The Body & Movement

Instructor Highlight Maureen

So Maureen isn’t one of our instructors, but she’s an integral part of Personal Euphoria. Maureen handles all the money and ensures our whole team gets paid. She works with the towns, invoices, and processes payment. And, if you’ve ever tried to watch Maggie count, you know it’s important that she has help in this department.

Get to Know Maureen:

When you aren’t teaching what are some of your favorite ways to move?

Walking the beach, and walking it again. It’s like a new landscape appears with each tide. Each tide brings you a new gift. A piece of sea glass, a shell, or just a view. I say it all the time “The beach is my happy place.”

What song motivates or picks you up the most?

Happy… Pharrell Williams (it’s a feel good song and reminds me of Maggie)

Favorite Food?

Hmmmm mostly anything edible. I am sitting here trying to decide what my favorite really is and I realize I don’t have a real favorite, how odd. I certainly have cravings, but if I had to choose, I couldn’t.

Time you normally crawl into bed?

Weeknights 8:30-9:00, Weekends when I wake up […]

Instructor Highlight MaureenMaggie Downie2018-03-21T15:43:40-04:00

Instructor highlight Jeannine

Jeannine was the first instructor to come on board with Personal Euphoria. She has a great sense of humor and a strong work ethic. We are so lucky she is a part of our team. She teaches all over the place: Wethersfield, Glastonbury, Rocky Hill, Portland, and for some of our corporate clients. While you are most likely to find her teaching Pilates she also teaches traditional ballet and strength classes. She’s always willing to sub when needed. Here’s Jeannine’s instructor highlight!

Get to Know Jeannine

When you aren’t teaching what are some of your favorite ways to move?

When not teaching, I power walk, run trails, ride horses, and do a lot of gardening.

What song motivates or picks you up the most?

Music favorites vary depending on the mood I’m in. I prefer classical music. “O Fortuna” from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana comes to mind.

Favorite Food?

I like to eat what I make. A year-round favorite is home-made pureed vegetable soup with a couple of scoops of whole grains such as quinoa, buckwheat, brown rice, wheat berries.

Time you normally crawl into bed?

Bed time depends on wake-up time, so it can vary from 9 if I wake up at 5:30 […]

Instructor highlight JeannineMaggie Downie2018-05-25T07:26:46-04:00

What is fascia?

Drink fluids for healthy fascia!

This month we are highlighting fascia. Fascia is the connective tissue that runs along every surface of the body, encasing the organs, muscles, and other soft tissue like a sausage casing or the sections of an orange—where each large and tiny segment of juice is held together by a sleek, thin film. So the muscles themselves are encased, but so is each muscle fiber. Fascia is everywhere in our body. There are different types of fascia in your body that serve different purposes.

Fascia helps us move. It helps make us glide so that when we move our skin, tendons, and muscles don’t stick to all our other parts. Each part can slither smoothly alongside each other. Fascia can help the muscles do their job. When healthy fascia remains springy (for lack of a better word) in movement, the muscles can use less energy and won’t fatigue as quickly because the fascia takes some of the burden of force and helps the body return to its “normal” shape. Fascia is your friend for all kinds of movement.

Recently it was “discovered” that a particular type of […]

What is fascia?Maggie Downie2018-05-04T11:38:40-04:00

Wrist Pain When Exercising

If your writs don’t hurt you may take for granted how much they are supporting you on an exercise like sidebends.

Our fingers do not have any muscles. They move like puppets on a string via tendons connected to the muscles of the hand and forearm. That means we need flexible, strong, mobile wrists so that our fingers can maintain all their movements. The opposable thumbs we love so much would be less useful without a tendon running off a muscle down through our wrist. Whether our wrists are tight or weak, it can cause wrist pain when we do exercises that rely on the wrists. This includes plank, push-ups, tricep dips, holding weights, or supporting your body weight in any way. If the wrists are getting in the way, it can drastically limit our upper body work.

Injuries or carpel tunnel make people think of their wrists, but otherwise, unlike six pack abs, most people are not looking to tone their wrists. This becomes a problem if you go to do an exercise and your wrists get in the way because they are weak or feel strained when you put your […]

Wrist Pain When ExercisingMaggie Downie2018-03-21T15:42:56-04:00

Straight Arm or Elbow Plank

Snap a picture doing your favorite version of plank and send it our way!

As humans we ponder many great philosophical questions of life such as what is the meaning of life? Or can we trust our own memories? What is time? What is reality? And now we can add should I be doing a straight arm or elbow plank (aka forearm plank)? People always want to know which is harder.

The Answer

Apparently, the answer to this seemingly simple question is as mind boggling as all the rest. Making the answer: BOTH. Alternating between both is important because the body requires, likes, and benefits from variety.

Read a book or look online and most places will tell you a straight arm plank is harder, but not all agree. Clearly, this is a mystery. In my body, there is no doubt in my mind that an elbow plank is considerably more challenging. Everybody is different. But here are the facts we have.

Facts

An elbow plank works your abdominal muscles more. Everyone agrees on that and you can probably feel it for yourself if you compare planks.

Elbow plank is easier on the wrists. So if your […]

Straight Arm or Elbow PlankMaggie Downie2018-03-21T15:42:15-04:00