I have been a member of Headspace for years – being in Silicon Valley, where stress is a second nature, Meditation became a supremely useful tool to help me unwind and relax … during long commute and to cope with crazy Bay Area passive-aggressive drivers. But then Headspace introduced meditation for sports and I really got super hooked. This year has been tough mentally and physically because of isolation, remote work and lockdowns and for me, realizing almost too late that I needed to be even more stringent on proper nutrition, balance and exercise that I usually am. 4 reasons every athlete should meditate (adapted from here) A mind that is not under control is a mind that makes mistakes—mistakes that could prevent you from winning. High levels of stress decrease your ability to maintain focus and concentration. Of course, stress can be a helpful tool when used correctly; but when it’s not, it can not only impact your performance, but your life. Elite, professional, and amateur athletes, despite their differences in level and/or sport, they all face similar challenges: anxiety, depression, stress, inability to maintain focus, sleep difficulties, life balance, confidence, the list goes on. Why should you consider practicing meditation for athletic performance?
Meditation Apps (I use Headspace) Comparing two popular meditation apps, Headspace and Calm, to see how they stack up. How much do they cost? Both apps are free to download, with free trials and limited free features. If you want to upgrade to get full access, you’ll have to pay an annual or monthly fee.
How do they work? Both Calm and Headspace can be customized, and optional push notifications offer gentle reminders to stay on track with your daily practice. You’ll also find meditation practices tailored just for kids in both apps. Calm Calm makes it easy to create a daily practice and make it relevant to what you need on a given day. As you launch the app, you can choose from a few different options.
Headspace With its fun, cheerful animations, Headspace has a completely different aesthetic from Calm. If you’re new to meditation, the 10-day Basics course is a great starting place. It’s designed to teach the essentials of meditation in just minutes a day. As you build your practice, the Everyday Headspace meditation — a short, guided, daily meditation — is front and center on the home screen. Here’s what else you’ll find:
@philippemora > I come from the future. I work and I workout. Always be kind and passionate.
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What are the benefits of eating soup? Soup is a quick, hot meal that offers plenty of health benefits. You can throw a variety of ingredients into a slow cooker in the morning before you leave for work or school and return home to a delicious meal in the evening. The healthiest soups include fresh, low-fat ingredients and a minimum of salt and extra fat. You can use up leftovers in a soup pot and create new variations of favorite recipes, since soup lends itself to experimentation. Vegetables The American Heart Association recommends adults consume eight or more servings of fruits and vegetables every day. That's 4 ½ cups. Soups can contribute to that total. Almost any vegetable lends itself to use in soup, from creamy squash or tomato bisques to vegetable beef or chicken vegetable soup. Add fresh or frozen vegetables to canned soups to increase the servings of vegetables and add flavor. Nutrients Soups made with beans and lean meats such as fish provide lean protein. Beans also give you fiber. Tomatoes are a good source of lycopene. Vegetables in soup contain many vitamins, such as A and C. Cream soups supply calcium and vitamin D. Low Fat Most soups, if made with lean meat, are low in fat, making them a good choice for anyone concerned about fat in his diet. Use fat-free broths and lean meat to reduce the fat content of soups. se skin milk for cream soups; or, instead of milk, you can use pureed white beans to thicken soup. To further reduce the fat content of your soup without sacrificing flavor, chill it and skim off the fat before reheating and serving. Filling Because soup contains so much water it fills you up with fewer calories. Research at Penn State University discovered that students who ate chicken and rice soup instead of a chicken and rice casserole, consumed fewer calories yet reported being equally satisfied. Phil’s Soup kitchen I love soups. All kinds of soup. While most people have a sweet tooth, I don’t – soup is my thing. And so here’s how I do my soup. Basically, I have a simple foundation that I complement with low-cal canned soups – my favorite being chicken noodle soup. The foundation
Just cut all these in small pieces and sauté them with garlic paste. Just as they all become soft, add water and chicken bouillon. That’s it. You should prepare enough for the week, aka 2 big bowls per day. Daily soup prep and assembly Basically, what I do is to take my soup foundation and run it through my nutribullet to get a really nice velvety base. Then I add organic chicken noodle like Yes or Rao’s. And then one more flavor if I feel like it, for example Amy’s black bean and vegetable canned soups. And voila! Healthy, hearty, and filling soup every day! @philippemora > I come from the future. I work and I workout. Always be kind and passionate.
