Your exercise tip – a basic abdominal routine to strengthen your torso
Keeping your abdominals and torso muscles strong can help reduce the risk of injury and damage to underlying structures (like intervertebral discs and pressure on nerves) that can cause many short and long term complications. A simple strengthening routine is as follows:
- Side plank https://youtu.be/lvm-e8m6glw
- Front plank https://youtu.be/jY8oAp4AeQA
- Side plank https://youtu.be/lvm-e8m6glw
- Bicycles https://youtu.be/RC72mFrR9e4
- Complete each exercise for 30 seconds, repeating the exercises four times through.
This is a daily routine and will help you build the strength and support needed to keep you moving well.
Your health tip – my love of fruit weight loss – is it sabotaging my efforts?
Having a variety of coloured foods in our diet is an important step in ensuring we receive all the nutrients we need. Fruit is one of the essential components of this plan, providing energy we need to move, nutrients and vitamins that our body uses to maintain good health and giving us natural snack option when we are on the go. With such an important role in our health, why do people that are trying to lose weight take out fruit (as most diet plans due)?
Reducing calories in your daily eating pattern will go towards helping lose weight. Your first choice to reduce should not necessarily be the healthy fruit option. First look at processed, high calorie, low nutrient food sources (high in sugars or fats) you may be consuming. By reducing your fruit sources as the first option, you may well be reducing calories but you may also be reducing essential nutrients you may not be getting from other food options. Fruits do contain a high natural sugar content and can make managing blood sugar levels more challenging, but that does not make them an issue with weight control.
Having said that, like any food (healthy of processed), if you are consuming excess amounts, you may need to reduce your intake accordingly. Most adults are recommended two to three servings per day. Life is about a balanced approach.
Exercise of the week – Jump squats
This week we are looking at an exercise that is a great for our cardiovascular capacity, our bone density and all our leg muscles. As an added bonus, it will help us fit into those jeans we want to. Tips for the jump squats are:
- Start with smaller jumps, with longer breaks between each jump. Practice landing softly (knees bent with a reduced impact).
- Try 30 second rounds, aiming for a big jump from a deep position. Try for good technique and landing rather than greater numbers
- If you have back and knee issues, this is not an exercise you should try.
- If it hurts, stop.
Your life tip
Be kind to others. Some people are travelling a tougher road, a little kindness can be the breath of air they need.
This week’s wise words
Hope. It sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible.
Anonymous
Have a great week and keep healthy in 2017. David.