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Free Yoga
TeleYoga Wants You and Your Friends to Do All the Minutes of Yoga You Can Muster
In a mere week, the Million Minute Month begins! To cheer us all along, we've gathered powerful forces for good in the form of Spirit Guides. Today, a big welcome to Spirit Guide Christine Miller, Founder of TeleYoga, whose sweaty minute encouragement begins...now. On the line: A free private TeleYoga session. All you have to do is rally a few friends as fellow challengers. Here's how it works:
More..._0.big center.jpg "Christine! photo by David Pexton")
Practical Eating
Skyr Vs. Fage: Yogurt Deathmatch
All yogurts are not created equal. Some are champion snacks or even meals, and others are sugar-soaked goop. One serving of my childhood favorite, Western Family lowfat blueberry yogurt, contains 44g of sugar, versus 9g in an equally if not more delicious serving of Total Fage. So no more Western Family for me. Which brings us to the topic at hand: yogurts' nutritional content, specifically high-end, thick-style yogurts.
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Sex Ed
More on the Pelvic Floor, the Psoas, and the Big O
Yesterday, our poll on Pilates and sex prompted healthy debate. A few key points to highlight: The general consensus suggests that exercise focus on the pelvic floor can bear very positive results for the orgasm-er; but also that those benefits do not necessarily accrue to the orgasm-ee. In any event, the discussion prompted a yoga teacher friend to email the following:
Psoas release is where it's at for the ladies. A little something called "constructive rest" for about 10-20 minutes a day can really unlock it, and that helps everything work better. I recommended it to one of my classes, and women were thanking me for months. :)
Naturally, I insisted that she elaborate. Included after the jump, then, a small tutorial on "constructive rest," the importance of releasing the Psoas major muscle, and the female orgasm.
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Poet Laureate
Ladies in the Gents Locker Room
If you haven’t heard, Ines Sainz is the latest in a string of female reporters to be sexually harassed while on the job. I can’t speak for what was said to her—because, well, I can’t find anything except she was “called out”—but since the verbal part of the incident took place in the Jets locker room, I think it raises a decent question: should female reporters be allowed in men’s locker rooms? I understand many post-game interviews take place there, but it’s also where athletes, you know, get naked. Thoughts after the jump.
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Scientific
On Stress and Belly Fat
Writer and runner Haruki Murakami has a great line in his book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: Walking behind a beautiful young fat woman, the narrator speculates, "There must be as many paths of human fat, as there are ways of human death."
Well, some Wake Forest researchers have found an exception to Murakami's rule: The searchers fed monkeys an "average American diet," and the monkeys got fat. Shocker! But here's the wrinkle: The researchers also found that if the monkeys ate American food and experienced prolonged stress, they got fat in a particular, common way. They developed belly fat.
That's bad news because belly fat is linked to heart disease in monkeys and in humans. People with larger waistlines -- over 40 inches in men, and over 35 inches in women -- are at significantly higher risk for all sorts of trouble: Diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, among others.
Yet another reason to manage your stress: Lose the belly, and nurture your own, natural, even literary, fat profile.
Classics
NetFlix Old-School Exercise Videos Now
Do you remember your first workout video? Oddly enough for me it was Richard Simmons in my Middle school gym. This was Utah, the early '90s.... I'll admit that I still find it marvelous to work out in my grungiest sweats with nobody watching. It's a workout you can laugh at; a workout you can pause whenever you want. These days, most imortantly, it's a workout you can Netflix.... With a few clicks, old-school favorites like Crunch's Fat Burning Dance Party could be streaming on your computer. Three dance parties in a 45 minutes: Party Salsa, Party Funk, and Retro Dance Party. All that super dancing, and zero public humiliation.
Online & Video
Home Gyms
Shh...The Ottoman is a Weight Bench in Disguise
Let's not mince words. Gym equipment is fugly. Try as you might to upgrade your home gym with swanky designer dumbells or an artsy rowing machine, when all is said and done, camouflage may be the best recourse. Enter the hidden home gym....
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Celebrity Fitness
Ryan Reynolds' Body Fat Percentage Is Probably Lower Than Yours
"For a romantic comedy, he needs to shrink down a bit. For Blade and Green Lantern, he was 200 pounds and 8% body fat. For rom coms, he’s about 180 and 11% body fat....I was with him in New Orleans [for the Green Lanterns shoot] for six months. We worked out seven days a week, 90 minutes a day, and never did the same workout twice."
Ryan Reynolds' trainer, Bobby Strom, explaining why muscles like Ryan Reynolds' may be a little out of reach for you...
