One of the most common injuries to athletes and generally active people alike is a hamstring pull or strain.  Often the first impulse is to stretch that hamstring, and often that is not necessarily the best option.

In our modern lifestyle, many of us spend a lot of time in a seated position.  Whether that is sitting at a desk through the workday, sitting through a day at school, or sitting down and decompressing at night.  That seated position flexes your hip and your knee, tightening your hip flexors on the front of your hip, and your hamstrings on the back of your thigh.  This tightness and shortening of the muscle inhibits their antagonists:  in this case the glutes and quadriceps.  So when this individual begins activity like jogging, the glutes, which should be doing the work, is turned off by the tight hip flexor.  That forces the hamstring to take over a job that it should not be doing, resulting in an injury.

So in order to correct this common problem, and to prevent injury a few things should be done:

1.              Stretch your Hip Flexors:

·      PROCEDURE

·      While keeping a slight forward lean of the torso, tighten the core and contract (tighten) the glute of the leg with the knee on the ground

·      Maintaining this posture, shift the entire body slightly forward

·      Exhale and hold the stretch for two seconds

·      Relax and repeat

2.              Strengthen your glutes:

·      Lying Glute Bridge

o   Procedure:

§  STARTING POSITION

§  Lying face up on ground with arms to side, knees bent, and heels on ground

§  PROCEDURE

§  Lift hips off the ground until knees, hips, and shoulders are in a straight line

§  Hold 2 -3 seconds, return to start position and repeat for prescibed number of repetitions

§  COACHING KEYS

§  Do not let back hyper-extend

§  YOU SHOULD FEEL IT

§  Working mainly your glutes and secondarily your hamstrings and low back

Performing these two exercises consistently will correct a misalignment in your posture, turn your glutes back on and allow them to fire properly.  In turn reducing your risk for a hamstring injury by leaps and bounds.

Just because the winter is upon us, there is no need to forgo being active and including outdoor workouts in your routine.  It may take a bit more fortitude, and taking advantage of good weather, but with a bit of preparation you can have some seriously awesome workouts outside this winter.

Snow shoeing, they say, is the fastest growing sport in America these days, and for good reason.  It is fun, it easy to learn (if you can walk, you can snowshoe), and it is great exercise.  Plus, the trails that you now and love in the summer, turn into winter wonderlands when the snow flies, with far less traffic.  With a little preparation, you can have the most memorable outdoor experiences with your snowshoes.  Make sure you are prepared for winter conditions with adequate clothing, - GoreTex is your friend!  Always carry a first aid kit and emergency supplies, and educate yourself a little about Avalanche awareness.  More and more snowshoers are getting themselves into a bit of trouble because of the capability to get into the backcountry with snowshoes.  So it is important to be able to recognize avalanche dangers when you see them.

Cross-country skiing or 'skate skiing' may be one of the best workouts you will ever have.  Cardiovascularly there are few activities more demanding.  There are several Nordic skiing areas with groomed and non-groomed trails and bountiful acres to skate through with those cross country skis, putting your backcountry worries to rest.  You can go in the backcountry with your cross-country skis, but the necessary preparations stated above apply.  Backcountry skiing with what is called a Randonee setup is a favorite.  In a Randonee setup, you have a free heel like a cross-country ski, but your skis are more like a downhill ski.  This allows you to get into the backcountry and climb hills like you would on cross country, but then you have the capability to lock your heels down at the top, and downhill ski down.  Both are cardiovascularly demanding, and also a wicked workout on your quads, glutes, and of course, your core.  Awesome!!

If heading to the winter wonders of the mountains is not your thing, there are plenty of workout opportunities with in confines of the city.  One of the greatest things about living in the Northwest is the myriad parks and green spaces we have here.  Just because it is not warm and sunny, does not mean you cannot head to a park do a great workout.  Having the right clothing will make all the difference.  There have been improvements by leaps and bounds in cold weather aerobic training clothes in recent years.  Breathability and warmth have been incorporated into your clothing, making working out outside in the winter fantastic.  Make sure you do not overdress, as with your workout you will be creating a lot of body heat, warming your core.  Be sure to wear glove liners and a hat though, as you lose heat through your head, and your fingers will freeze as you begin moving.  From, there you can do everything outside in the winter that you can do in the summer.

 So dress warm, prepare for the elements, and get out there and enjoy the winter and get your workout while you are at it!

 
A recent study (reported in August 2008 edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine) asked people to keep a food diary– simply writing down what they ate.  The research included 1,685 overweight adults over 25 years old who were asked to eat a healthy diet, exercise and to keep a food journal.

Those who wrote what they had eaten six days a week lost on the average TWICE as much as those who made food journal entries less often in this study.

The findings showed that you don’t have to keep an elaborate food diary.  It seems that the act of writing down what you are eating is what’s important. And it’s more effective if you write it after you eat, not at the end of the day.

To begin your food journal find a notebook that is small enough that you can carry around with you. You need to carry the food journal around with you on daily basis so that you can truly focus on where your calories are.

Write down everything that you eat for 1 week. This will be your starting week in your goal to lose weight. This will give you a realistic vision of exactly how much food you consume on a daily basis.

Sit down at the end of the first week and look at your food journal. Look at what you have been eating and realize this why you have not seen and weight loss. The eating trends that you have now are what are causing you to not lose weight. You need to change your eating habits to lose weight. Your food journal will help you to do this.

Start implementing changes after analyzing your diet.  Begin reducing portion sizes. You should be evenly dividing your overall caloric intake for the day by five or six meals every 3 hours or so.  This helps keep your insulin levels even all day long and optimizes your utilization of the nutrients you are taking in.  Start analyzing the types of calories you have been taking in as well, making sure to have an adequate balance of complex carbohydrates, protein, and good sources of fat.  For example, try to be somewhere around a 55%, 35%, 10% respective.

