Saturday fitness post: Yoga

Last week I wrote about High Intensity Interval Training (HERE), so I decided to do the same this week about Yoga.


What is Yoga?
Is one of the oldest teachings about harmony in the body, mind and spirit. It's a state/practice where those three aspects come together. When the ease comes, the feeling of unity and blissfulness follows. Yoga has different techniques which help you come to this state, those techniques are: body positions (asana), controlled breathing (pranajama), meditation (dhyana), singing, reading of ancient writings ... They all have the same purpose - to free oneself from distractions (negative thinking, disease ...) and find inner peace or samadhi - spiritual state of consciousness.
Yoga is much more than just a workout.

Source: Pinterest.

How to Yoga?
Yoga doesn't need much equipment. You need comfortable clothes without trainers, yoga/exercise mat, elastic band and a block or a pillow for beginners.


Benefits of Yoga

Yoga provides overall body health and well being. As any other practice, yoga is great for conditioning, balance, flexibility, helps you sculpt the body and is great for losing or maintaining weight. Yoga is bodyweight exercise and you're using your own weight to move from posture to posture and in certain poses, you're lifting every pound (I've noticed how quick triceps got defined from practicing chaturangas).

Source: Pinterest.

Yoga improves your posture and strengthens back muscles. It also helps to open hip flexors, calm muscle pain and reduces joint pain in general (I've noticed that myself). Just 15 minute back stretching or hip flexor opening yoga practice can do wonders.

Yoga leads into inner peace and balance in life. Like meditation, yoga is spiritual experience connecting with one's true self - the Soul, which leads into calmness and improves life in every aspect. Yoga provides space for spiritual growth.

Another great benefit is that it reduces stress and helps to cure diseases caused by stress. It also slows down ageing and relieves ageing problems (you can also do face yoga, which is great for erasing lines, wrinkles and helps to maintain a young looking skin). Plus, yogis are known to be happier :).

Another benefits are better sleep (I think that is common with any other workout regime), more focus in life in every aspect, helps you fight food cravings and encourages you to make better eating choices ... Overall, yoga provides better life and many yogis say that yoga is a way of life, not just a workout :).


I could go on and on about yoga. I do practice yoga, but I don't say I'm any good at it. But I can assure you that is challenging, you will probably have muscle pain the next day and I also is a nice change from regular HIITs I usually do.

Do you practive Yoga? Or have you ever tried it?

 

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Saturday Fitness Post: How to workout

Getting a little bit basic today. How to workout or should I call it "preparation" before workout.

Source: Pinterest.

1. Get your workout clothes on and get your hair out of the way. Wear comfortable and breathable clothes and trainers, because you'll sweat and your skin needs to breath. If you get all sticky and uncomfortable, you won't be able to give it your maximum.

2. Prepare bottle of water, workout note book, pen, workout equipment, exercise mat, towel ... Whatever you'll need during the workout, because you won't have time to reach for those items while exercising. It unnecessarily consumes time and distracts you. If you go to the gym, it's good to have all those items in there, so you avoid long preparations before going to the gym. Just grab it and go ;)

3. Plan out your routine for that day. I always write down in my notebook which exercises I'm doing and how they follow each other, this way I stay focused on a workout and rest between exercises is minimum - to take a sip of water if needed, to write down the reps and to prepare myself for next exercise.

Source: Pinterest

4. Turn off your mobile phone, computer, TV ... This is not time to talk to people, look at your Twitter or watch your favourite show/series/movie/YouTube videos ... Workout should be your alone time to give it 110 %, and to give that maximum, you have to be disconnected. Computer, phone or TV can be on only in case if you listen to the music to exercise to and if you're following a workout video :)

5. This one is optional, but preparing a post workout meal before an actual workout. Couple of days ago I did my stretching after a workout and still in my workout clothes I went to the kitchen an prepared everything for a meal, put veg into an oven and took a shower. After that dinner was served in 10 minutes :)

Do you have any more basic tips on "how to workout" or "how to prepare everything to workout"?

Have a lovely Saturday.

