Social Workout

SW-e-AT

Food-Ex Pairing: Brown Rice and Hammies

Today's food-ex pairing needs no introduction. One of them supports, in a nutritional sense, well over half the world. The other supports, in a literally sense, you.

Let's talk about your hamstrings. They're not super visible in most people, and they're kind of awkward to exercise. (Yogis, think standing split. Weightlifters, think prone thigh curls.) This makes them easy to ignore, but that would be a mistake. Your hamstrings are responsible for minor things, like allowing you to flex your knee, and also to extend your hip. As in: walking, running, jumping, and lifting things off the floor. And they're also responsible for important things, like Moonwalking, and/or doing that other Michael Jackson move, where he lifts one knee and taps the lifted heel with his hand.) OK, I bet you're wondering where the term hamstring came from. Not to be a shameless Wikipedia quoter, but check this out:

Another commonly accepted origin is that legs of ham used to be hung by a hook through the space between the thighbone and the tendons behind the knee. Ham/pork used to be more common in England than beef and lamb.

Who knew!

If you're curious about how to work your hams in a kind of Western-weight-lifty way, I recommend this page on Project Swole. These people seem smart. Dancers and yogis might can try almost any of the exercises demonstrated in this very jazzy Pilates promo video. These people seem funny. Take your pick, but remember the old Chinese proverb: "Talk does not cook rice." 

Oh snap! Let's talk about brown rice. Did you know that in some languages "to eat" translates directly as "to eat rice." This according to the food geeks at WHFoods, who also point out what you already know: Whole grain brown rice is very good for you, while stripped and polished white rice is a lot less so. Eat the brown rice, and you'll be thinner, have lower cholesterol, and be less likely to develop Type 2 Diabetes. How should you do it? TheKitchn.com has your back with its normal Five Ways to Eat... post, one of which would seem particularly appropriate as it includes some delicious hammy: "Fried with onions, ginger, and an egg."

Enjoy you SW-e-AT-ers....

Healthy Read: Jillian Michaels's Master Your Metabolism

This book came out last spring, and I probably would have jumped to buy it at the time but for the reviews on Amazon, which basically said that if you have listened to the majority of Jillian's podcasts then you already have this information.

I have no idea if my meals were “wild” or not

GENERAL EXERCISEMore...

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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Wake Up Call

On Eisstockschießen

You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.

~ Billy Wilder, Austrian-American filmmaker

Eisstockschießen is like curling, but without the brooms. Or it's like bocce, but played with funny discs on frozen ponds in Austria.

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.)

Gratuitous Video

Clean Momma Recklessly Combines Dusting and Pliés

Let's say you're a mom with no time, but you still want to get fit. Stop trying to carve out special exercise time, says Carolyn Barnes, a.k.a. cLean Momma. (Her strange capitalization.) Instead, she suggests working fitness into your household chores: Push-ups while you do the dishes, or lunges while vacuuming. Really?

Online & Video

Turning a negative into a positive. Day 日本語. "7" in Japanese

Day 日本語. "7" in Japanese

New York