CategoriesBlog Live Fit. Move.

5 Benefits of Exercise That Never Crossed Your Mind

You know the benefits of exercising, right?  
A great way to get in shape and/or lose weight.  Improve your health.   Help your heart.  Relieve stress. And so on…

You’re heard those reasons.

But what if there’s more?  

What if there are benefits to exercise that you no one ever tells you?

Here are my top 5 benefits of going to a gym that likely never crossed your mind.

5. Exercise can create connection — even if you never speak to anyone.  If you come to the gym on a regular basis, the front desk will learn your name or, at the very least, recognize your face. In addition, you usually see the same people.  The super-buff dude, who’s also really nice.  The angry guy who never smiles.  The perky gal, with the crazy arm swing, who runs on the treadmill every. damn. day. The old guy who still lifts more weight than you do. You may never meet them, but you feel like you know them. The simple act of exercise creates this connection to your environment and the people within it.

4.  Exercise improves your ability to think. If you’re feeling stuck at work or in life, head to the gym.  Hop on a treadmill.  Take a class.  Use a foam roller.  Let your mind wander.  Allow your blood to flow.  You just never know what answers may come.

3.  Exercise in the early morning, and you might get leaner — plus getting your workout in early sets the tone for the day and frees you up later. Researchers have discovered that exposure to morning light, whether it’s pure sunlight or bright indoor lighting, is associated with leaner body weights. Who doesn’t love that?!

2. Exercise teaches you the difference between real and imagined pain.  There’s pain that tells you to adjust or back off, and there’s mental pain that simply wants you to quit.  When pushing your body, you learn when to fight through and when to say “when.”

1.  Exercise is a chance to improve the practice of life.  You exercise when you feel like it — and when you don’t.  When the alarm goes off and you’d rather sleep. After work, when you’d rather hit happy hour.  You push yourself and go easy.  Sometimes it’s play and other times it’s pain.  And you learn to trust your body and the wisdom that it provides with each and every work out.
What’s your favorite way to exercise?
Let us know in the comments below.

CategoriesBlog Nourish.

Healthy Noodles

Vegetable noodles are one of the newest healthy food trends, and are a great alternative to pasta or other noodles.  Vegetable noodles are spiralized vegetables that can be used as “noodles.” They are a great option for anyone who is looking to increase their vegetable intake and reduce their consumption of carbohydrates. They are also a great for those who eat gluten-free, children who don’t like to eat vegetables or those who are sick of salads .

In order to make vegetable noodles, you will need a special “spiralizer” tool, which is available in both countertop and handheld models. Many stores now offer vegetable noodles if you don’t have a spiralizer or don’t want to take the time to make them. While you can store vegetable noodles in the refrigerator, it is best to use them immediately after spiralizing.

While you can use almost any vegetable, the most common vegetables used are zucchini, parsnip, sweet potato, turnip, carrots, squash and broccoli stems.

Vegetable noodles can be used in so many different ways!

  • Use in place of pasta in your favorite Italian dish.
  • Make your own baked curly fries with sweet potatoes.
  • Use to make pasta salad.
  • Use for soups that traditionally call for noodles.
  • Use in place of noodles for Asian stir-fried noodles.
  • Use root vegetable noodles as a hearty side dish.

Health Comparison

Pasta 1 cup cooked = 221 calories  and 43 grams of carbohydrates

Zucchini 1 cup = 25 calories and 4.6 grams of carbohydrates plus vitamins, nutrients and antioxidants not found in processed pasta.

CategoriesBlog Nourish.

Spring Healthy Eating Challenge

As we enter April, it’s time to breathe some fresh air into how you eat. With that in mind, why not challenge yourself to create a healthy new habit (or four!). Change your eating for the better, making small changes and, perhaps, invite your family and friends to join in the fun with you.

Here’s the challenge:
Pick one small healthy change to make each week (ideas below).
Put your entire focus on making that change happen. Set reminders — put visual reminders around your house.
Review at the end of each week. Did you do five-plus days of your change? Success! Tell everyone about it. If not, figure out what your obstacle is and plan to beat it.
If you were successful, pick another change to make the next week, but also continue your first change. By the end of the four weeks, you should have four solid changes if all goes well. If you weren’t successful, just continue the same change (or pick a different one if you didn’t like that one) and try again, but this time with a plan to get around the obstacle.

