Sometimes you don’t reach your #goals, but that’s ok. Your #limitations are often guide you to different ideas of success you otherwise wouldn’t have acknowledged. Feel free to tap into success in a different way today! Happy Tuesday!
Lumber Multifidus…What?!
Ever hear me talk about your Lumber Multifidus muscle? Often ignored by personal trainers, this muscle is essential in establishing a solid foundation of support for your lumbar spine, allowing you to progress your training to a higher level sans injury. Let’s talk about why it’s so important and how you can strengthen this integral stabilizer:
1) Without them, our spine would have problems!
The multifidus muscles help to take pressure off the vertebral discs so that our body weight can be well distributed along the spine. Additionally, the superficial muscle group keeps our spine straight while the deep muscle group contributes significantly to the stability of our spine. These two groups of multifidus muscles are recruited during many actions in our daily living, which includes bending backward, sideways and even turning our body to the sides. Studies have shown that the multifidus muscles get activated before any action is carried out so to protect our spine from injury.
2) The key is training your body to breathe while engaging your multifidus!
One of the reasons so many people have lumbar back pain is a result of not taking full breaths using their diaphram muscle in their lower abdomen. So often we take short quick breaths using our upper back and neck muscles because this is the most efficient way to get oxygen to our heart quickly. But when not in quick need, it’s important to contract that diaphram so that the multifidus learns it should be engaged all the time. Taking long sustained breaths in and out retrains your body to use your diaphram rather than your upper neck and shoulder muscles to breathe. You can imagine the tightness and pathology you may sustain by breathing from your neck, shoulders and back rather than from your deep abdomen–The upper extremity muscles get tighter and more bulky (theoretically causing lactic acid buildup and reduced oxygenation). This can result in a compression of the cervical spine and a weakness in the lumber multifidus.
3) Key exercises for keeping this muscle strong:
Cat & Cow Pose: Inhale, look up, pull belly in. Exhale, look down, push shoulders towards ceiling.
Pelvic Bridge: Press back flat into floor, raise hips towards ceiling. Hold for 2-3 seconds. Repeat 10x.
A Smarter Snack
A lot of professionals in my arena would tell you to limit your snacking daily… That the calories in and the calories out matter. But not me.
It’s the quality and timing of the snack. Choosing the smarter quality snack will make you a calorie burning machine–but you have to know the factors that make it. Here they are in listed format so you can snack smarter too:
1) 200 Calories or Less : A snack more than 200 calories won’t satisfy you any more than a 200 calorie snack. Often your body is just looking for something to hold you over–a quick burst of energy. Don’t pick something with more calories–you won’t benefit from the extra padding.
2) 0-10g Sugar: No added sugar is best, but if it’s on the ingredients list, just make sure it’s not in the top three.
3) 5g Protein: That’s enough to give you a feeling of fullness–so you won’t be ravenous by the time your next meal rolls around.
4) 1-2g Saturated Fats: No more than 10% of your diet’s calories should come from saturated fats.
5) 3g+ Fiber: The more, the better. Fiber regulates blood sugar, maintains your metabolism and curbs your appetite better than anything else.
Why Mindful Eating Works Better
“The rhythm of life is becoming faster and faster, so we really don’t have the same awareness and the same ability to check into ourselves.” These words are from an unexpected source: a Harvard nutritionist. Dr. Lilian Cheung, with Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Nhat Hanh, co-wrote ‘Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life.’ “That’s why mindful eating is becoming more important. We need to be coming back to ourselves and saying: ‘Does my body need this? Why am I eating this? Is it just because I’m so sad and stressed out?’” In this 3-minute video, Dr. Cheung explains how honoring and being mindful of the food we eat makes us healthier. She offers seven practices for mindful eating — simple steps that we can take to maintain a healthier weight and live a happier life. We are what we eat — and how we eat
Video from KarmaTube
Detox Monday: Killer Abs
You’ve been drinking and eating your way through the weekend, so what better way to start off the week than with a Detox Monday workout courtesy of CoreFit. On the docket for today is a killer ab routine I use on the toughest NFL players out there. They need the core power to maneuver up and down the ice quickly and power the puck to those game winning victory shots.
Lululemon and The Rabbit Hole
Heard mentality– it’s a dangerous thing. I love yoga, but exercise and fitness can be a dangerous thing. You convince people that all this is for your body and it’s good and they will literally do ANYTHING to win this race. People LOVE extremes, let’s face it. They will, for instance, follow you into a store and purchase massive quantities of overpriced articles of clothing. And apparently, that’s not all. If you want to indulge yourself in a little extremist herd mentality behavior, check out my favorite example Lululemon. Lofty ideals, they elevate your badonka-donk to a holy height.
If you haven’t been keeping up with the dramatic downfall of my favorite cult Lululemon, then you may be in for a surprise. This week Christina Day, CEO (formerly of Starbucks fame) stepped down after five and a half years. This wouldn’t come as a shock for many who watched the brand take a nose dive after the see-through pants snafu and Founder Chip Wilson’s Ayn Randian demands on employees that they follow his training protocol, “or else.” This is a man who named the company, infamously as a marketing technique because “Asians would have a hard time pronouncing it.”
Wilson, who remains lulu Chairman, sold $50 million worth of stock just days before Day
I Love This
“”
She closed the door with the intention of not looking back
But missed her step because she didn’t have a steady track
She can’t be bothered by the mistakes she’s made
But she’s forgetting that’s what guides you to the rightful path
Fruit and Veggie Goodness Smoothies
Green Machine
1/2 cup of mango juice
1/2 cup of passion fruit juice
1/4 cup of kale
1/4 cup of spinach
1 cup of bananas
Protein Berrilicious
1 cup of soymilk
1/2 cup of strawberries
1/2 cup of bananas
*
Triangle Pose Break Down
Ever wonder how I get such great abs?
This break down of the Triangle Pose illustrates the usage of the inner thigh and the full abdominal wall. It’s one of my favorite poses to do for an overall toned appearance and it also stretches out my hamstrings really well. A great pose to counter the affects of the forward motion of running.
