Yoga Meditation – A Guide for Beginners
Yoga is a great exercise and an awesome way to practice mindfulness!! You should do yoga for at least 30-60 minutes per week!
Yoga helps you build muscle strength, increases flexibility, improves blood flow, decreases blood pressure, improves posture, concentration and energy, decreases stress and anxiety.
Taking to a yoga class is a great way to exercise, get hands on guidance, make friends and build community! If you’re new to yoga, check out this 20 minute yoga routine you can do at home!
Fighting Muscle Soreness After A Good Workout
A good workout will make your muscles sore! Here are some tips to fight soreness.
Day of workout:
- Drink lots of water! Staying hydrated helps circulate lactic acid out of your muscles and prevent soreness.
- Heat your muscles later in the day via hot shower, sauna, heat pad or blanket. Heat helps promote blood flow to muscles, which promotes healing and repair.
- Eat pineapple or ginger or drink tart cherry juice. These have anti-inflammatory properties that help improve post workout recovery.
Day after workout:
- Use sore muscles. Light exercise or stretching of sore muscles helps reduce soreness.
- Foam roll or self massage. Both of these loosen tight muscles and improve muscle flow to muscles, which relieves pain.
- Ice pack. Putting an ice pack on sore muscles reduces inflammation and numbs sharp pain.
A Strong Mindset for Strength Training
Mindfulness and strength training go hand in hand! Meditation through movement is easy, you just move mindfully and focus your attention on your body movements. Counting the repetitions in your lifts can be calming and meditative, similar to focusing on your breath. Try of these suggestions the next time you’re lifting weights:
– Focus on your breath. Pay attention to the air going in and coming out of your lungs.
– Have a mantra. Create a mantra to say with each repetition or each inhale/exhale. You’d be shocked how much having a powerful mantra can boost your workout!
Make your own mantra or try these out: “I am enough,” “I am strong,” “I am powerful,” “Yes I can,” “I’ve got this.”
– Concentrate on the movement. Move your muscles slowly and really think about the muscle groups you’re using. You can focus on any aspect of the physical movement you like. Some examples are focusing on your form or thinking about what the muscles feel like as you move them.
Wine-ilates
Pilates and wine are two of my favorite things!!! I’m always looking for inspiration to combine my favorite things together so I can spend more time doing what I love!
Give these Pilates moves a try:
– plank
– Pilates teaser (boat hold)
– single leg bridge
– side plank
– roll like a ball
– one leg circle
– hundreds
Check out this site for instructions on how to do some of these moves.
image from:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/211598882463215029/
A Successful Workout Mindset
The right mindset is the most critical element to making an exercise routine work for you! Here are some important steps to getting the right mindset:
1) Set Realistic Expectations: It’s important to set a goal, but start very small. By making a large goal, you make it difficult to achieve. Instead of setting your goal to run a mile everyday, start with a goal to run 15 minutes 3 days per week. Once you hit your goal, increase it to slowly over time.
2) It doesn’t matter what you do … just do something! It doesn’t matter what you do, just get your body moving. You don’t need a gym membership or weight set to get healthy. Walk the dog, or run the stairs in your house for 5 minutes, anything that’s easy and attainable for you. Doing anything is better than doing nothing!
3) Make it fun! Pick an activity that you enjoy doing. If it feels like torture, you’re less likely to do it. Taking a fitness class or joining a sports league or dancing to a zumba DVD, whatever sounds fun to you!
4) Remember why you’re living an active lifestyle: When you’re working out, remind yourself why you’re doing it. Even if working out seems like a chore, adopting a grateful attitude and appreciating your ability to more your body will make every workout more enjoyable.
5) Get an accountability partner and schedule your workouts: Both of these tips help you get in the mindset of working out and inspire you to keep going. Scheduling your exercise around an existing habit is great trigger to also get you into the exercise mindset, so try to schedule at the same time so that exercise becomes second nature.
Stretching – The Most Important Thing to do Every Day
Stretching is extremely important for your body!
It’s critical before and after workouts:
– Stretching before a workout helps prevent injury and gets your blood pumping.
– Stretching after a workout helps reduce your heart rate and helps blood from pooling in your lower extremities.
But did you know it is also SUPER important to stretch a little bit EVERYDAY!!! This keeps your muscles flexible, strong, and healthy! It also maintains mobility in your joints – if you don’t stretch regularly, your muscles actually shorten, weaken, and tighten, which leads to a number of injuries!
This is especially important if you’re in front of a computer or your phone for many hours of the day! Check out these stretches to do everyday when you’re working on the computer!
Roll of the Dice Workout
If you’re having fun during your workout, you’re more likely to do it! Some ideas for making workouts fun: crank up the tunes, workout with friends or your dog, get outside. But the best way to have fun during a workout is to switch it up and try new techniques and classes! If you’re looking to integrate something new, give this dice rolling workout routine a try!
Timing Your Meals to Maximize Your Workout
https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/simple-carbohydrates-complex-carbohydrates
Timing your meals around your workouts is important! If you eat too close to a workout, you could feel sick and not be able to perform your best during the workout.
Pre-workout meals: 1-3 hours before workout
– lots of lean protein
– carbohydrates (simple and complex)
– should not have fat, as this slows digestion
Post-workout meals: 0-2 hours after workout
– lots of lean protein
– carbohydrates (simple and complex)
– should not have fat, as this slows digestion
Other meals: 4-5 hours before/after workout
– protein (40% of meal)
– complex carbohydrates (30% of meal)
– healthy fats (30%)
For an explanation of simple and complex carbs, read this article.
Easy HITT Workout for Beginners
High intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts are extremely effective at burning fat and building muscle. Check out this easy, low impact HIIT workout!!
Post Workout Meal Ideas
Eating the right food after a workout is extremely important! You muscles burn through their energy storage and are broken down by working out. The right foods will not only rebuild the muscle energy stores and help with protein synthesis, but also enhance overall recovery.
Here are some post-workout meal ideas:
- tuna salad sandwich on wheat bread
- grilled chicken with rice and roast vegetables
- fruit and cottage cheese or greek yogurt with crackers
- egg omelet with avocado toast
- salmon with broccoli and sweet potato
- hummus with vegetables and pita