Small changes ideas:
Add a vegetable to lunch.
Add a vegetable to dinner.
Eat a vegetable or fruit for a snack.
Add fruit to breakfast.
Prepare a healthy snack for when you feel like snacking (carrots, grapes, nuts, banana, raisins).
Change a white grain at lunch to a whole grain.
Change a white grain at dinner to a whole grain.
Pick a healthy recipe and cook two to three days’ worth of it.
Eat a vegan meal each day.
Eat no fried foods.
Replace sweets with fruit.
Reduce alcohol to one drink.
Drink more water.
Create a daily meal plan.
Eat slowly and mindfully for one meal a day.
Eat whole food instead of prepared food for one meal a day.
Eat a salad every day.
Replace soda with tea.

Have some ideas?  We’d love to hear.
What will you do?

CategoriesEvent

Hike with Flow ~ Saturday, April 23rd

In Seattle there are so many activities in the outdoors to experience that are less than an hour outside of the city. Why stay cooped up indoors on a Saturday morning when you could be enjoying what this beautiful place has to offer?

Get off the couch and into the mountains with Suzanne this spring.

Suz is a Personal Trainer at Flow and has a huge passion for outdoor adventures. She has been leading backpacking trips all over Washington and promotes a healthy lifestyle not only at the gym, but in the wilderness.

Our first community hike will be Saturday, April 23rd at Rattlesnake Ledge.
Meet at the trail head at 9am, or carpool from Flow (more details to come).

Please sign up at the front desk.

CategoriesBlog Live Fit.

There Is No Finish Line: Healthy Tips for Daily Living

Many people begin the year with lofty goals and aspirations. A large percentage are health related:
Get fit and stay healthy; Lose weight; Exercise more.  

All of these are excellent goals, but how many people actually stay the course?

Most lose momentum quickly, especially if they don’t experience quick success. (Who hasn’t wanted to  lose 10 pounds in one week?) Other people place their focus solely on the finish line and cannot wait to just be done – especially in the pursuit of health.  We can’t wait to finish the diet and go back to “regular” eating or finish the exercise regime and go back to lying on the couch.

Here’s the thing:  There is no finish line.  

Health, true health – both inside and out – is a part of daily life.  In fact, I’d argue that every decision you make affects your health.

Think about that for a moment: What if every decision you made today impacted your health?

There are the obvious health decisions we make, such as what to eat or how to exercise.  But there’s more to it:

Where do you work? How many hours of sleep do you get?  What kind of shoes do you wear?  Do you sit all day? How much do you move? Do you travel for work?  How long is your commute?  Do you like your co-workers? How often do you vacation?  How much TV do you watch?  Do you spend time outdoors? How do you relieve stress? Do you belly breathe? What are you thinking right now?

You make decisions every day – many of them a repeat of the day before.

With each choice, are you moving toward your optimal health or further away?

Are you simply looking for a quick fix – a finish line to cross and be done, or are you looking for a life style?

Sometimes, eating that cookie is healthier than the alternative.  Or skipping the gym, opting for a much needed nap, would do wonders for your psyche.

Tiny steps, each day, toward health.

Know this: You are the master of your health and wellbeing, and there is no finish line.

Every day you get to decide.

So, what are you choosing today?

CategoriesBlog Live Fit. Move.

Sculpt a Better Life With a Strong Core

** This post contributed by Dr. Traci Grandfield

Core strength is one of the major foundations to our health and, consequentially, quality of life. The definition of core is “the most central or most important part of something.”  The core is where we generate the power to drive our bodies in every action they perform. From major stressors, such as lifting weights at the gym, to small actions, such as chores around the house, our core is responsible for supporting our spine and the rest of our skeletal framework. Without core strength, your body will always struggle to hold balance and alignment and injury is much more likely to occur.

