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Got Tight Summer Feet? You Have Options!

6/30/2022

Summer is here! It draws us out into the great outdoors! In the warmer months we have more opportunities to stand for extended periods of time, watching a local parade, socializing at a block party, attending a festival, watching our team dominate the other team. Or perhaps we are on a ladder painting or window washing, and it is likely many of us are mowing the lawn!

These summer classics are also culprits in the creation of tightness of the calves, ankles and feet of your body. Standing in one place for a period of time, or standing with little walking, or lots of small-step walking-like in a crowded type situation, much longer than the muscles and fascia of your legs are conditioned for, can leave these areas tight. Likewise, a lot of activity in the heat may leave your body a bit dehydrated (another way to tightness, or worse, muscle cramps).

This month I thought we could quickly review a few ways to restore supple happy feet, calves and ankles after a demanding summer day. All you need is a few found-objects: a tennis ball (of course if you have a fascial release ball, that’s a bonus), a yoga mat (foam half-round, if you have one), and an old t-shirt (Yoga Toes, if you have a set).
To support better leg energy, and to reduce wear to the joints of the toes/ankles/knees/hips/low back, it is worth the time to assemble practices that can loosen the feet, exercise the ranges of the ankle, and loosen the calves.

Toe stretching can have a surprising restorative effect on tight feet, simply by weaving an old, soft t-shirt between the toes and kicking back for 15 minutes while the space between your toes opens up a bit. This gives the toes more ability to spread and disperse forces to the foot when you stand/walk with them.
Learn more…

Using a tennis ball to roll out the arch of the foot as well as roll out the tight places in the calves can help hydrate the fascial web of these parts, and help loosen tight calves.

Using a rolled up yoga mat like a half round, can help with calf raises , calf stretching, and “mashing the arches.” Mashing the arches is the glorious feeling of pressing the arch of your foot into the arc of the rolled up yoga mat--sometimes doing what I also call "typewriter walking"; the practice of taking tiny little steps (for approx. 1 minute), side-by-side from one end of the mat roll to the other (have a wall nearby, or a chair back for balance). You are essentially kneading the bottoms of your feet…heaven.
Learn more here

Finally, as the summer heats up you have to hit the water, a-plenty! It seems that a well hydrated body is the product of consistency. You have to adapt (train) your body to absorb water. Drinking a consistently plentiful amount of water every day trains your body that you are safely near water and it can calibrate to utilitze, say all 100 ounces, that you drink. In the absence of consistent conditioning, you may not appeal to you bodies sense of survival, and it may send water it deems excess right on down-river. Likewise, during heat spikes, or higher work load in high heat (yard work, cardio) we can often benefit from some form of electrolyte support to encourage our bodies to better utilize fluids.

Between the festivals and the parades, I am here to answer any questions all summer long.
Just email me at [email protected]~

Stay loose, keep fluid, and be ROBUST!
Tami

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That's not Cardio

6/9/2022

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For blood flow, endurance, fat loss, metabolism shifts, blood sugar reset, mental clarity…this list could just keep going and that’s just a list of what we know thus far. It seems every day there is more research that adds something more to the list of benefits to be gained from cardio exercise. But what is cardio exercise?

I know that seems like a silly question since we all have so much experience with the concept, but if you look at some of the research methods for the “cardio” exercise you'll find that the studies were clearly pushing the subjects into an anaerobic energy production. Without getting too technical, this means that the gains realized in the study were from a higher intensity. An intensity that was beyond aerobic or “cardio”.

Aerobic exercise is not defined by the activity, but the intensity of that activity. Pedaling a bike at a resistance (indoor bike) and speed that you can sustain for at least 8 minutes can be considered aerobic. Pedaling that same bike at a resistance and speed that you can only sustain for 1 minute, is not aerobic, it is anaerobic, even if you repeat that minute multiple times with rest in between. But what if, instead of resting between bouts of the high intensity, you continued to pedal but at the lower resistance and speed? This is, of course, the idea of interval training and it has many benefits. It is a stretch, though, to call it cardio exercise.

This matters because of how the public uses the information from the fitness industry. In 1996 the Surgeon General’s report on physical activity gave recommendations for the minimum amount of exercise necessary to decrease risk of disease. One of these recommendations was that exercise could be broken into shorter bouts, as low as 8 minutes long, and that quickly became counting all movement toward exercise goal regardless of how brief. Another recommendation was that exercise should be most days of the week, which somehow translated into 3 days a week. And remember, the recommendations were the minimum to have any benefit. So, when they were lessened even more it is no wonder that the benefits also failed to be realized.

