And Have a Happy New Year!

See you in 2014

Exercises for snowboarding/skiing

                Hello everyone with the coming of winter, mountains are getting ready and some are even opening.  This all means that snowboarding season is upon us.  I absolutely love boarding and am extremely excited for this upcoming season and feel it is time to prepare.  There is nothing more frustrating than being in the middle of a boarding day and your legs begin to fatigue and give up on you.  This post will is going to focusing on exercises to help you prepare yourself for a season of hitting the mountains.

 (Sis and I boarding Cayons in Utah))

                Training your legs is vitally important for preparing for the season but I also like to add balancing exercises to help increase your body’s ability to balance itself.  That is why I love this first exercise, the one leg toe touch with a hop.  If you are a vet of Insanity then you will know what I am talking about.  You start off by standing with your feet together and lift one leg so you knee is at a 90˚ angle.  Then bend forward keeping bent leg even with body and touch your toes or the floor with both hands.  Begin coming back up and when body is in the start position jump.  Start with 10 per side and as you feel comfortable and your leg strength and balance builds feel free to increase the amount of reps.

                The next exercise I like to do for snowboarding are squats.  This includes regular weighted squats as well as pulsing squats.  These squats you start with your feet shoulder width apart going halfway through the squat so you are in the sit position and instead of coming back up hold it and start small pulses.  Do 5 pulses and on the next one explode jump so your arms and legs are fully extended where you would resemble a starfish.

                Now it's time that we directly attack out abdominals.  For this I love doing Russian twists.  Start off by sitting on the floor feet flat with knees bent.  Fully extend your arms lean back slightly while lifting your feet and twist side to side.  I also like doing crunches with 4 twists on a declined bench.  Do 10reps per set and increase amount of sets or amount of reps per set.  These are great exercises and you stomach will soon be on fire.

                Another exercise that are good for preparing you are walking lunges.  I enjoy these much more than regular lunges.  Walking lunges not only increase your leg strength but also helps you increase your balance.  Start by grabbing dumbbells or any weighted item that you are comfortable holding for some time.  The amount of room you have can determine how many lunges you can do.  Starting with 6-10 reps (keep it even so both legs are strengthened evenly) and if you want to challenge yourself do 10 lunges in one direction turn around and do 10 more ending where you began.

                It is important that you remember to exercise your upper body as it helps you with rotating your body.  A good upper body work out are bench tricep dips with balance ball.  Start by grabbing a bench, a balance ball, and extra weight if you want more of a challenge.  Sit on edge of the bench and place heels on top of the exercise ball.  Dip down and come back up keeping heels on top of the ball.  These help increase your upper body strength and also helps increase you body’s ability to balance itself.

                These are some of my favorite exercises to help prepare for the upcoming season.  Remember that these are only a few and there are many more that you can add to your repertoire.  Remember stay hydrated and to stretch, who knows maybe I’ll see you out on the mountain.

Till next time

Bogo Out

Proper Stretching Techniques for Pre and Post Exercise Part 2

                Today we are continuing our discussion of proper stretching for pre and post work outs.  To summarize what we covered on our last post it is important to perform dynamic stretches prior to any workout or sporting events.  Dynamic stretches run the body through its range of motion and properly warms up joints and muscles for any activity.

                Once you have completed you work out or event it is now time to cooldown and to do static stretches.  While dynamic stretching brings the body through a range of motion static stretching stretches the muscle to the point of tension and can be held for 30 seconds to 2 minutes.  Static stretching helps increase flexibility and range of motion.

                Static stretches include triceps stretch.  For this stretch you place your hand in the middle of back between your shoulder blades and with the opposite hand you push your elbow down and hold.  A chest stretch has you lock your hands behind you back about waist level and slowly lift arms straight up.  Some static stretches for your legs include hamstring stretch also known as toe touch.  For this stretch you can either be sitting or standing.  You bend at the waist and touch your toes and hold.  Another leg stretch is the quadriceps stretch.  This is when you lift your foot and grab with the hand on the same side and lift up towards your butt.  These are just a few static stretches that can be done.

                So in closing it is important to remember that for any physical activity that you are conducting, you warm up to complete dynamic stretches before you activity and you conduct static stretches during or after your cooldown.  We stretch to maintain flexibility and range of motion, this helps prevent injuries and properly prepares your body for your next activity.

Stay safe and have fun

Inspiring

The other day Youtube suggested a video for me to watch titled "Letting Beauty Speak Up Itself", I saw it was Crossfit's channel and was interested. I am just going to leave you with this what an inspiring video.

Proper Stretching Techniques for Pre and Post Exercise

            Hello everyone and welcome.  For this month I decided to make my posts around stretching.  There will be 2 posts about this with the first post being about stretching prior to exercise and the next post will be about proper stretching after you exercise.