A common thread for what makes journal writing so powerful is that it is focused reflection and review.  Sit down every week and evaluate how you have done with your eating through your writing in your food journal. You will also want to weigh your self when you sit down with your food journal. You can keep track of your weight by writing it down in your food journal as well.

Stop putting off getting back in shape and start being accountable to yourself and keeping a record of what you are putting in the one body that you have.  You may find some of your habits surprising, and being accountable for it will allow you to change those habits for the better and get you to four fitness goals.

    Not everybody is an early bird, let alone one that is able to get out of bed and head straight to the gym for a     good energizing, calorie burning workout.  However there are several reasons why you should think about     getting over your old sleeping in ways, and head to the gym!

    One of the main reasons is that working out first thing in the morning will increase your metabolism.  By     getting that body moving early, you are giving your system a major jump start.   By increasing what is know as     EPOC (excess postexercise oxygen consumption), you will also increase you caloric burn for the rest of the     day, i.e. you will increase your metabolism. After cardiovascular exercise or weight training, the body continues     to need oxygen at a higher rate than before the exercise began. This sustained oxygen consumption is known as EPOC.  This is an important concept especially when training early.

Another reason to train early is that your workouts can be easy to put of if you wait until the evenings.  We are often tired by the end of the day, and it is too easy to convince ourselves to do it the next day.  Plus, by getting it done early, you will have the whole day ahead of you and will be that much more energized from the workout.  

You will find that you will be more alert throughout the rest of the day, as all those endorphins released into your bloodstream during a workout positively impact your brain function as well.  You may not notice it at first, but after getting into your routine for a week or so, you will notice a big difference in how you feel throughout the rest of the day.

Once you are into your routine you will begin to sleep better as well. Exercising later in the day tends to disrupt your body’s cycles.  All of the benefits described above will be occurring, but much too late for you to reap the greatest benefit from.  Many people describe having trouble sleeping if they workout too late, disrupting their sleep cycle, and making them even more groggy in the morning. 

It may be tough at first, but try doing your workouts first thing in the morning for a few weeks and see how you feel.  

Women today are realizing the profound benefits of strength training in their workout routines.  The myth in the world of health and fitness of  women “bulking up” with weight training is being put to rest at last.  The truth is that by strength training, women will reap more benefits than they possibly could imagine. 

In the past, women relied on cardiovascular activity and a low calorie diet to change their physical appearance. Unfortunately, low calorie diets merely punish the soul and plummet the metabolism.  And without consistent strength training in your program, change in your physique will be an impossible goal.  Also, with out strengthening your muscle tissue, ligaments, and tendons through strength training, all that cardio can lead to injury. We now know that strength training is absolutely essential if we wish to create visual changes in our bodies, and we've discovered that the benefits of strength training extend far beyond the visual.

As work is performed against resistance in a strength training program, muscle mass and muscle tone is improved.  This newly formed muscle tissue is functional, meaning it does work and therefore requires energy to do what it does, i.e calories.  As opposed to body fat, or what is known as adipose tissue, which is energy.  As long as you are on a good nutritional diet, this new muscle tissue will draw the energy it needs from that body fat, and will require more calories.  That means that your metabolism begins to go up, way up.  Your BMR (basal metabolic rate- the number of calories it takes to run your body in a day w/o exercise) goes up, and your body composition will begin to change.  Your body fat percentage goes down, which comes with all kinds of benefits, including having a leaner body with the capability to live an active life with a reduced risk of injury.  This is all equally true in both women and men.  Sometimes the difference lies in how the training is implemented.  Heavier resistance and fewer repetitions lead to larger muscle fibers and what is known as hypertrophy.  While lighter resistance and more repetitions still garner the benefit of improved muscle tone and muscle mass, making you a leaner, stronger, sleeker version of you.  The problem is that some women take this notion to the extreme and do exercises with far too light a weight and far more reps than is necessary.  If you don not use heavy enough resistance than your muscle tissue will have no reason to improve, and you will not gain the myriad benefits of weight training.  You should use a weight that is challenging for 15-25 reps, without losing form in any way.  Your form and technique is far more important than the weight or the reps.  If your form falls apart at 8-10 reps, than it is too heavy.  If you have not already, seek the advice of a fitness professional to ensure that you are doing things correctly, and always using correct technique, tempo, resistance, and rest periods.

Middle-aged women can gain particular benefit from strength training.  When you work against resistance in a strength-training program, you are also putting that resistance on your bone structure.  This not only reduces risk of osteoporosis in younger women by maintaining bone density, but studies have shown that bone density actually increases in older women who have exhibited signs of bone density loss.  As mentioned earlier, strength training not only improves the quality of muscle tissue, but it also increases the strength of connective tissue, reducing the risk of injury. 

The women in this study were all post menopausal, and some of their ages were in the 50's and 60's. They made some remarkable changes in their lives as they got stronger. One woman described going rollerblading with her children. Another went canoeing with her husband.  Strength training gave these women back a youthfulness that they thought they would never see again.

As a woman, you should not fear weight training, but instead embrace it with vigor.  Incorporating strength training into your workout routine will bring benefits of lower body fat %, higher metabolism, improved muscle tone, reduced risk of osteoporosis, reduced risk of breast cancer, reduced blood pressure and cholesterol, reduced risk of injury, not to mention an improved self confidence to move about and live an active life, and the list goes on.  Again, for the safest, most effective program, you should seek the advice of a certified fitness professional.

Feel free to write if you have any questions.