So, what we know is that exercise can make a huge difference in many areas of life and there is a clear dose-response relationship with greater benefits to be gained with higher intensity and greater frequency. Using this as your guide will be far more effective than some classification label that can lead you to believe that all of those listed benefits of cardio can be gained by walking.

As always, let me know how I can help.
Adam

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Rest Mindfully

6/8/2022

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EQUIVITA’s 5 Keys of Fitness don’t exist in a vacuum separate from each other. The keys are interconnected and when used together can create a fitness program that’s super beneficial. Last month we discussed the cardio key and some amazing topics were hit on, and this month as we explore the rest key let us take a look at how these two keys can work together to maximize your fitness goals.

As we get into the full swing of the warmer time of year, running becomes a go-to for a lot of individuals to get their cardio in. Just as we’ve discussed in the past where the method of warming up the body is important, the method of rest and cool-down periods are important as well. Rest isn’t just the time between your workouts, it’s the time during your workouts in between the act of “doing” the exercise. For example, interval running can help increase stamina and provide the body with a way to “work up to” running goals, and those seconds when not running are rest, and that rest time can be used to its fullest capacity when done with intention.

Sticking with this example, when we stop running and walk for our rest period during interval running, the muscles are warm and primed for “re-programming.” Our habitual posture tends to kick in when we are tired, and when in the walking phase of interval running, it's easy to let the body collapse back into old habits. However, if we take advantage of our body’s warmed up state and focus on proper alignment in our posture while walking/standing, we can help re-teach the contraction and release relationship of our muscles. If you tend towards collapsing in the chest with the shoulders rounding like I do, focusing on getting those shoulder blades back and down on the back and lifting the chest in those rest periods. This can put the muscles in proper alignment as they cool down, helping to keep those muscles from contracting back into the tightness that causes the pulling and collapse, and strengthen the weaker muscles to help hold the body in that proper posture.

This concept can be applied during resistance training as well, or any time there is rest in your exercise. Rest is where the change happens, and those little periods of rest create change that can be used to your advantage when done mindfully. Old habits are hard to break, and re-training the body requires attention during those important periods of change. View rest as an opportunity, not just as a passive phase.

Best,
Katherine

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After Cardio Moment(connecting rest and cardio)

6/8/2022

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Oftentimes after cardio and stretching are completed, I lie on my back, knees bent, feet flat on the floor wide apart and allow the knees to rest against each other in what is called constructive rest position. I’ll usually choose a mantra to listen to, and recently, I’ve enjoyed this one, which promotes physical rejuvenation.

https://youtu.be/Hb1qGAZJ7Eo

Let me know what questions you have!

Carla

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The Interval

6/8/2022

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The best way to get where you’re going is to feel good along the way.
~words Tara Styles used in her blog at some point

As we break into the warmer months of Summer and the daylight gives us space to be out and about, it is in step with nature that we pick up our cardio respiratory operations (aerobic fitness training). At its base, cardio respiratory exercise draws copious amounts of oxygen into the body and bathes the cells in energy, the energy your body needs for effort(s). That is what aerobic fitness training is, breath controlling the amount of oxygen that gets to your muscles, oxygen that fuels the motor of your locomotions.

Meaningful cardiorespiratory fitness gives us the sense that we are in connection with our flame! When you feel in connection with your cardiorespiratory fitness, you know that you ‘can-do.’ It’s the assurance that you can keep up with the herd, young and younger; it’s also the moxie that you can take down the challenge.

What is also good to remember is that Rome wasn’t built in a day. As we shed the darker months of Winter and pare back the less free-range nature of the pandemic, perhaps it is a good time to revisit interval training. Interval training offers a fine interest-factor to the repetitive aspect of effective cardio respiratory exercise, as well as giving us gobs of ways to slide beads all about your fitness abacus! The interval can be used to support a person trying to restore base level endurance after surgery, or it can be used to safely push intensity, or aggressively safely push intensity. Gobs, and gobs of options–all you have to know is your interval training builders.

Interval training is the project of alternating segments of TIME and INTENSITY. The simpler part of the equation is time. You may choose to track time in minutes, as with this example: walk 3 minutes at a regular gait pace and 1 minute at a faster gait pace for a total of 30 minutes. You may choose to track time by landmark, as in this example: on a 400 meter track, walk the straights, run the curves.

