It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? Get a dog, and you’ll be forced to exercise at least twice a day. You will have a running partner who is always willing to go with you. You will have a foolproof reason to get your butt out the door. You’ll even feel a little safer with the dog with you.
Yeah… it didn’t quite work out like that for me…
About.com has a great workout that requires no equipment. Just print it out and put it in your suitcase on your next trip.
For the Pike Shoulder Pushup, the pictures shows an exercise ball, but if you read the directions, you can perform this move with a stool or on a step. The following moves are extremely hard if you’re a beginner: Staggered Pushups, Pike Shoulder Pushup, and Triceps Dips. These moves use your body as the weight. If you are overweight or if your muscles are new to strength training, these exercises can be challenging.
Other than that, this looks like a great strength training workout for your hotel room stay. Remember it next time you are trapped at a hotel without a gym or stuck at home unable to get to a gym.
If you’re lucky enough to be living in Washington D.C.; Austin, TX; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA; or New York City, NY, then here is a great series of articles for you revealing the best urban trails in those few cities.
The irony of these articles is that the locals know the good trails. We talk to each other and trade information about the best rides we’ve had recently. These articles are best for people who are visiting the highlighted cities. If you are trying to decide whether to strap the bikes on the back of the car, this series will give you a good description of the trails they have to offer.
If you’re thinking about coming to Salt Lake City, Utah, email me and I’ll tell you the best trails to ride here. We’ve got some great ones within five minutes of downtown. I’ll let you in on the secret; Moab isn’t the only great mountain biking in Utah.
Via: SportsGeezer
There is so much that I don’t understand when I read the running magazines and books. I’ve tried to fathom what they are talking about, but it all sounds like gibberish and numbers to me. It’s not like I’m scared of numbers. I was a math major. If I can wrap my head around Multi-Variate Calculus, I should be able to understand a running magazine, right? Not yet…
My sister suggested that I hire a personal trainer from the gym. I shied away from the idea, mostly because I don’t like the idea of having a personal trainer. A running coach, on the other hand, sounds like someone I could work with. Of course, this article gives some local information on finding a running coach, but only if “local” means Washington D. C. It’s too late for a running coach to make any major improvements on my time for the SLC Marathon on April 23rd, but for my next race, it might be a good idea. Until then, I’ll keep working with my Treadmill Spreadsheet.
This series from About.com talks about the benefits that can be had from a daily walking regimen.
This article gets a little metaphysical, but it opens up your mind to an entirely different way to look at your daily exercise.
If you got a Stability Ball for Christmas, you are problably bored with the video that came with it by now. If you didn’t get a video with your new exercise toy, then you might have even blown up the ball and just bounced it around the room after doing a few crunches.
This set of exercises gives you a bunch of fun new moves to try with your Stability Ball. My favorite, the One-Legged Hamstring Roll, is pictured here. Maya on Yourself! Fitness made me do that once and I had no idea how effective it was until the next day when I could barely walk. I do Leg Curls at the gym with as much weight as I can do and I it won’t have that kind of effect on my hamstrings.
Enjoy this lower body workout!
Shape magazine has what they call a boredom busting workout that is supposed to break you out of your physical fitness rut.
After looking over the program, it looks like a fairly easy plan to follow. You will need dumbells in a variety of weights, a weight bench and a stability ball. The cardiovascular training can be done on any cardio machine. In all, this program is best used at a gym where you have easy access to all the equipment and the variety of different cardio machines.
As far as navigation goes, Shape’s web designers could have done a better job. Make sure you read the side bar on the first page about RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion). It isn’t discussed on the first page, but is used heavily in the cardio section. Additionally, you could use a Heart Rate Monitor instead of RPE.
The article is several pages, but there isn’t navigation at the bottom, just names of “Related Stories.” Those related stories are the actual workouts that you are supposed to follow and a nice little inspirational piece about “sticking with it.”
On the whole, it looks like a really good workout if you can get past the clumsy user interface. I guess they want you to buy their magazine instead of getting all your information for free on the Internet. Imagine that…
I have seen so many different calculations for Target Heart Rate that I really don’t know what’s true anymore. For years, it was always:
220-Your Age=Target Heart Rate
I vaguely remember a heart rate that took into account your current weight. I saw another one that used your BMI. I remember another one that had a different rate for women than men. I remember another one that took into account your fitness level. I’ve read about others that take into account your resting heart rate. There are now so many potential calculations for your Target Heart Rate that I can understand if you might be tempted to just forget about it.
One day, I decided that they all were bogus…
This article explains the benefits of taking a day off from exercising.
A Day Off: why you need to include rest in your exercise program – by Joe Friel, M.S.
This is the hardest thing for me to do. When I do something every day, it becomes a habit and it only takes one day off for me to get out of the habit. Remembering to take a guilt-free day of rest is something that I have been working on since the beginning and haven’t fully mastered.
Even though last year’s race was poorly managed and treated like an afterthought to the marathon, I’m going to run in the SLC 5K this April. It took me a long time to decide to run it, so now I have less than six weeks to train for it.
This isn’t really a problem for me. I have been exercising regularly. Dance Dance Revolution and Yourself! Fitness have kept my cardio training up to running level. I just need to get back to running so I don’t surprise my muscles on the race day. Running works different muscles than either of the other exercise routines I use.
I decided to run the 5K while lying in bed last week. “I do what is required to weigh 120 pounds,†I told myself. It wasn’t getting me up. I imagined my daily reward (thirty minutes sitting on the heat vent, reading or crocheting or playing video games, whatever I want). Not even the comforting heat vent time was getting me up. “This isn’t working,†I thought to myself. “I need different motivation.â€
At that moment, I decided to run the 5K. I imagined myself running the familiar pathway from Liberty Park to The Gateway shopping center. I sat up in bed and walked to the back door to let the dog out. Not even the potentially bursting bladder of my faithful dog was enough to get me up, but thinking about running that race got me up and dressed for a run within minutes.
Motivation comes from the strangest places. Oddly, this month, it came to me from deciding to run a race. I wish I could harness motivation. I wish I could bottle it and sell it. If I could, I would make a million dollars.
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