Alan’s Top 10 Tips for Enjoying the Holiday Season

1. Enjoy your Holiday party season but remember that once the party has finished the diet and exercise regime must restart. The Holiday Season is long, you just keep exercising between Thanksgiving and New Year!

2. Don’t get involved with New Years resolutions. Make lifestyle changes when you are ready for them rather than just because it is the turn of the year.

3. When you go out drinking, and no I’m not condoning it, try alternating between soft and alcoholic drinks. This will hopefully reduce the amount that you drink and will increase your hydration level.

4. Do not under any circumstance go for the ‘diet’ option. Most of these sugar free or diet foods and drinks will contain aspartame or similar and should be considered poison. Yes that means that if you are going to have a cola mixer in your drink you are better to go for the full sugar option rather than the diet option.

5. To reduce the chances of the kids going hyper supply them with some healthy snacks such as carrots and fruit rather than chocolate. Your aim is to stabilise your kids blood sugar levels, introduce them to healthy food and it also means the times when they do have chocolate they will appreciate it more.

6. Treat your food like we treat exercise, it is quality not quantity that counts. If you are going to have food or drink that you know is naughty then buy high quality, high cost naughty food. This will mean that you will appreciate the food and drink more, you will savour the flavours more and the chances are that you will consume less.

7. If you are going out for your celebration meal and you know that you are a protein type, have a high protein snack before you go out. If you have a Thanksgiving or Christmas meal the chances are that it will be high in carbohydrate rather then high protein so have a suitable snack first. Also remember that you must include your desert in your carb/protein balance, so if you are going to have a desert you may not want to eat your veggies with your turkey!

8. Chew your food, it sounds basic but trust me this makes a big difference. By chewing your food until it is liquid you will take much longer to eat and this will much improve your digestion. Increasing the time it takes to eat will allow your stomach to actually register that you have eaten, this reduces the chances of overeating.

9. Remember that we are open throughout the holiday period so if you fancy a training session on Christmas day or hurt your back while playing with the kids give us a call.

10. Finally, reduce your stress levels by buying your loved ones a voucher for massage or personal training from The Wolf Studio (come on you didn’t think I’d miss an opportunity to plug the business!).

Alan

Flexible Thinking

Do you stretch before or after exercise? Why?

Do you stretch in the morning or in the evening? Why?

In exercise one of the most mis-understood areas, by both the public and professionals, is stretching. If you look at the sports section in your local books shop you will find many volumes on how to increase your flexibility, if you go to any yoga studio they will tell you that it improves flexibility, the same when you go to the gym or into any martial arts studio. So flexibility must be important?

Ask anyone if they stretch before or after their run and they will give you a confused answer, they often know that they should but they don’t know what to do or why. Often people have been given conflicting information regarding stretching and flexibility.

The most important thing when deciding what to stretch and when, is knowledge. You must know what you want to achieve from your stretching before you begin. Do you want to make your muscles longer or more flexible, are your muscles actually short or are they just carrying too much tension, do you actually need more flexibility or are you just doing what the others in your group are doing?

If you exercise with bad posture then your body will remember that, so stretching muscles that will allow you to go into better posture before you exercise is sensible. So it is a good idea to do postural correction stretching before you exercise. If your sport involves going into extreme positions like martial arts, football, ballet or gymnastics a much more extensive stretching regime should be an essential part of the warm up routine. If your sport does not involve extreme ranges of motion, like distance running or cycling, then it is not usually necessary to do stretching before the activity unless it is to correct a postural deficit or address an injury issue.

Developmental stretching is best done after exercise when the muscle temperature is higher. These stretches can be done as part of a warm-down or at home in the evening. Again for developmental stretching the evening is better than the morning because a warm muscle will respond to stretching more readily than a cold muscle.

Most people stretch muscles that are already normal in length, they do stretches that they are good at, this is normal but this often leads to joint imbalance, instability and injury. At our studio we take a great deal of time assessing and measuring our clients to ensure that the stretches we give are right for them. Stretching a muscle which is already overly long can lead to imbalances across a joint and result in injury.

Some people need to stretch before and after every session to avoid injury, some people never stretch and never get injured. You need to figure out what works for you regardless of what others in your training group are doing, the only thing we guarantee is that your body is different to everyone else’s, so what should you expect the same stretching routine to work?

