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Making Yourself a Priority this Holiday Season

Making time for exercise and prioritizing your life is not always the easiest thing to do; and during the holiday season it is even more difficult. Let’s face it, eating “healthy” this time of year also feels almost impossible! Let’s work together to help make this “Mission Impossible” very possible!

Let’s start by planning ahead – whether it’s your day, week, meal plan or fitting in a workout. This can be applied year round, but it’s vital the holidays when planning around events. Start by looking at your work and social calendar then plan out your meals and set time to workout. The most successful people are those who plan ahead and continue to proactively workout more leading up to the holiday parties. You know the one “where you eat way too much unhealthy food”… Avoiding that holiday weight gain comes from consistency – both exercise and nutrition – instead of trying to make up by burning off the party calories. If time is not on your side, try making your workouts shorter, but more frequent by exercising 4-5 days a week or more if you can. If the family is getting together, maybe even invite a friend or family member to workout with you. A healthy, holiday challenge can keep you on track even through the busiest time of year.

Try planning out your meals for the week ahead of time – start by looking at which meals are dinners out or parties then fill in the rest. What do I need for lunch at work? Which nights am I getting home late? Plan out the week’s menu and try to prep meals ahead when you have free time. Consistency with healthy eating allows you to stay on track between holiday party foods. Remember, one meal is not the end, its repeat offenses over time which can steer you off track.

3 Holiday Health Management Tips:

  • Plan meals ahead of time
  • Schedule in your workouts
  • Remember our health and happiness is what the holidays should be about

Take the time to be proactive as the parties start poppin’. By avoiding playing catch up after the holidays, your future self will thank you. Your health is the most important gift you can give yourself. Make the time for you.

 

 

Recipe of the Week: Pumpkin Spice Superhero Muffins

“Superhero Muffins” are a staple from the cookbook Run Fast, Eat Slow written by elite runner, Shalane Flanagan, and chef & nutrition coach, Elyse Kopecky. This week, Shalane announced her retirement from professional running; so to celebrate her career, we are sharing this fall ready version of their famous muffins. (Learn more about Shalane here!)

Since it is Turkey Trot Training season here at Peak Performance, this week’s recipe is ready to fuel your body for a long training run on a Saturday morning (or Sunday if that’s your preference).

Makes 1 dozen

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups almond meal
  • 1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
  • 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree
  • 6 tablespoons butter, melted
  • 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup raisins, walnuts or chocolate chips (optional)

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12-cup standard muffin tin with paper muffin cups.
  2. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the almond meal, oats, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda and salt.
  3. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the eggs, pumpkin puree, butter, maple syrup and vanilla.
  4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until completely combined. If using raisins or chocolate chips, fold them in.
  5. Scoop the batter evenly into the muffin cups, filling them to the top.
  6. Bake for 32-35 minutes, until cooked through in the center and browned on top.

 

 

Recipe adapted from “Run Fast. Cook Fast. Eat Slow.” by Shalane Flanagan and Elyse Kopecky.

Running & Walking Efficiency

Walking and running both seem simple enough- just put one foot in front of the other. However, in order to walk or run efficiently you must understand how to move your body. Use these simple tips to help you cross that finish line with ease!

Posture

How are you standing or sitting now as you read this? Think of a string running through your center to pull you straight up and maintain that tall posture. This way you are not leaning forward or backward. By paying specific attention to keeping your core tight, this will directly help your posture.

Stride Length

Maintain a short, quick stride when you are walking/running. When we plant our foot in front, the goal is to have the hips knee over the ankle. Rather than trying to reach forward with your foot, focusing on a faster turnover will help plant the foot properly. Not only is this more efficient movement, but it may help you prevent injury.

Stride Rate

This goes along with our stride length. A faster step will help you move more efficiently than trying to take longer steps. Specifically for running, an ideal stride rate is about 180 strides per minute (or 90 per foot). Slower stride rates may indicate more vertical movement, which is less efficient (wasting energy). If you listen to music, try a faster bpm and try to match the cadence – remember this will not change immediately and takes time to learn.

Arm Swing

When running, try keeping keep your elbows bent at about 90*. Your goal to avoid letting your arms creep up too high (think T-Rex arms) or shrugging the shoulders. As you’re moving, be sure to keep your arms at your sides and avoid letting them cross over in front. If you keep pumping those arms at your sides, your legs will follow!