When you seek to influence intensity, remember there is a sort of micro/macro aspect. You program for the challenge of effort AND for how long you challenge that effort. Sally wants to increase her happiness walking for several hours to prepare for her European vacation. She wants her body to show up without complaint so she can be present for the sights and experiences of her vacation. She anticipates walking 2-3 hours at a time, which is outside of her life custom currently.

Sally sets up phase 1: walk 45 minutes straight, first phase. That feels solid, she recovers on the same day as the activity, so she shifts to walk 3 minutes at a regular pace, and then walk 2 minutes faster than regular pace, and she does this for 45 minutes. She feels a bit stiff from this shift, but after a couple weeks that is no longer the case. Next she adds 15 minutes more time to this same interval, and finally she switches the interval to more fast walking than regular walking. In Sally’s case, after 3 months of interval training, she feels in her bones that she is ready for a good 2-3 hour segment of touring before taking a break.

With effective interval training, you use your gobs of options to influence your body to some artful outcomes. You increase the amount of oxygen you are taking into the cells of your body, and with consistent demand, the mitochondria will multiply to meet demand and you will have more ability to recruit fuel for your muscles. The greater the density of mitochondria in your muscles, the more oxygenated blood you can connect through that muscle which influences your muscles ability to recover and restore for round-next. Interval training also gives the muscles, bones and connective tissues of the body a better stress-equation. You can condition those tissues with manageable amounts of demand, rather than crush them with constant use that they then make into dysfunctions–like itis’s, fractures, and ruptures. Win/WINNER!

Of course, with all the options there is a case for analysis paralysis. I’d say start with your desire, and try to suss out a plan on paper. If you feel you still have questions as to what intervals to plan for, to help reach your desired goal, please email me at [email protected].

We will figure out how to feel good along the way.

In robust health!
Tami

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Give Yourself a Break

6/1/2022

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What exactly is overtraining? Very simply, it is when your body doesn’t have enough recovery from the stressors. In fitness we can see this in how muscle growth is hindered, fat loss is lessened and performance degrades. And a simple way to assess it is by recording your resting heart rate and body temperature every day. Ideally, at the same time of day for consistency.

In the too much stress and not enough recovery state of overtraining, your resting heart rate will increase and your resting body temperature will decrease. This is the exact opposite of what happens in the optimal training zone. And I think even if you haven’t considered this before, it makes some intuitive sense. Not giving yourself the space to recover means that you can’t effectively adapt. Your body’s ability to respond to the stressor and become stronger, faster or have increased endurance is hindered because of the lack of rest needed for recovery to happen.

Now, let’s take this simple understanding of overtraining the body and consider if something similar can happen to other areas. Deep thinking is a fairly easy one to compare, because it is similarly exhausting to spend time in focused deep thought. Less obvious is the background thinking. Those thoughts that can be running all the time and provide no sense of rest are exhausting, yet, because they aren’t as obvious they are harder to address. Similarly, emotional overtraining is sometimes obvious and overwhelming, and other times those heightened emotions are likely to be overlooked and unaddressed.

We live in a time when we are inundated with stories that are specifically designed to elicit an emotional reaction. And as hard as we may try to not allow ourselves to be pulled into the reaction, our brains can work against us as it pursues its goal of knowing. When presented with a gap of knowledge the brain will actively try to fill the void rather than find comfort in not knowing. In fact, this drive is so powerful that the brain will sometimes fill the void with fabrications, because that is more comfortable than allowing a gap to remain.

I find that understanding these things about our nature is very helpful in creating a bigger understanding of our society, and I also believe that if people could realize how their lack of allowing space for recovery has impacted their ability to adapt then they might choose differently. Much like overtraining of the body hinders one’s ability to achieve optimal results, overtraining of your mental and emotional self will hinder you. It is maybe not as obvious, but it is every bit as important.

Unfortunately, I don’t know of a simple tool to assess whether you are overtraining your brain, but you might be able to pick up on indicators by reflecting on how irascible or reactive you are. Reflecting, however, requires taking time to gain some objectivity and the respite that can be found in that time is also where you will find the benefits.

I encourage you to design a plan that provides you with daily opportunity to turn off the incessant stream, find some calm and maximize your adaptability.

And, as always, let me know how I can help.
Adam

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Got Tight Summer Feet? You Have Options!

That's not Cardio

Rest Mindfully

After Cardio Moment(connecting rest and cardio)

The Interval

Give Yourself a Break

EQUIVITA

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