Blog Archives
Digestive Health & Fitness
This Motivation Monday brings us about two weeks away from this year’s Tour de France. The 3,360 km race features the world’s most elite cyclists and today, I’m thrilled to share an interview with one of them.
Lucy Garner is a British racing cyclist and part of the professional Team Giant-Alpecin. She won her first junior world title at a road world championship in Copenhagen, returning a year later to claim a second world title at Valkenburg, Netherlands. Joining the senior levels at the start of the 2013 season, Garner claimed her first professional victory on the opening stage of the Tour of Chongming Island in Shanghai, China.
Garner recently teamed up Brooke Alpert, nutrition expert and author of The Sugar Detox: Lose Weight, Feel Great and Look Years Younger to discuss the role of nutrition as part of an overall healthy and active lifestyle. I hope you’ll enjoy their discussion from Amsterdam filmed a little earlier this month and sponsored by n Culturelle® Probiotic.
A Unique Approach to Healthy Living
With Dr. Donald Hensrud, Medical Director of Mayo Clinic’s Healthy Living Program
It’s always a win-win when my multimedia production world collides with my lifelong love for health and fitness. On this Motivation Monday, I’d like to share a glimpse at how that happened just last week in Rochester, Minnesota. That’s home to the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, and it’s where I made a repeat visit to produce a satellite media tour for KickedUp Media Group.
I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Donald Hensrud, the medical director for Mayo Clinic’s Healthy Living Program. The immersion program is aimed at helping people keep their health and wellness resolutions alive long beyond a few weeks or months in the new year.
Let’s face it: most of us realize the benefits of adding healthy eating habits and physical activity to our daily routines, but the tough part is sustaining those habits in the course of our hectic lives. To learn more about how the Healthy Living Program is helping people make better choices and maintain them, please click on the player window below.
Before you take a peek, I’d like to thank Dr. Hensrud and Mayo Clinic for not only making this production possible, but for creating such an innovative program to help people have fun, be fit and feel fabulous!
New Adventures for LauraLovesFitness!
With Allison Haunss, Host & Executive Producer of the “Working Woman Report”
It’s an exciting Motivation Monday here at LauraLovesFitness!
My worlds of journalism, production and fitness all collide tonight with the debut of the Working Woman Report. The half-hour lifestyle show was created by my talented friend Allison Haunss. We met during our graduate school days at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and later worked together at News 12 Long Island and News 12 Connecticut. Now in addition to my role at KickedUp Media Group and pursuing work in the voice over world, I’ve joined the Working Woman Report as Senior Producer. I will also serve as the in-house fitness expert, which means you’ll see videos of yours truly showing people how to add some healthy moves to their lives.
The show debuts tonight at 8:30 pm ET on NYC Life, which reaches New York’s five boroughs; Long Island; Westchester; New Jersey…and beyond!
Shooting videos in Central Park with Videographer/Editor Ash Kalmar
The following is a list of where to find NYC Life based on your cable provider:
- CableVision 22
- Comcast 25
- Time Warner 25
- Verizon / FIOS 25
- Over the Air 25
- RCN 25
- DirecTV 25
To learn more about the show, check out www.workingwomanreport.com In a nutshell, the stories showcase female entrepreneurs from all walks of life and how they’ve made their mark. The overall theme is aimed at empowering women to turn their dreams into reality. Since I’m always promoting how leading a healthy lifestyle can help you tackle your goals, I’m thrilled to reach a new audience about the benefits of incorporating exercise and a well-balanced diet into your daily routine.
At the MetroBVNS Studio
Not in the New York area? No sweat! You’ll be able to watch my fitness segments on YouTube. (There’s a tab at the top of this page that takes you directly to the LauraDLovesFitness channel.) If you can tune in, please be sure to set reminders on your calendars or program your DVRs for future Mondays at 8:30 pm to catch more inspiring stories from some fabulous females and to see when I’m back with more fitness moves. Of course, feel free to tell your family and friends about the show and to let me know what you think! 
I close with a big thank you to all my readers, family, friends and members of the fitfam who keep me keepin’ on! Here’s to all of the new opportunities that lie ahead for all of us on the never-ending journey to have fun, be fit and feel fabulous!
Help For Your Hip Flexors
We made it to another Workout Wednesday!
Photo by Leslie Hassler
For this week’s post, I wanted to concentrate on an area of training that should be a key component in everyone’s exercise regimen regardless of his or her fitness level. Unfortunately, it’s also an area that’s often tossed aside thanks to time constraints. I’m talking about flexibility training.
Whether you clock countless hours each week sitting at a desk, commuting or shuttling the kids around town, chances are you suffer from an all-too common problem for modern-day Americans: bad posture. This matched with an ever-increasing sedentary lifestyle make a recipe for disaster and makes flexibility training more important than ever. It’s one of the easiest ways to decrease muscle imbalances, joint dysfunction and overuse injuries.
While I can’t assess how your body moves via this post, I can tell you about one of my biggest “problem areas.” When I’m not “out in the field” producing shoots, I spend way too much time sitting in front of my computer. Since I’m almost always on deadline, I tend to lose track of just how long I sit there. These extended periods of sitting unfortunately cause tightening of my hip flexors, which are made up of five muscles including the psoas.
The good news is it’s not hard to find relief for those tight hip flexors. In my latest video (from the LauraDLovesFitness YouTube channel), I offer an easy stretching solution to this common problem area:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pygoAAbyQE8&feature=youtu.be
So what happens if I I don’t take the time to stretch my hip flexors and just get right into the “heart” of a workout? There are plenty of terms in exercise science to describe the problematic results, including altered reciprocal inhibition, synergistic dominance and arthrokinetic dysfunction. Here’s what those problems look like when it comes to performing one of the most popular exercises known to man: the squat. If I repeatedly perform squats with a tight psoas, the “wrong” muscles end up doing the work. The gluteus maximus should be the prime mover, but tight hips flexors inhibit the gluteus maximus from doing its job and getting strong. Instead, the workload gets picked up by the “B team:” the hamstrings and erector spinae. Not only does this make the butt-kicking exercise pretty much ineffective for actually toning my butt, but I’m also putting myself at risk for low back pain and potential injury.
The bottom line is this: if I had a time machine and could fix some of the fitness mistakes I made in my younger days, I’d try to make up for some of the lost time I didn’t spend on stretching. Making flexibility training a part of your daily routine is truly one of the best things you can do to have fun, be fit and feel fabulous!
lauralovesfitness 