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About Maggie Downie

Thank you for giving your time to stop and read my blog. I hope it encourages you to keep moving. Move and the body will be happier. And when you're moving you can hike, run, swim in Jell-O, race over non-Newtonian fluids, travel the world or build igloos--if that's your thing. If not, you can watch me do it. This is just a spot to try and feel good about life.
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Exercises to Relieve Holiday Back & Neck Pain

Have you ever spent a day baking cookies and your back aches halfway through? Tis the season of back aches and neck kinks. There’s a lot we look forward to this time of year, but much of it comes with a lot of prep work. And even if we enjoy that, it can add to the time we spend hunched over. This hunch (kyphosis) can aggravate our back and neck.

But not to fret. There are moves you can do to counteract that forward bend. First remember, our low back and neck can move much easier than our midback. All those pesky ribs protecting our internal organs makes it a little hard to get mobility in the mid back. So, when we hunch over a lot, bending back becomes harder and harder to do from the mid back and we do more and more from our neck and low back. So, while it is okay to bend back at the lower back and neck, you do want to be mindful that you move from your middle when you want to counteract the slump of a long workday or baking marathon.

Moving from our middle […]

Exercises to Relieve Holiday Back & Neck Pain2022-11-21T21:16:10-05:00

The Shortest Workout You Need!

The shortest workout you need sounds too good to be true. It sounds like a gimmick, but there is research that supports its effectiveness. But while it’s short, it will be challenging.

Professor of kinesiology, Martin Gibala, and his team have shown that a specific 10-min, intense interval workout three times per week was as effective as 30-minutes of moderate exercise four times per week. What’s great about that news is that it means if you’ve said in the past, “I don’t have time to work out,” now you really have no excuse. Ten minutes can provide great impact on the body and your health.

Equally effective meant people seem to have very similar results in multiple health markers, including insulin sensitivity, VO2 max (how we utilize oxygen during exercise), and at a cellular level our mitochondria responded similarly.

Just to see those numbers a different way—30-minutes of high intensity interval work throughout the week yielded the same results as 120-minutes of moderate work throughout the week. It’s just a quick way to fit in exercise. It doesn’t mean that one way is better than another. Moderate and vigorous exercise challenge the body in different […]

The Shortest Workout You Need!2022-12-14T11:16:38-05:00

You Are Not Complaining

With my private clients, my first question to them is almost always, “How are you feeling,” or “How is your body?” As you can imagine the answer can vary greatly from person to person and day to day. But often when someone has pain somewhere and they tell me about it multiple weeks in a row, they start to apologize.

Even in my group classes when someone informs me of something going on in their body, if they are still bringing it up a few weeks later, they will often apologize. I’ve done this myself when I take classes. No one wants to be seen as a whiner. And none of us wants our body to hurt.

But I can’t preface enough, you are not whining. You are not complaining. I need and want to know what is going in your body. It helps me help you move better. The more feedback the better.

I’m not sure where this apology comes from—a desire to please (thinking any pain or injury makes us less pleasing), a frustration in the discomfort itself that we’d just like to will away, the fact that in our society we […]

You Are Not Complaining2022-08-26T12:14:54-04:00

Wrist Exercises

Who wants to do wrist exercises when we could be working our abs, butt, and thighs, right? Unless they hurt our wrists are not the first body part we think to workout. And when I was younger, you’d have a hard time convincing me I should waste any workout time on my wrists. Ah, youth!

But it’s like any part of the body. Everything is integrated and we need strong and flexible wrists or our wrists will impede other exercises (like plank, pushups, and even potentially weight lifting). Type a lot? Don’t want carpel tunnel? You want to consider your wrists.

If you have wrist pain, these series of exercises are really helpful. The first video takes you through a series of moves that both strengthens and stretches the muscles. The second video is a series of deep stretches. If you choose to do either of the videos, listen to your body. Start small. Ease in. These are small muscles, and you can progress over time. Both videos are beneficial, but if you only have time for one, do the first.

If you don’t have wrist pain, I know it will be harder to convince you to make time for your […]

Wrist Exercises2022-08-15T10:59:38-04:00

National Disability Independence Day

July 26th commemorates the day the American Disabilities Act was signed. It reminds us of actions put in place to help create independence for people with disabilities. According to the CDC 1 in 4 US adults has a disability while 1 in 7 has a physical disability that impairs mobility.

Those are the statistics, but people are more that data. We are all in need of regular movement for optical health and independence. The general guidelines for exercise (30-minutes of moderate movement a day) is the same for everyone. But exercise can be much more daunting when you live with a physical disability.

What are the options when movement can pose additional challenges?

Water

Get in a pool or a body of water. Water is a great place for many different types of disabilities or pain. My father-in-law had a type of muscular dystrophy (Charcot-Marie-Tooth) and he was a different person in the pool. Not only can the water enable the body to feel great, but it also creates resistance so we can get good strength work and even cardiovascular work.

Walk

I’m not sure we all think of waking as counting as exercise. Often people think if they aren’t working at […]

National Disability Independence Day2022-08-09T10:23:57-04:00
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