What muscles make up the core?
The core is not simply the lower abdominals.  It is composed of many muscles working together: muscles of the trunk including the abdominals and little muscles surrounding the spine called paraspinals, muscles of the hip girdle including the gluteals and upper leg muscles, and the shoulder girdle muscles. These muscles are constantly working together to stabilize your core. Core stability comes from the strength and ability of these muscles to hold it together, literally.

Benefits of core stability

Injury prevention, maintenance of low-back health, athletic performance and spinal stability are just a few benefits of having a strong core. Injury can occur to the discs of the spine, such as a herniated disc, due to lack of support during a simple activity like bending over. Without proper gluteal firing and hip stability, stress on the knees may be overwhelming. This can lead to arthritis over time or knee ligament injury.

Core stability is necessary for movement of arms and legs in athletics. If you’ve ever carried groceries, moved boxes, swung a baseball bat or golf club, shot a basketball or served a volleyball you felt the activation of your core beginning in your abdomen or trunk before the transfer of power out through your arms and legs. In fact, the more core strength you have, the better you perform in any of those activities.

While performing well is satisfying, remember that avoiding injury while playing your favorite activities is paramount. Some research has proven that optimal performance comes from optimum production, transfer and control of force and motion to the extremities in athletic activities. This means that power from your arms and legs is dependent on the strength and stability of your trunk and core muscles, which produce and transfer forces across the body.

So remember:

Core endurance = Spinal stability
Core strength = injury prevention and better athletic performance
Both endurance and strength = better balance
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If you want to feel better and improve your quality of life, contact Dr. Grandfield to find out how to get started. Getting aligned is the first step to empowering your body and mind in any endeavor. 

CategoriesBlog Move.

Training For Strength… Is it for You?  

Yes.  Yes, it is.

When I meet a potential member, I always ask them about their goals. For the most part, I hear roughly the same answer: Lose ___ lbs.,  tone (insert body part), and usually something that has to do with their core – at which point they frantically point to their abdominal area. I rarely hear that someone wants to get stronger (unless I am working with an athlete), which makes me wonder if training for strength is reserved for only those with athletic performance goals? Or is it something all of us, regardless of size, shape, age, or activity, can (and should) look towards improving?

Training to be strong can benefit everyone, and should be an area we all look to drastically improve. Training for improved strength generally consists of working with  a resistance  that only allows for 4-6 repetitions with proper form. Most believe that they are getting stronger through classes such as body pump, boot camps, HIIT, and even some CrossFit sessions, but you really are not training for strength during these sessions.  The weight isn’t heavy enough, the reps are too high, and the rest period is too short. Most of the training you are experiencing in these formats are for muscular endurance, conditioning, and hypertrophy (muscle building).  These classes have amazing benefits and should be part of your training routine, however, there are also great benefits to traditional strength training.

For starters, training for strength requires a tremendous amount of neuromuscular control and activation which helps with balance, stability, and coordination. Making vast improvements in these areas translates favorably into your daily activities  including walking upstairs, picking up groceries (or a child), getting up off of the ground, climbing, and running, to name a few. Further, because the primary adaptations to traditional strength training are neural, you can get considerably stronger, without added muscular development (contrary to popular belief). In other words, you can add strength without getting bigger. For all you “core” enthusiasts out there , training with heavy weights is one of the best things you can do to strengthen your hips, lower back, and abdominals, as core strength is a major factor in accomplishing a successful lift.

Another great benefit of traditional strength training is minimizing the loss of bone density (or in many cases improving bone density) as we age, particularly among females. Healthy bone density is crucial in reducing the occurrence of osteopenia and osteoporosis. Finally, strength training puts a tremendous amount of (good) stress on the connective tissue, including tendons and ligaments, which helps with joint integrity and drastically reduces the chance of injuries.

