cardio

Low Impact Cardio – Gentle Moves for a Healthy Heart

Cardio exercise is beneficial on many levels. Getting our heart rate up strengthens our heart, enhances our lung capacity, and helps reduce blood pressure and cholesterol. It can also boost our mood and may help with immunity. If cardio exercise came in a pill everyone would want that pill.

Running, HIIT, and swimming are all great forms of cardio, but if you don’t have access to a pool, hate high intensity, or are worried about your joints you still have options.

While cardio does require us to pick up the pace, you don’t need to work at warp speed.

To do cardio workouts you do need to move faster, but it isn’t all or nothing. You can build up incrementally. You want to challenge yourself (heavy breathing), but don’t feel a sense of misery while moving. You’ll want to be winded, but not feeling like you are going to be sick.

And while we should all set a goal of being able to maintain moderate cardio for 30-minutes, you can start with 5-minutes and build up from there.

To be gentler on your joints […]

Low Impact Cardio – Gentle Moves for a Healthy HeartMaggie Downie2024-07-18T09:56:46-04:00

Tips for Healthy Hiking

Hiking is one of my favorite pastimes. And it feels so much better when your body is ready to trek up a mountain. So how do you train for a hike? Here are some tips:

Pack Your Weight

Wear your pack when you train and put some weight in it. If you know how much weight you’ll be carrying on hike day, build up to that quantity. Getting a pack filled with weight can take time and extra effort. If that’s getting in your way of prepping, start moving without the pack.

Trekking Poles

Trekking poles are a lifesaver. If you want to hike into your 70’s and 80’s you want to get trekking poles today. Not only do they save your knees, but they turn the hike into a more full-body workout. On a typical hike, the arms aren’t that involved. Add trekking poles and now your arms and shoulders get a workout too.

Cardio

Any hike will feel better if you are ready for the cardio it will require. You can build up by hiking, biking, running, or picking up the pace when you go for a walk.

Core

It’s easy to forge

Tips for Healthy HikingMaggie Downie2023-08-01T14:00:29-04:00

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