            Muscles are important to our bodies, they allow us to move.  In order to allow us to properly move, bend, and flex, our muscles need to properly work.  Not only will having tight non flexible muscle prevent proper movement and full range of motion, they can also leave a person prone to serious injury.  Therefore it is important to properly stretch prior to exercise as well as post exercise.  Stretching properly also increases blood flow to muscles which allows more oxygen into the muscles.  This increase of oxygen helps keep lactic acid at a minimal by using the lactic acid to help create more energy.

            Before stretching even begins, the muscles need to be warmed up for greatest efficiency.  A good way to properly warm your muscles is to take a light jog around a block, a lap on a track, or even jogging in place.  The warm up allows blood to travel to the muscles and helps stretch farther.  There are two forms of stretching and each has a proper time and place.  The first type of stretching is the dynamic stretch, which “involves moving parts of your body and gradually increasing reach, speed of movement, or both” (Kurz, Tomas, Science of Sports Training, page 236).

            Once your muscles are warmed up it is now time to start your dynamic stretches.  These can include arm circles, windmill toe touches, butt kicks, non-weighted lunges, leg swings, and open the gate.  All of these stretches involve movement of a specific joint or muscle.  This brings the area through its range of motion and causing blood to flow to the area which carries more oxygen and prepares muscle or joint for any activity.  If you do not do dynamic stretches prior but do static stretches instead you run the risk of damaging your SEC (Series Elastic Component), this is the part of your muscles that allows your muscle to stretch and retract back to its normal shape.  As with what Tomas Kurz says you want to stretch gently with no jerking or bouncing movements.  You muscle does stretch but it is not a rubber band and bouncing can cause injury and does not help to properly stretch your muscle.

            So remember that we warm up to stretch our muscles prior to an exercise.  Having our bodies warm and properly stretched before our activity will allow us to be more prepared for our work-out or sport activity.  Stayed tuned for my next post on Static Stretching.

Till Next Time

Bogo Out

Two Smartphone Apps You need

I love my smartphone, as I feel many people do.  I am all about downsizing and having a smartphone help with this.  It’s a GPS system, a camera, a music player, and there are a vast amount of applications that can be downloaded for everyone’s different tastes.  I am actually going to backpedal from a recent statement.  I do still have an iPod for when I am working out and driving around; there just is not enough space on phones for all my music.  But with that said I am all about apps and finding apps that help motivate and track people’s health patterns.  Below are 2 fitness apps that I feel are fun and must have applications for people who are either enthusiastic about exercise or who need a little motivation.

• Zombies Run

• Now if you got to know me at all you will quickly find out that I am a huge zombie fan and that when I heard about this app I almost lost it.  I am what you can call a runner I enjoy the health benefits and somewhat find the peace of tightening up my laces and going out for a few miles.  This app is geared towards those who run.  Every time you step outside for a run this app uses the GPS functionality of your phone to give you a mission.  As you are going about you jog it will give you objectives like turn left or you need to sprint away from a pack of zombies.  This is great because it adds a fun factor your run and it is also an interval work out which is great for increasing your cardio endurance.  I am definitely going to try this app out and I will get back to you about what I think.
• Zombies Run 2 is available on both App store and Google Play for $3.99 full version and $1.99 for 5k trainer.

• GymPact
• Now this next app is very interesting to me.GymPact is an application that helps motivate and keep accountable those who choose to use it.  This app allows you to set an agreement when you will work out and what your stake is.  So for instance I can agree to work out 3 days a week with a $2.00 dollar commitment.  Now if I miss any of those three days I get charged the $2.00 but if I make your pact you get rewarded a percentage of my stake.  Now this is what I had trouble understanding but after some more research I totally get it.  Your reward comes from those who failed to meet their agreement.  GymPact allows you to check in at a gym, run outside using RunKeeper, or workout from home.  I’m not sure if GymPact can afford me as a user but for those who do have trouble staying committed to keep up with their exercises this app is perfect for you.
• GymPact is available on both the App Store and Google Play for FREE

Have a good one everybody

Bogo out

Milk does the body good

                There are a lot of diet plans and health fads that I don’t jump ever really jump on.  I guess I just have a routine and I really don’t ever add extra protein in such into my diet.  However there is a new study that I am very willing to jump on the so called band wagon and that is chocolate milk for post-workouts.  I need to say that again CHOCOLATE MILK for post-workouts.  

                Studies have started to prove that when you drink water only after a workout that it is only replenishing the sweat that was lost.  When you drink fluids like Gatorade and Powerade you are replacing the water lost from sweat but I the same time you are giving your muscles the much needed fuel of carbs and proteins to help repair and replenish your muscles.  This goes the same for chocolate milk.  I don’t know about you all but I am not made of money and purchasing Gatorades and Powerades even from Costco will quickly send me into bankruptcy, so I think it’s great tasting always enjoyable chocolate milk for the win.  If you want to read up some studies on this newer found theory I have placed a few below.

Hope you all are having a great weekend and that you have an even better weekend.

Bogo out

Fitness Magazine, Got Milk?

Runners World, Is Chocolate Milk Really Best for Recovery?