Now that you have learned about some of the benefits of training for strength, here are some guidelines to follow so you can begin to challenge yourself and mix up your routine in the gym:

  • If you have never worked with heavy resistance, allow your body to SLOWLY adapt to heavier weights by starting with 2 sets of 10-12 repetitions of a lighter resistance  on  all exercises. After 3 weeks, increase your weight so that you can only accomplish 6-8 repetitions with proper form utilizing 3-4 sets per exercise. Following another 3 weeks at this intensity, you should be ready to tackle weights at 4-6 repetitions for anywhere between 2-6 sets.
  • Begin each strength exercise with a very  light warm-up set (or two) to increase blood flow, train movement patterns, and “excite” your central nervous system.
  • Choose exercises that incorporate large muscles groups (Legs, Back, Chest) and are multi-joint in nature. These exercises  include weighted squats/lunges , pull-ups, deadlift, overhead presses, bench press and Olympic style lifts. Extremely heavy loads are not recommended for accessory muscles (i.e.. rotator cuff exercises, bicep curls).
  • Because of the added neural fatigue associated with strength training, as well as the need for perfect form, adequate rest time of  2-5 minutes is required to ensure safety and successful lifts over the course of your workout.
  • If you are pressed for time or want to get  more of a “conditioning effect”, you can superset (doing two exercise in successions of each other) opposing body parts (exp: Front Squats with Weighted Chin-ups) and keep your rest between supersets around 90-120 seconds. You can also superset mobility and/or accessory exercises with your lifts.
  • Because of the neural adaptations associated with strength training, your ability to lift more weight will come faster than your connective tissues’ ability to withstand it, so keep your increase in weight modest (3-5% for Upper body, 5-10% for lower body exercises) on a week to week basis.
  • Choose only 3-4 exercises during your strength training sessions, the remaining exercises should be designated for accessory muscle groups and /or mobility training.
  • Record all your workouts, including exercises, weights, reps, sets, and rest time.

Now stop reading, grab a pre-workout meal, and go get STRONG!!!!

And if you have questions please stop in and see me, or one of the other trainers at Flow.

CategoriesBlog Live Fit.

Massage.  A luxury, or necessary component of taking care of your body?

If you’re like most people, you might consider massage to be a luxury.  Something you do every now and then on a “spa” day.  Yes, a massage is relaxing, but it’s so much more than that.
Here are three healthy reasons to book a massage today:

Relieves stress.  Experts estimate that upwards of ninety percent of disease is stress related.  Nothing ages us faster than high stress. Guess where that stress shows up??  In the body.  More often than not stress tends to manifest in the shoulders, neck, and abdomen.  While eliminating stress altogether may not be possible, a massage can, without a doubt, help manage your stress. Nothing beats the power of human touch.

Improves Flexibility & Circulation.  By working on muscles, connective tissue (fascia), tendons, ligaments, and joints, regular massage can improve your flexibility and range of motion to help keep your joints more fluid and less injury prone.  A chain reaction of fluidity in the body is better blood circulation that occurs as a result of receiving massage therapy on a regular basis.  Massage therapy can also help heal old, and new injuries and has been used for centuries to manage pain in a natural way.

Improves the Immune System.  A surprising benefit of massage therapy is that it can actually increase the white blood cell count in the body.  These are the cells that protect our body from diseases and infections.  Although the best thing to do when you are feeling a cold coming on is to stay home and get plenty of rest, receiving a massage once you are no longer contagious can help ease the recovery process.

As if that wasn’t enough, a regular massage helps improve your quality of sleep, which is a big part of any recovery process and good health in general – and there’s so much more!  Do yourself a favor, and book a massage today!
As luck would have it, we have two massage therapists on site.
Contact them today:
Anna Alpert and Amanda Baker.
Flow Members receive $15 off of their first massage.

CategoriesEvent

Functional Mobility Workshop ~ Thursday, March 10th at 7pm

Would you like to learn how to improve your flexibility, increase blood flow & circulation and reduce injuries or pain? Dr. Shiflett from Airrosti is teaming up with Flow Fitness for an educational and interactive foam rolling/mobility class. You will learn some simple yet vital tools and techniques to keep those aches and pains at bay so you can continue training like you want for as long as you want!

After the workshop, Dr. Shiflett will also be available for complimentary musculoskeletal evaluations—for those nagging injuries that you were afraid to ask about.

Space is limited reserve your spot now!
CLICK HERE to register

*Please use the link above to register and sign informed consent prior to class.