Fitness Tip of the Day: Friday's Facts/Saturday Stretch -- The Benefits of Hatha Yoga

I decided to combine the Friday and Saturday posts today because of a new post from Dr. Melissa West from Namaste Yoga that I saw on Facebook.

It is the first video of a 20 class series that she will be doing on Hatha Yoga; what is it and what are it's benefits.  She is going to cover not only the benefits to the physical body, but also the energetic body.  It is very informative.

It is based on two books:  Yoga Beyond Belief, Insights to Awakening and Deepening Your Practice and  a main Hatha Yoga text:  The Hatha Yoga Pradipika

From the text with the video:

"What is Hatha Yoga? Over the next several weeks we will be exploring Hatha Yoga and its benefits. Ha means sun and tha means moon. Ha is masculine, heating, expanding and strengthening. Tha is feminine, cooling, contracting, and flexible. We need both in our practice to create balance. Flexibility without strength leads to fragility. Strength without flexibility leads to rigidity. Too many heating practices would cause you to burn out. Your inhalation for example increases energy, tightens and strengthens (HA), while your exhalation releases energy, softens and lengthens.

The style of hatha yoga we practice on Namaste Yoga encourages long holds anywhere from 30 seconds to one minute to several minutes. Ideally without the time constraints of computer download file sizes I would have you holding yoga poses for at least 3-5 minutes

Long holds allow for deeper openings. Long holds release deeply held stress and tension. Long holds release holding patterns in your musculature that leads to better alignment of your muscles, bones and nerves. Long holds allow you to penetrate to deeper and subtler areas of your energetic body. This allows you to tune into energy and receive the messages from your body, ultimately allowing you to strengthen, heal and balance."

Her website is listed on the right side bar.  You can also follow her on facebook.

Fitness Tip of the Day: Thursday's Total Body/Cardio Workout -- Full Body Band Workout

Today's workout uses a resistance band.  It is a video from PopSugar featuring Lacey Stone who is Amanda Seyfried's trainer.  She will demonstrate 5 exercises that will incorporate the resistance band and will work most of your entire body.

Once you get the hang of the exercises, I would recommend trying to do 3 sets of 8-12 repetitions for each of them (the last 2 reps should be challenging).  You can do this by doing all the sets in a row with a bit of rest in between, or you can do all 5 exercises, 8 reps each and repeat 3 times with no rest.  Doing all the sets in a row will fatigue and work the muscle more because there won't be as much rest time.  Doing the whole workout 3 times without rest will be more cardiovascular.

Either way, please warm up first and stretch after.

Fitness Tip of the Day: Wednesday's Wild/Warrior Workout

Most of the workouts that I've been posting on Wednesday have been HIIT (high intensity interval training) or tabata (20 seconds on 10 seconds off for a set number of rounds) or AMRAP (as many rounds as possible).  These are all shorter, high intensity workouts that use intervals to rev up the calorie and fat burn during and after the workout.

Today's workout is part interval, part endurance training.  It is called the 1,000 rep workout from Kathy Porhoroff that I found on YouTube.

Yes, you read correctly--1,000 rep workout.  The beginning is a quite intense ladder-type interval.  Then you go into 10 different exercises doing 100 reps each.  There is rest time in between while the instructor gives modifications and alignment cues for the next exercise.  If you can't do every rep, don't worry about it, do as many as you can.  She considers the beginning a warm up, but as I said, it's quite intense, so I would do a separate warm up first.

Be very careful with the jumping lunges.  You have to make sure you jump straight up and land straight down.  Only do this if you don't have knee issues.  I prefer switching legs each time if you are jumping, again though only if there are no knee problems.  Otherwise, eliminate the jump and just go as deep as you can go keeping in alignment.

I have to say I don't agree with her regarding her comments regarding sweat.  How much or how fast you sweat has nothing to do with your fitness level.  Some people sweat tying their shoes!  I don't sweat a lot, it's never pouring off of me even at my highest intensity.  Not to say that I don't sweat at all.  It's just more about your sweat glands than your fitness level.

I found her entertaining, and very knowledgeable.

There is no final stretch included.  Please do the full body stretch video posted in the right side bar.