Alan

Krispy Kreme Challenge

Saturday saw one of those momentous events that challenges the very beliefs you hold about yourself and shows you what you really can achieve when you apply yourself to the task wholeheartedly: The 2nd Annual Krispy Kreme Challenge West! For those uninitiated to what the KKCW has to offer, here is the lowdown:

1. Run 2 miles
2. Eat 12 Krispy Kreme doughnuts
3. Run 2 miles

As in true multisport fashion it is a single event. The time is taken from the gun up to the point you cross the finish line, split times are also measured allowing comparison of different race strategies. To further add to the challenge there had been no female finishers of the challenge the previous year. The leading lady had only managed 9 doughnuts. That was just throwing down the gauntlet….

This year there was a strong turnout from Team Running Skirts. Christy, Cindy, Brooke and myself were racing in the adult division, Maddy in the Under 18s and Pam was assisting with doughnut distribution. All wearing the same stylish uniform of course. The boys, Jamie and Dave, were there as well and ended up showing us girls how it was done, but alas they did not don the skirts.

How does one train for such an event? The 2 mile run was fine, I know I can run that far, although not very fast. The doughnuts were an unknown quantity. Being new to the US I had never actually sampled a Krispy Kreme and decided to keep it that way, just in case I didn’t like them. Having practiced eating large quantities of junk over Halloween weekend I decided to start my taper early and leave my sugar cravings in-tact for the big day. On race day morning I opted for a small breakfast hoping this would be the best compromise between having something in my stomach to off-set the doughnuts and not filling me up too much.

Lining up at the start and looking over my fellow challengers and team mates it was clear that I was at a distinct disadvantage in running ability. The strategy was therefore clear: slow and steady and hope I manage to polish off more doughnuts than the other girls.

On the first 2 mile stretch I predictably fell way behind. I was still maintaining my slow and steady approach and hoping to ensure than by not going out too fast I would be more able to eat as soon as I stopped. I was already several doughnuts down when I arrived in the doughnut corral. You could easily identify the returning veterans from the previous year – they brought coffee! I made do with water, but not too much lest it took up valuable doughnut space in my stomach. Soon after I arrived Christy announced that she was done, only 2 doughnuts in. Brooke and Cindy were still going strong. They were both using the strategy of stacking 3-6 doughnuts on top of each other, squashing them down and then eating the whole stack. I used a different approach of one doughnut at a time. Certainly my way didn’t allow for super-fast devouring, but I hoped it would allow me to keep a steady pace and survive to the end. It seemed to work, 4 doughnuts in I was still going strong whereas the other girls were slowing down. By 8 doughnuts they were struggling, Brooke was turning a slight shade of green and I started to get hopeful. But those girls are made of stronger stuff and they powered through. Brooke was the first to finish her doughnuts and head off for the 2nd run, soon followed by Cindy, I was just behind them.

Surprisingly the 2nd run was not too bad, I was actually doing some running and in no danger whatsoever of throwing up. I crossed the finish line as the 3rd woman to ever complete the Krispy Kreme Challenge West! Brooke took the honors and Team Running Skirts totally dominated the field (only one other woman had entered!). I did have a few moments later that day where I thought the doughnuts were going to strike their revenge on me but luckily it passed.

Here is to one of the craziest and funnest races I have done in a long time. I’ll give it a few weeks before I sample any more doughnuts though!

Corina

P.S. Check out the Krispy Kreme Challenge West Facebook page for loads of photos and videos of the event!

Great (but realistic) Expectations

I find myself having conversations with other athletes every day that go something like this:

“I’ve been training really hard and I’m making good progress but I don’t understand why I’m still not as good as Fred. I train much harder than him!”

It is at this point that I somehow tactfully need to bring up the point that the athlete in question may not be as genetically talented as Fred and that they can never hope to be as good. For some reason we have no problem accepting that some people are more intelligent than others, some are good at working with numbers, others are really great artists. But when it comes to someone being physically superior it is viewed as discriminatory.

Having to accept that you are not going to improve indefinitely with more training can be a hard pill to swallow. We realize that we will never be able to ride a bike as well as Lance Armstrong or run as fast as Paula Radcliffe, but when it comes to comparing ourselves to those that line up next to us at the local race for some reason we don’t accept that some people can fall out of bed and run faster than you without even trying.

I have been there too. I had my rude awakening last year when trying to qualify for the British Age Group Triathlon team. I had been doing Triathlon a few years and was steadily improving. I even managed to climb onto the podium at some small local races. Then I showed up at the first qualifying event and it was a different story. Not only did I get so soundly beaten that the winner had probably already showered and gone home by the time I crossed the finish line, but I also saw the bodies of the girls I was racing against. There was no way I could hope to be as good as them, my bones were not even of the right shape to manage that.