Relax Your Shoulders & Hands

Take the tension out of your shoulders and hands. Relax your shoulders by keeping them down and away from your ears (think back to that long, tall posture). Avoid keeping a tight fist and open your hands to let them naturally swing at your sides.

 

By Louise Mills-Strasser, MS

Set the Tone with Dynamic Stretching

When walking into the arena to begin exercise, whether that arena is in the gym or the great outdoors, it is important that you set the tone for the day. Your workout needs to begin with a warm-up that compliments the intensity of your exercise. The greatest threat to performance is the lack of preparation or a poor warm-up routine.  When going for a run or walk many people have a routine before they begin exercise: whether that routine is swinging their legs back and forth to create motion around the hips or twisting to the left and right to loosen up their lower back: Whatever it may be, are you consciously thinking about the activity you are about to engage in, the intensity you are about to give, the time in which you plan on exercising for and the current injuries or ailments you are battling at the time?  So much goes in to planning a workout therefore it is essential that equal thought is placed on planning your warm-up resulting in ultimately crushing your planned workout while minimizing injury or local muscle fatigue.

A large part of a dynamic warm-up is neurological in the sense that you are making a mind-to-muscle connection. The dynamic warm-up gives your body ample time to understand and process the stress you are about to place on your body so it can respond with the correct rate of force by recruiting select muscle fibers.  Take the guessing out of the equation and allow your body to go through a 15 minute dynamic warm-up to maximize efficiency.  If you’re going for a run ask yourself, what specific deficits do i have?  When you go for a run do you start to develop tightness around the ankles?  Adding in some ankle mobility would be a good idea with the objective to loosen up the ankles and get them tracking properly to disperse energy into the appropriate areas via tendons and ligaments.  Try performing walking heel raises to improve the elasticity in your calves, butt kicks to wake up the hamstrings, or work on mobility with deep squats to open the ankles and hips.

Everyone’s warm-up will be different and tailored to their specific needs required for the workout. Setting the tone with dynamic stretching  will help prevent injuries and keep your body working at maximal efficiency.

 

-Brandon Ayala, CSCS

Interval Training for Walkers & Runners

If you haven’t ran or walked in a while, sometimes it’s hard to start up again. The thought of a 5k race or even one mile can seem challenging. Knowing where to start is key.

Your body needs to get used to the impact running has on it and your over all endurance needs to improve. Forget about what you were able to do in the past, it’s about where you are right now and how to improve from this point forward. While it may seem tempting, avoid going from sitting on the couch to running 3 miles or even 1 mile for that matter. Intervals are the best way to get back into running/walking. If you want to start incorporating walking or running into workouts again, it’s a little easier to get back into because most people need to do walking for everyday life things. Simply start with walking at a comfortable pace then trying to walk a littler faster for 30 seconds to 1 minute at a time. For this interval, you are going back and forth between walking at a comfortable pace to pushing yourself and walking a little faster.

When first starting back out, know that it’s okay if you need longer recovery in between pushes. Walk at a comfortable pace in the beginning, but slowly over the next few weeks you will start doing your faster pace at a more frequent interval until your whole walk can be the faster pace. For running, you can start by following the same interval method. Be mindful of your pacing – while it may seem tempting to run as fast as possible, try to start with a walk to a jog not a full out run. A great interval to start back up with could be to walk for 2 minutes then jog slowly for 1 minute just to get your body used to the movement again. Repeat that about 4 times and finish the workout with a cool down walk and stretching at the end. These interval workouts can be done about 3-4 times a week. The next week try flipping that routine, so it’s a 1 minute walk followed by a 2 minute jog for 4 rounds. Keep up the consistency by doing a workout like that 3-4 times in a week. The following week try going back to week 1, but try to pick up the pace to more of a run for the minute instead of jogging.

Depending on your fitness goals, you may want to work on speed or distance. The key is slowly building up to being able to run continuously or walking for an extended period of time. Starting to walk and or run again is something that is a great lifestyle change, but remember it is about consistency. The more consistent you are with your walking/running the better results you will see and better you will feel over a longer period of time.

 

By Corynne Duprey

Strength Training for Endurance Athletes

Why would a runner or endurance athlete want to strength train? We all may have been the victim of a particularly brutal workout that’s left us too thrashed to go on the next days run; it would seem that the endurance and strength training mix about as well as oil and water. However, collections of studies have proven the health benefits of strength training and cardiovascular training, so there must be a way to harness the two and use them to improve our performance on the pavement.

