body – Page 3 – Personal Euphoria: Pilates & Fitness Classes in CT

Heat up in Winter

If you find yourself feeling cold on these frigid winter days we’ve been having, you have two tools at your disposal all the time that can help you warm up: movement and specific breathing patterns.

Our muscles are efficient little furnaces They are great at heating us up. In fact, when we engage our muscles around 80% of the energy created becomes heat. Only about 20% goes into the muscle movement. To heat up quickly you’ll want to do a few full body moves that use big muscles. For example squats brining your arms over head, jumping jacks, or large marches in place while pumping the arms. Use your whole body, but definitely involve the legs and glutes because they have some of our biggest muscles. You can even simply tense your muscles. Try that with me now. Tense you arms, legs, glutes, abs. I feel that heat right away, do you?

Now, the key to remember when you want to move to heat yourself up is not to do so much. You don’t want to do squats or jumping jacks until you start sweating because then you’ll just get cold again. Try 5- 15 reps of any exercise. If […]

Heat up in WinterMaggie Downie2022-02-16T16:39:49-05:00

How Many Steps A Day?

Many of us believe we are supposed to walk 10k steps per day. The truth is that there has never been research to back that up. The number comes from a 1960’s, Japanese ad campaign for the first pedometer. Clearly the campaign worked because we’ve all been believing it ever since.

But now we have three research studies that indicate, perhaps to some people’s delight, that we may not need 10k steps for a substantial benefit. It looks like the magic sweet spot is between 7,000 and 8,000 steps. Upon crossing that threshold people decrease their chances of mortality by all causes by 50-70%.

These studies showed correlation not causation, so it is not evidence that walking makes you live longer, but people who walk certainly live longer. If you’d like to be in the “live longer” group, I’d encourage you to build up to 7k steps per day.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting if you already walk more than that (perhaps you have gotten in the habit of 10k steps) that you should reduce your goal. Increased steps was correlated with even more gains, but the most profound leap in longevity came […]

How Many Steps A Day?Maggie Downie2021-11-14T16:40:11-05:00

The No Pain, No Gain Fallacy

We’ve all heard the phrase, No Pain, No Gain in relation to exercises. It’s a popular expression but it is not true. Actually, it’s potentially harmful.

When we think No Pain, No Gain in terms of exercise we tend to think that either our workout should be grueling, or we should be sore the day or two afterward. If we aren’t then we presume we haven’t done enough. The problem is working out and pushing through pain increases our risk of injury. Once we are injured our whole workout plan can be derailed. Plus the Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) we feel 24-48 hours after a workout isn’t practical or functional. We are more likely to get injured then because we have to alter the way we naturally move to work around how sore we are.

While you can choose to only do an upper body workout every other day, you can’t not use half your body for a whole day. We need our arms to pick up our children, reach for something off the top shelf, and open the refrigerator. We need our legs to go upstairs, get in and out of […]

The No Pain, No Gain FallacyMaggie Downie2021-10-15T16:20:14-04:00

Feeling on edge?

Have you been feeling on edge since mid-March? Hmmm, I wonder why? Perhaps you are human. We’ve been dealing with a lot in the world lately between COVID, loss of work, black lives matter, and a general sense that we don’t know what the future holds or how to bring about changes we may desire. And, we’ve been going through a lot of it in some degree of isolation—never a good thing for humans. We are social animals. Even if you are one of those people that say you prefer cats and dogs to your fellow humans, you need people and support.

Does Rest Still Work?

I’m a big believer in a rest day from exercise, but I’ve found that it hasn’t been an option. Prior to COVID I could take a rest day. If I took three or four in a row, I’d start to get antsy. (Matt might use the word grumpy.) But now, if I don’t exercise one day, by midafternoon I’m not in a good place. Movement is such a useful tool for me. It makes me feel better. It helps my sanity. Moving boost my spirits. But perhaps […]

Feeling on edge?Maggie Downie2020-06-19T14:16:27-04:00

Body Shaming Yourself

Have you ever looked back at a picture of yourself from a few years ago and thought, “I looked good.” But you know that at the time you thought you weren’t good enough. The day of the picture you told yourself you had a bad hair day, thick arms, or weight to lose. We get caught up in body shaming ourselves in little ways, never really thinking we are good enough at the time.

Aside:

I selected the picture here at random. It’s from 2014 or earlier. This is an example of a picture that I see now and think I look fine, but at the time I thought I had all sorts of ways to improve myself. Now, when I catch myself thinking I don’t look good, I try to look at myself from the perspective of Maggie from five years from now. I’m pretty sure she’s thinking I look great.

Sharing What’s Good

Not long ago I read an article about how women meet up with friends and complain about themselves. They never show up and say, “I look great today,” or “I’m having a great hair day.” Part of that is societal. […]

Body Shaming YourselfMaggie Downie2019-07-29T10:51:59-04:00

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