🙏❤️💪🏋️♀️🔥🚀 Wow! It’s been about a year since I last updated my fitness log. But a lot of things have happened, of course – besides the pandemic. I changed my job and moved to Northern Colorado and most importantly – and finally! I managed to shed 30lbs and I am just getting started: 20 more lbs to get back in the game. So, I thought I would now get back to my log. It’s so important today to get back to fitness and clean eating and to stay there in the age of covid. And after being a really bad boy during the first lockdown, I decided that working virtually and more in control of my social life (or lack thereof = no temptations!) was a fantastic opportunity to get back on track to my athlete shape of 5 years ago! Fort Collins was founded as a military outpost of the United States Army in 1864. It succeeded a previous encampment, known as Camp Collins, on the Cache La Poudre River, near what is known today as Laporte. Camp Collins was erected during the Indian wars of the mid-1860s to protect the Overland mail route that had been recently relocated through the region. Travelers crossing the county on the Overland Trail would camp there, but a flood destroyed the camp in June 1864. Afterward, the commander of the fort wrote to the commandant of Fort Laramie in southeast Wyoming, Colonel William O. Collins, suggesting that a site several miles farther down the river would make a good location for the fort. The post was manned originally by two companies of the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry and never had walls. Today, Fort Collins produces 70 percent of Colorado's craft beer and seven percent of the United States, but my favorite fun fact about Fort Collins is that Fort Collins is home to some of the famous Budweiser Clydesdales horses. If you’ve seen Budweiser ads over the years, it’s likely you’re familiar with the world-famous Budweiser Clydesdale horses: they’re known for their long white hairs on their lower legs that cover their hooves, Clydesdale horses have long been used for Budweiser promotion and even made appearances at two presidential inaugurations. Anheuser-Busch owns a total of about 250 Clydesdale horses, which are kept at various locations throughout the country, including in Fort Collins. The Clydesdales West Coast Team is housed at the company’s brewing facility in Fort Collins, and other touring teams are based in St. Louis, Missouri and Merrimack, New Hampshire. @philippemora > I come from the future. I work and I workout. Always be kind and passionate.
🙏❤️💪🏋️♀️🔥🚀 A few months back, I have shared my thoughts about the concept of rituals as applied to personal health and fitness. Recently I have refined my thinking and I thought I would share … After a certain time, it’s easy to see your daily workouts as just your routine … don’t! Instead try to view your overall physical (and mental) fitness with more respect: call them your fitness rituals. That subtle word change will make all the difference … see, routines, habits, etc. will tend, over time, to gain a negative connotation because they’ll eventually become a “have to do”. But a ritual will always be something you respect and want to participate to – so whatever your pre-race or pre-workout ritual is, it will be setting the tone for it to be a positive experience and something you truly enjoy. Here are my suggestions that will help you turn your workout “routine” into an awesomebulous ritual. Have a theme song! For me, music plays a big role in any activity. Not only does it focus your mind but when I listen to something I really like (for me It’s uplifting EDM) that’s super upbeat, it can se the done for how your experience things. So I suggest you get a rotation of songs, a playlist, an app that gets you in the mood for exercise. For me, I use an app called di.fm radio and I listen to their uplifting, epic and vocal trance channels and shows (from Armin van Buuren to Jena Garniychuk and Ori Uplift). When I really love a song, I add it to my running playlist on Apple Music (you can follow me there). That’s the soundtrack of my workouts and runs. Dedicate your workout to someone I think there is power in reminder myself as to why I am committing to my workouts, because it’s helping me why this matters to me and to remember the bigger picture: more and more (and more) maintenance as you get older! I’ve learned that great idea while practicing mindfulness using the Headspace app: take 3 deep breaths, shift your attention to your senses and be in the Now. Then think about why the workout you’re about to do matters to you. And then finally connect all of this with your own bigger picture, whether it’s preserving your health to be strong for your loved ones, or to remember how lucky you are to be healthy or to remind yourself how you feel so much better after your workout ….. Always do something you actually enjoy A part of your ritual is your workout itself. Soooo … if you hate to run, don’t run. There are a lot