Innovation
The Complete, Unabridged List of Social Fitness and Wellness Sites, Apps, and Devices
We've been compiling an exhaustive list of interesting products in the "social fitness/wellness" space. We're now well over one hundred, and it's clearly time to start sharing the love. If you'd like to make additions or changes, please tell us about it!
Gym TV
Dwight Shrute Takes Over Spin Class
In case you missed it, last week's episode of "The Office" featured a guerrilla take-over of a spin class by Dwight (skip to the end, it's the last scene of the episode). And I quote:
Dwight: OK everybody let's take this next hill!
Instructor: Excuse me, I'd appreciate it if you just let me run this.
Dwight: You know what, you had your chance, you're no leader. Up out of your seat let's blast!
Online & Video
Vent About “Easy Tone” Shoes
I’ve been meaning to write about this for awhile now, but after seeing another one of the infuriating commercials this morning while I was on the treadmill, it just had to be done.
Has anyone else seen the Reebok commercials for these shoes? If not: http://www.reebok.com/microsites/easytone_reebok/
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Poet Laureate
Healthy Man’s Spam
[Ed. Note: Mr. Mohawk showed up on Social Workout last spring, a male poet from Texas holding forth on a female dominated, hopelessly metrosexual and yoga-slanted urban fitness blog in the making. Since then he's contributed hundreds of posts and comments, from the witty to the ranting, crude, and beautiful. We think he has also worked out quite a lot. Apparently we owe his prolific posting to a strange glitch in the software he uses at his Day Job somewhere in Manhattan — a program of some sort that leaves him with several minutes to kill roughly every several minutes. Worried that this tenuous situation couldn't last forever, we've asked him to write some items in an official capacity. Frankly, we have no real idea what he'll do; but we're delighted and somewhat terrified to be introducting Mr. Mohawk to the Front Page....]
Because I was recently asked by HQ to pen the occasional men’s interest article for Social Workout, I joined the magazine’s Men’s Health email list. I figured, why the hell not? It beats, you know, having to look things up to write about. Over the past few days I’ve accumulated a handful of lovely newsletter emails, and now I’m going to subject you to them share them, in a haiku series no less! (I’ve written advertisements in CAPS.)
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Om Shaqi
Shaq vs. Yoga
Yoga isn't just for white girls anymore! Shaquille O'Neal, superstar NBA center, moved to Cleveland recently, and, not having anything better to do, he's taken up yoga. "He's got some tight hamstrings," said his teacher Tami Schneider to the A.P. "He came in just like a regular guy. He was alone, which was nice, and he seemed to feel right at home at the studio. He fit right in." Well, let's just say he "fit right in" as well as any 7'1", 325 pound NBA superstar. Apparently, Shaq's practice requires two mats, placed end-to-end. I don't imagine anyone bitched about him taking up too much space — or that Tami got very far "adjusting" him. (Fun game: Imagine Shaq in various yoga poses. Or doing pranayama breathing.) Give it up for the big man for having an open mind! Not only has he tried yoga, but he spent the summer filming Shaq Vs. in which he competes with stars of other sports: "He traded punches with Oscar De La Hoya, intercepted Ben Roethlisberger passes and even swam against Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps." All I can say is that Ray Kelly could learn a thing or two from O'Neal.
Mat Manners
Bad Yoga Behavior — Instructors Dish The Dirt
We've gotten into the rich territory of ridiculous breaches of yoga etiquette before. People popping cans of Diet Coke during savasana, tighty-whities in Bikram...but that's all been from our the student perspective. What about the teacher perspective? The Phoenix New Times talked to yoga instructors, and they've compiled a list entitled of notable complaints entitled "Why Your Yoga Instructor Hates You." You've got the usual suspects — crackberry addicts, people leaving during savasana — but then there are a few surprises:
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Jordan Black Cement 4 How to Start a Retail Business in Singapore
gapore namely a combination of an Eastern and Western access the community is enriched with Asian ethics meanwhile in the meantime mingled with Western access of conducting happening Since Singapore does never have its own natural resources apt increase its economy, it relied aboard additional field such as exporting and manufacturing.
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Day 9: I’m Usually Not a Morning Person
I have tried for years to wake up early and get a workout in before starting my day. But I can never wake up. I even set two alarm clocks as far away from my bed as possible so that when they go off in the morning, I have to physically get out of bed to turn them off. Even then, once I turn them off I still jump back into bed and fall asleep.
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I'm in, courtesy of zuzupetals.
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