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Saturday Fitness Post: Favourite fitness and health sites

I received a comment from lovely Numra A in my last Saturday Fitness post. She asked me who do I follow for my workout routine. I replied and the next comment I received was from Bright Town Girl and she found my previous reply useful. I got inspired to write today's post. Thanks girls ;)


*I got all pictures on google.*

I've already mentioned Zuzka Light, but she was my inspiration to start working out on regular basis. She does HIIT - high intense interval training, about 10 minutes up to 30 minutes per day. If you remember, I done her Zcut power cardio series this year and gave me amazing results in just one month (read a review: here).
Even though she's now charging to excess her workout's, she has few new workouts every week. She's still much cheaper than any gym membership and she does that for a living, so you can't really be angry at her :).
If you're not ready to pay for the membership, she still has 70 charge free workouts (ZWOWs - Zuzka's workout of the week) on her YouTube channel, has a lot of recipes, tips, trick and advice + she also has 3, 4 or 5 minute short workouts for busy days. I like her zen and happy persona. She's a cool chick, check her out :)

Zuzka Light website: http://www.zuzkalight.com/
Zuzka Light YT channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/ZuzkaLight/

My favourite health channel has to be Lean Secrets. I already mentioned her in my Favourite YouTube channels post and I'm going to mention her one billion times more. Brenda has very informative videos (why you should stop eating wheat, drinking coffee, about carb cycling ...), gives advice for fitness chicks, how to get ready for fitness, gives the best recipes, motivates you, shows you workouts, what equipment should you use, reviews fitness and health stuff ... To sum up - everything fitness and health related :).
She also has a program called Lean Secrets, which you can purchase on her website. She radiated positive energy and strength. Amazing woman.

Lean Secrets website: http://leansecrets.com/
Lean Secrets YT channel: www.youtube.com/user/leansecrets

I've been into yoga lately, because I injured my knee awhile age and I wasn't able to exercise for more than a month (miss my muscle definition!), and yoga just feels right for me right now. I found Yoga with Adriene on YouTube and I've been doing her flows and I can assure you that they're not easy. Yoga is really challenging, because you have to control every movement, finding your breath and some transitions are really hard. People who say that yoga is easy, apparently they have never tried it :).
Adriene is really sweet, funny and gives useful advice. I think you'll like her if you're into yoga.

Yoga with Adrienne YT channel: www.youtube.com/user/yogawithadriene/

I also follow Blogilates, but never done her workouts, since I've been doing mainly HIIT, but her workouts look challenging. I love her recipes though. She does Cheap clean eats and shows you that eating healthy doesn't have to be expensive. She's really bubbly and funny as well.

Blogilates YT channel: www.youtube.com/user/blogilates/

 

I cannot finish this fitness post without mentioning the taughest fitness trainer, Jillian Michaels. I think that everyone knows her 30 day shred exercising programme. I did them myself, but I get bored if I have to repeat the same exercise for few days in a row. Anyways, I love her story (she was a fat kid), became extremely successful, has written best selling books ... Inspirational :) You can also watch The Biggest loser on YouTube, she was one of the trainers.

Jillian Michaels website: http://www.jillianmichaels.com/fit/ 
For her workouts I just typed Jillian Michales and you can check them here: YouTube


Other sites I use for motivation are:
- my blog :P (sometimes I need to reread my own advice, recipes etc.). Shameless self-promotion :) ;
- if I'm searching for more motivation, pictures, quotes etc., I go through Pinterest (no sh*t ;)). Check out my boards: http://www.pinterest.com/booogeywoman/. I use Google for those, too ;)
- Cut and Jacked has a lot of fitness stories, interviews, recipes ... Even though those girls and guys are all bulky (and I'm not), I still find it as a great source of information. Check out their site: http://www.cutandjacked.com/
- Another site for recipes, diet tips, advice ... is Shape Magazine. http://www.shape.com/
- Tone It Up - I'm subscribed to them, but somehow I always forget to watch their videos (too many subscribtions problem). They are nice chicks, they have workout videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/ToneItUpcom


I hope you found this post useful. Tell what fitness/health sites and YouTube channels do you follow?

