As fitness professionals we know that our clients (and maybe even ourselves…) tend to lose motivation for staying active during the holidays. With the stresses (and joys) of holiday cards, shopping for gifts, baking and spending time with family it is easy for our clients to skip workouts. You may not be able to combat this completely, but you can send them my top 7 tips for staying motivated during the holidays and hopefully that will help!

Do Less:

It can be hard to find the time to get in your full workout, but if you tell yourself you’re only going to do 20 minutes, it will be a lot easier to stick with it. So opt for a quick 15-30 minute express workout to keep your energy levels up and you won’t feel like you’ve got to start all over in the New Year. 

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We recently hosted a Fitness & Training Conference at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland OR and flew in the international presenter, Hayley Hollander, from Chicago, IL.  She spoke on a variety of topics sharing cutting edge health and fitness info and I thought I’d share some of her tips on, managing menopause.

She pointed out that…..

…….managing the effects of menopause can be up to a 20 year process which is a big chunk of our lives so we definitely want to understand what’s going on in our bodies and do what we can to prevent, reverse or minimize any negative symptoms.

The highlights including the importance of Strength Conditioning and High-intensity Interval Training to offset the negative symptoms of Menopause.  She also outlined the most important strength exercises for women to include in their strength training routine on a weekly basis which include:

• Overhead Press
• Squat
• Pulling
• Bridging
• Walk/Run/Locomotion
• Bicep Curl

Each of these exercises provide specific benefits in terms of either loading the spine or the hips, strengthening the lower body and our ability to move in a manner that promotes our ability to function in life, strengthening the postural muscles and improving our posture and alignment, strengthening the core, conditioning our upper body, and improving our ability to move through space. Read more on Managing Menopause…

Barefoot running has become very popular. Do you have clients that have tried it? Do you recommend barefoot running? While I believe in the importance of strengthening our feet and letting our toes spread out like they were designed to do…we have to be careful when recommending that our clients start running “barefoot.”

The bottom line is that our feet need to be strengthened just like any other part of our body, but running barefoot should be approached carefully and bit by bit.

Here is what I like to tell my clients when they ask me about this topic:

Exercises for your FEET:

Since most of us wear shoes all day long and many women wear shoes that keep their feet in a very tight, constricted position all day long, our feet become very rigid. But our feet are designed with multiple joints and have the ability to articulate like our hands – just look at someone who has lost the use of their hands and they quickly adapt the ability to use their feet to write, eat, and perform various other daily tasks usually done by the hands. So the message is, we need to make an effort to increase the movement and functionality of our feet.

Read more on Recommend Barefoot Running?…