of activities that will get you to break a really good sweat. Just thrive to get started, even when you don’t feel like it. The fun will come real fast. So find those workouts that will make sure that you’ll be always be coming back to them. For me I love running and I love lifting. But I don’t want to do this every day because I don’t want to get bored of it. So during my work week, I actually do my cardio on ellipticals, stairmasters (those are excellent cardio workouts!) and stationary bike. And every other day, I lift and work on my strength training. Have a post-game Once you’re done, I suggest you make a point in recognizing yourself for showing up today and do the work. Take your time during your cool down to reflect on how you feel and notice the positive changes you feel after a good workout session – for me I do a good stretching session and then hot tub and shower – so that you keep on doing it every day again and again and again. The concept of macro rituals In addition to your daily training and fitness rituals, I suggest you have a ritual to kick off each week. For example, I have a weekly macro ritual on Sundays when I prepare my meals for the week – make my food list, go to the store, take my time to pick up the best produce and then come home and prepare and cook. I usually do that after my weekend 10K runs. @philippemora > I come from the future. I work and I workout. Always be kind and passionate.
🙏❤️💪🏋️♀️🔥🚀 “Great abs are made in the kitchen” and the worst kept secret of the fitness and diet industry is that it’s equally pointless to exercise without proper nutrition as to diet without proper exercise. And if you exercise regularly, a proper nutrition plan is actually very simple: we’re going to call it “drop the crap” (In addition to way smaller portions), as losing fat an older male and fueling hard workouts doesn't have to involve counting calories. Keep it simple and fine-tune as needed. So here it is: the following three stages I am suggesting can be used by anyone who needs to clean-up and refocus their diet. Step One: drop the obvious crap If you’re in your mid-forties, by now you should know that junk food, candy, sodas, cookies, fast food and booze are wrecking your body or at least delaying your progress. The right amount of “in moderation” and “cheat food” is equal to zero: every time an overweight person consumes “the obvious crap” they’re taking a step backward or (at best) temporarily halting their progress. If your goal is to lose fat, keep it off for good. Cut it out and never go back at it ever again. Step Two: cut the less obvious crap Those are the foods that are considered as healthy but in fact aren’t. Those are the pretend health food choices that have more or less the same effect of delaying your progress as the obvious crap foods: low fat, fat free, low carb, gluten free, high fiber, organic, whole grain, etc. But low-carb foods can be calorically dense and filled with the worst type of dietary fats, and fat-free foods are always sugar bombs or full with processed flour. Sugar is gluten-free. Let’s not talk about added corn syrup in every food that comes in a box. And all of them will make you fat. Now the less obvious: drop wheat products. Yup. Bread and Pasta and everything that’s white and processed. Dropping wheat-containing foods may be controversial however you’ll be able to google quite a few studies showing that wheat polypeptides bind to the brain's morphine receptor, the same receptor to which opiate drugs bind, meaning that you get cravings, overeat, and disrupt your natural appetite signaling mechanisms. Further, the health benefits of this particular grain are largely nonexistent, you don't need it, and it's probably doing you more harm than good. And here more bad news: It can take anywhere from 5 to 28 days to drop the "addiction" to these foods. Food scientists and behavioral psychologists refer to this as the "don't be a pussy" stage and suggest three servings of "suck it up, princess" until bad habits wane and unnatural cravings subside. It’s really hard but out here in the real world, it works for 90% of people. Step Three: Replace all the above crap with clean stuff
@philippemora > I come from the future. I work and I workout. Always be kind and passionate.
🙏❤️💪🏋️♀️🔥🚀 An important note here: my colleague Alex featured in the picture above finished top 30 in the 10K race, in his age category. Awesome job Alex! The first trail race of the year for me. Basically getting up the mountain then down. Last year I injured one of my thighs on the way down the 10K and basically this was it for me for the year, so this year I did only the 5K to make sure I don't re-injure myself. Well I am happy to report that this race was so super awesome I think I am doing the 10K again next year! A little slow again though, but let's make sure about no injuries this season! @philippemora > I come from the future. I work and I workout. Always be kind and passionate.