It was a bitter pill to swallow at first and I was considering throwing in the towel then and there. But I persevered, started to race for me and taking delight in improving my own performance (and hoping the really fast girls didn’t show up!). I made it onto the team eventually and went to the World Championships. There I was pleasantly surprised that all the countries attending had brought along my kind of athletes, as well as the genetically gifted ones that were battling it out at the front.

Of course it can be difficult not to judge the worth of an athlete by the time they posted in the last race. After all, that’s what races are for, right? To be able to judge the achievement you need to consider the genetic gift of that person, how much they have given to the training, what else they have going on in life (for example, it is harder to get lots of quality training in if you have several young kids than if you don’t) and what they want to get out of the race. And it is also important for the athlete to set realistic goals to allow them to enjoy training and racing more. For example, I would love to be able to run a 3 hour marathon one day, but I can confidently say that is never going to happen. So if I choose to run a marathon I would set a different more achievable goal and then be extremely proud when I get there.

It is not just race performance this applies to, but many things in life like body shape. If you spend all day around super-skinny beanpole running machines it is natural to think that you are too fat, too short or any manner of other things. But if your body shape is different then you need to apply different standards to yourself. For example, compare yourself against how you were a year ago or two years ago. If you were noticeably fitter/thinner/more energetic then you know you can make improvements.

I guess the message is to not put yourself down for not living up to the high standards of those around you, but also don’t hold others to your standards. That way we can all train and race together and all get great achievements and fun from it. And I will wait before I attempt a marathon.

Corina

Stress

Recently I have been attending Chadwell Center for Health (highly recommended!) where Tony reviewed my supplements and ensured the treatments he gave me still held. After a busy week (…month, year, etc) one of the things we had been working on is restoring my depleted body, hence ensuring my supplements were working for me. Unsurprisingly the question of how much I was training came up. I answered 6 days a week, sometimes twice a day, but on further thinking that didn’t ring true.

When I signed up for the Carlsbad Half Marathon and the Stagecoach Century a few weeks ago Alan and I sat down to design a training plan for me. Since the events I have entered only involve running and cycling it would make sense for me to drop the swims in order to give myself more time to recover and focus my efforts on the upcoming events. It surprised me that I didn’t even manage to finish making the suggestion to drop swimming for the time being before Alan told me in no uncertain terms that I should definitely carry on with the swims. The reason was not related to any kind of training benefit I would get.

Alan has been out with me to the Cove where I swim in the mornings a few times. He has been sensible enough to stay warm and dry and practice his photography skills that morning. Each time he has seen me emerge from the water with a HUGE grin plastered on my face. For me those swims are not a training session, they are stress relief, fun and I definitely miss them when they are cancelled.

Alan has had similar experiences with his Iaido. He is so happy and relaxed when he returns from a hard training session. The difference in his mood is very noticeable one day to the next, especially when he needs to miss a session due to us teaching a workshop on a Wednesday night.

We often think of stress as being an emotional or mental thing. It makes us jittery, short-tempered and can disturb sleep. What we often forget is that stress can have a profound effect on our bodies too. When stressed we can’t recover from training as well, come down with more colds and injuries. Have you ever noticed that when you go on an active holiday, even if you are hiking, cycling, running, paddling, sightseeing etc much more than you could handle back home your body feels great? All those aches and pains that you live with day in day out are gone, and they return as you step off the plane? That is a pretty good indication that you are being affected by stress and it is taking a toll on your body.

The best way to deal with the stress is obviously to remove the source. In reality that can be very difficult. Often in life we have things we need to get through in order to get to a better place. These may include job related matters, relationships, moving house and many more. In these cases you then need to find a way to cope, to provide stress relief and make you feel better. For me that is swimming.

When we were learning massage we learnt how to advise people on ways to relieve stress. We learnt to rattle off the standard list of relaxation tapes, meditation, yoga, long walks and of course massage. For many people these work, for others, like me, we need to find other ways.

Training is a stress on your body and needs to be managed. Doing hill reps, intervals, tough strength workouts and a whole host of other nasties that are very necessary for performance improvements take a toll on your body and increase your stress levels. However, exercise can also be very relaxing, Yoga is the perfect example. In fact any form of exercise that is low enough intensity that your body doesn’t get too exhausted and that you enjoy to such a degree that you really look forward to the session can be a form of relaxation.

So the next time you get stressed ditch the training session and go and enjoy yourself instead. Ride your bike on some beautiful forest trails and watch the wildlife. Go for a run with a group of friends and have a good chat. Or swim in the ocean and watch the sun rise over La Jolla Cove whilst the sea lions play in the water. That type of “training” can sometimes do you a lot more good than whatever was on your training plan for the day.

Corina