Thank you for reading and commenting <3

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Saturday Fitness post: How to eat healthy?

I have some short and useful advice how to eat healthy. I think I mentioned and included them in my posts before, but repeating and including them all together will harm no one, right? :)

Source: Pinterest.

1. Buy and eat real food. With that I mean that real food doesn't need to be packaged, such as fruit and veggies. I know that those can be packaged too, but you know what I mean :). Even if you have to eat cookies, try to make them yourself, because you'll have to "work" for them, you probably won't be baking and eating them every day.

2. Packaged and canned food is allowed too, but it's good to read labels. Packaged food that is good for you: quinoa, amaranth, brown rice, whole grain pasta, canned beans, tuna, white cheese, Greek yogurt ... Those are mainly one to three ingredient foods, and I kinda "allow" myself five ingredients, but I always check if there are all ingredients that I can pronounce. If I don't know the ingredient, I won't buy it.

Source: Pinterest.

3. Another good tip is to ask yourself: Is this food good for me? Will it benefit me? Is it healthy? Does my body really need this? If the answer is no, than don't buy/eat it. Avarage person eats too many empty calories per day already. I'll write about empty calories in the future.
And don't get me wrong - having a cheat meal every once in a while is ok, it's not ok to have cheat meal life :)


I hope you find this post somewhat helpful. :)

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Saturday Fitness tip | Fitness and Travelling [guest post]

Today's guest post goes hand in hand with last week's Fitness post, which you can check out here.
Mike emailed me few weeks ago if I would want to review his article, he sent it over and it was a really nice piece, so I decided to post in on Saturday as a Fitness post. Let's just get into it, shall we ...
 

Plan Ahead and Pack Well to Make Fitness a Part of Travel

Whether you’re traveling for business or pleasure, staying fit while on the road is a challenge.  A disrupted schedule, lack of access to exercise facilities and simply feeling too tired conspire to derail your healthy resolutions. Nonetheless, it’s important to keep working toward those goals so that you don’t lose momentum.  

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Make a Plan

A wise person once said that if you fail to plan, then you’re planning to fail. That’s certainly true when it comes to fitness and travel where a little planning ahead can be a recipe for success.  Choose a hotel that has a well-equipped gym that will enable you to do your favorite exercises. When I had to take a trip to San Francisco I used a website called Gogobot in order to perform some recon. At Gogobot I could look through all of the San Francisco hotels in order to pick one with a complimentary 24-hour gym. This was essential in order to get my early morning workouts in.  Also, scout out running trails in the area. You’ll keep fit by utilizing these trails while also seeing some great scenery.

Pack the Right Tools

To accomplish some fitness routines, you don’t even have to leave your hotel room. Resistance bands, a yoga mat, a TRX band, and some exercise DVDs may be all you need to get a great workout.  These items are light, easy to pack and still deliver results. Get out of your comfort zone and get working out with different things.  

Source: Pinterest.

 

Get Fit at the Airport

If you think the airport is just a place to get bad food and recharge your cell phone, think again. According to USA Today, an ever-increasing number of airports is adding fitness facilities.  The San Francisco airport boasts a yoga room while the hotels around some major airports are making their fitness rooms available to people who aren’t even guests of the hotels.  Alternatively, you could use the expansive terminals found in most airports as your personal walking path. It gets your blood pumping and elevates your heart rate on a day when you might otherwise go without exercising entirely.

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De-Stressing for Business Travelers

Stress is a major concern for those trying to be healthier, and it is particularly so for the business traveler who must deal with on-the-job deadlines and demands as well as the general stress of being away from home. CNN suggests that business travelers take a small dose of melatonin to get extra quality sleep and choosing healthy foods to keep energy high.

There’s no rule that says travel forces you to sideline your fitness goals.  Plan ahead and pack right to ensure that your travels and your fitness routine will always go hand-in-hand.

 

Thank you Mike, for this informative post. If you have anymore questions for Mike, you can reach him at: mikemnning (at) gmail (dot) com and check out his blog here (even though he haven't posted in quite some time, but has some informative posts :)).

Have a happy healthy Saturday everyone!