🙏❤️💪🏋️♀️🔥🚀 It’s a really hard race, goes up the hills of the Santa Cruz mountains in the San Francisco South Bay Area: Sanborn County Park, a beautiful mountain park of redwoods and tan bark oaks. Last year, I did hurt one of my calves on the downhill of the TrailQuake 10K run … that more or less put me off racing for the rest of the year and I really had only myself to blame for the setback (yup, that’s what happens when your brain is still 20yo and your body is actually past 50). So this year, I am just doing the 5K and I am coming more equipped, let’s see if mind will win over body the right way this time! @philippemora > I come from the future. I work and I workout. Always be kind and passionate.
🙏❤️💪🏋️♀️🔥🚀 In the last decade, trail running events worldwide have become increasingly popular for those looking to step away from the “traditional” road marathons and track events. Basically trail running goes up and down and I have learned that it really levels the playing field between the runners who are really good and fast on flat (not me) and the more technical yet adventurous trail running (that’s more like me!) But running uphill is scary .. First you feel you’re out of air almost immediately and then, after the run, you discover there’s pain in many new muscles you never knew they even existed like the upper quadriceps, your buttocks (yup, your butt) and of course the calves. However with the right techniques, foods, massages and creams, uphill running can be tackled and it’s really good to have this as part of any training plan. The rewards: more efficient breathing, stronger muscles and brain power, and significant general improvements in endurance. Start slow and on the Stairmaster (and alternate with the incline treadmill) Obviously not the same, but the Stairmaster will teach you to run “quick and light” and also force you to maintain a normal breathing rate, while all you want to do is ventilate like there’s no tomorrow (yes Stairmaster is hard at the beginning). Also you’ll start to train the right muscles for natural hill running, hence minimizing the potential post-run pain when you start doing real hill running. The incline treadmill is great too for training, major drawback is that it’s really boring. Usually I do fast interval/hill training with them during regular workouts – really good cardio workout and teaches you the breathing part as well. Get the right shoes You need extra forefoot cushioning for uphill running and your shoes need to stay light – overall weight is really something you want to pay attention to. Also, one thing to consider is that you will go up, then down. Careful with too much cushioning, it may slow you down when you go down-hill. Learn to “run tall” Even with a slope, don’t forget to have a straight body alignment, aka “run tall”: head up, eyes forward, shoulders back, hips and knees aligned. Your elbows should be bent but remember that on an uphill/downhill trail, your biceps and shoulders will work harder than usual. With your body straight, your knees will naturally lift higher to allow for you to climb upwards, and your feet will be doing the angled work that gets you moving in the right direction. Run forefoot It’s a very well known technique for sprinters. Check this video: When it comes to running uphill, the greater the incline, the more use of your forefoot for the climb. One of the greatest benefits of running hills is that this is where speed is built for tackling faster flats. Of course, it’s not just sprinters and track runners who benefit from forced forefoot running. If you use your heels too much as when you’re normally walking, you’re going to cramp real fast. Do the quick and light This basically you run small steps more often. Trust me it works real well. This doesn’t mean that you increase your overall speed, which would totally change your breathing and your overall running momentum which will get you tired real fast, but you just increase your footspeed. Only hit the hill when you’re ready Once small and quick steps are mastered and the right gear is in check, it’s time to move from the stairs to the hills. The best place to practice uphill running are along uneven forest and mountain trails of gradual incline. The terrain naturally promotes twitch-fiber growth in muscles and the landscape always gives you new routes to run and new foot-falls even when on the “same” run uphill. Start easy and small, and find the right incline for your level. Too steep, and you’ll fatigue early, which can be deterring to those starting out. The best way forward is to increase your grade gradually, running the same route until you can claim that climb is conquered and move to a new challenge Rest and recovery Okay the bad news first: hill running does hurt. You’ll need to deal with muscle soreness the day of your race, and probably the day after. Here’s what I’ve learned:
@philippemora > I come from the future. I work and I workout. Always be kind and passionate.
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Weights, Track, music, PLACEs. Always be kind and passionate.
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