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Exercise & Sleep

For two days after I ran the half marathon, I slept so soundly for a good eight hours. The great sleep I got makes running another half marathon very tempting. But 30-minutes of any aerobic exercise should do the trick. Whenever I am extremely physical, I tend to get great sleep.

And there is research to prove it. According to a study in the journal of Sleep Medicine 20-30 minutes of aerobic exercise will help improve sleep by enabling you to fall asleep faster and stay in a deep sleep longer. One of the reasons they think this happens is that exercise raises the temperature of the body. It can stay raised for four hours, but when it cools off the temperature is usually lower than prior to exercising, which may help in falling asleep.

The benefits of better sleep are huge. The longer you are in a deep sleep the more growth hormones you produce, which helps you to rebuild and heal your body. But for me, I just love the feeling of waking up and feeling refreshed.

Exercise & Sleep2014-08-04T18:02:40-04:00

First Fall Weekend

Fall is officially here. This season has some of the best weather for being outside. It’s not too hot and it’s not too cold. Fall is just right. So how can you take advantage and be moving at the same time? Here are some of my favorite ways.

• Hike (I love Devil’s Hopyard and just recently discovered the blue trail at Castle Craig)
• Walk a town green
• Get one last walk on the beach in
• Run with a friend
• Pick Fruit in a local orchard, but walk to the fruit and skip any hay rides to the fruit
• Bake a pie from scratch—skip out on electric mixers and mix by hand for a slightly higher calorie burn
• Take your favorite exercises (pilates, yoga, kick boxing) and do some moves outside in a nice park

(Picture: Me and my dad hiking last fall.)

First Fall Weekend2017-09-12T19:31:46-04:00

Kids & Movement

Joe Pilates drew a lot of his ideas about movement and exercise by watching animals and infants move. In knowing that, I often watch my friends’ kids to see how they move. What do they do when they are first learning to crawl? How do they hold their head up? Why do they walk on their toes when they first learn to walk? How does their spine move? These are all things I look for to see what kids do naturally.

Kids also have a freedom to movement that I think we lose as we age. It’s mostly societal. An adult can’t get away with throwing their arms up in the air, spinning in circles or just jumping up and down on the middle of a sidewalk the way a kid can. Kids have more freedom to be silly.

And so when we had friends staying with us a few weekends ago and their 3-year old daughter started moving around in ways that made me chuckle (okay, I was laughing hard), I tried to catch it on camera. This was especially something I wanted to catch after I asked her what she was doing and she responded, […]

Kids & Movement2017-10-25T15:49:42-04:00

Try Not to Compare

I know it’s hard not to compare yourself to others in a group class. We see someone else doing something and we want to be able to do it too. I get that. I’m pretty competitive. But the problem is there is more than just our level of strength that may make us need to do an exercise at a different level.

Think of the roll up. If you have short legs and a long torso, you have a lot of weight to lift and not much to help counter balance you. No matter how strong you are, this exercise will always be harder for you that someone with longer legs or someone who is similar in size on the top and the bottom.

When I went to the psoas workshop last week I learned that depending on where the psoas connects to the spine it get affect how you move. The psoas can connect to your vertebra at T12 or L5 (which I knew), but what I didn’t know is that if it is lower […]

Try Not to Compare2017-09-12T19:31:47-04:00
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