Benefits of Strength Training:

  • Improvement of core strength (stability/form)
  • Increased muscular strength (speed)
  • Correction of imbalances caused by every day life (efficiency)
  • Decreased injury risk

Now, these benefits also cross over with endurance training right? The key is to incorporate the two correctly to receive maximal benefit.

An endurance athlete will need to consider a few things if they’re looking into start strength training in addition to their running protocol. Namely, the athlete would need to figure out when their big or tough runs are in the week and program heavy or higher intensity workouts around that. Next would be recovery. Is that athlete getting proper nutrition, sleep, and mobility work to assist with the work they’ll be adding in?

Here is a sample week- long program to get an idea:

Sunday

 Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

Saturday
Long Run Off Low intensity Lower Body and Easy Run Medium Intensity run Off High Intensity Lower Body

Low Intensity Upper Body/Core and optional light run

Looking at the example listed above, we can see that the lifts have a high or low intensity value, that’s used strategically to avoid overtraining or injury. Also strategically placed, the more taxing workout days (Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday) are placed a day or two apart in order to ensure that the athlete covers correctly. In most cases, an athlete will be able to complete a shorter run and a resistance training session in the same day, but this varies by person and goals. Talking to an exercise physiologist or performance professional before starting a program can increase the benefit and smooth out to programming process for someone looking to start.

 

By Matt Rhodes, MS, EP-c.

Recipe of the Week: Turkey White Chili

Prep: 15 min.
Cook: 70 min.
Makes: 6 servings (6 cups)

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/2 cup chopped onion
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 2-1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
  • 1 pound boneless skinless turkey breast, cut into 1-inch cubes
  • 1/2 pound ground turkey
  • 3 cups chicken broth
  • 1 can (15 ounces) garbanzo beans or chickpeas, rinsed and drained
  • 1 tablespoon minced jalapeno pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried savory
  • 2 teaspoons cornstarch
  • 1 tablespoon water
  • shredded Monterey Jack cheese and sliced red onion, optional

Directions

  1. In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onion; saute until tender, about 5 minutes. Add garlic, and cook 1 minute more. Stir in cumin; cook 5 minutes. Add turkey; cook until no longer pink.
  2. Add broth, beans, jalapeno, marjoram and savory. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, covered, for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  3. Uncover; cook 15 minutes more. Dissolve cornstarch in water; stir into chili. Bring to a boil. Cook and stir 2 minutes. If desired, serve with cheese and sliced red onion.

Nutrition
1 cup: 288 calories
Per serving: 12g fat, 635mg sodium, 15g carbohydrate, 3g sugars, 29g protein.

 

Find the original recipe here!

Using Journaling & Scheduling as Tools for Success

The New Year begins with good intentions-plans for making positive changes to create a healthier lifestyle. However, these changes will not happen overnight and it’s important to know that progress and habits take time. So how can we stick to these plans? What tools can we use to be successful? Start with these tips to get starting journaling and scheduling in order to hold yourself accountable.

  • Tracking Progress

The New Year always starts off resolutions of new exercise programs and healthy eating habits. Many individuals begin a new exercise program with the best intentions, but may fall short of their goals. This can happen for a number of reasons, but often not seeing immediate results can be deterring. Maintaining an exercise journal helps a person keep track of progress. You are able to see firsthand how far you’ve come while sticking to a stead >exercise routine.

  • Making Gym Appointments

Doctor appointments, kid’s soccer games, work meetings- these all end up on the calendar. They are appointments which need to be kept, same as your gym appointments with yourself or your trainer. Keeping a schedule is more effective than just keeping a to-do list. When you carve out time for a specific activity or project, you’re far more likely to stick to it. If it’s not on the calendar, you may forget about it. Prioritize your agenda by scheduling time for the gym and adding it to the calendar.

  • Recording Nutrition Habits

Whether you are being honest with yourself or just knowing that someone (i.e. exercise physiologist or nutritionist) is going to read the journal, you are being held accountable. Food logs help make us self-aware of what are putting into our bodies-whether it’s too much or too little. Knowing that someone else is going to review the journal may also help us stay on the right path towards our goals. This journal can also be used to reflect back on successes or which areas still need improvement.

 

By Louise Mills-Strasser, M.S.