This story category covers active sports; fitness activities; sports clothing and gear; and diet.
LOSING IT | Losing weight wasn’t at the top of my To Do list. It hovered somewhere between sorting out the basement and organizing the family photos, promising to be just as much of a chore. Then recently, I looking around on Abebooks.com and I noticed that they are practically giving away copies of the The Dukan Diet. Read more
MONEY WELL SPENT | Ever heard the term “Bar butt” before? No, it’s not something disastrous that happens to your bottom when you spend too much lounging around quaffing cocktails. Bar butt is actually desirable, a high, tight, sculpted backside that comes from doing the glute recruitment exercises in the killer workout known as The Bar Method. Read more
SAVE TIME + ENERGY | Before I got involved with this online magazine, I worked out pretty hard at least four times a week. Now it’s just twice—if I’m lucky. Most of the time I sit in front of a computer screen; I can actually feel my bottom deflating (dare I say spreading?) as I type these words. Yikes.
It’s hard to stay in shape when you sit for a living, but I do not intend to let my whole bod to go south without putting up a fight. So I won’t get bored I need a multitude of seriously quick and efficient workout routines I can do in street clothes (if I need to) in my weensy office space. Read more
SAVE YOUR MONEY | Are you a January Joiner? That’s the term used to describe people who resolve to get fit in the New Year by purchasing a gym membership or plunking down cash for a workout package. If you are one, check out Frugalbits Cheap Sheet every day this month for a higher than usual number of deep-discount deals on every type of workout imaginable.
Or you might want to try one of our favourite free workout alternatives. This past year, we looked at number of serious ways to get fit that required little or no expense. Here’s what we liked best.
FIT FOR FREE | Don’t hate her because she has an unattainably perfect body and fabulous celebrity best friends like Gwyneth Paltrow. For the past 11 years, Tracy Anderson has worked damn hard for her money, developing workout studios both in New York and L.A. and creating a series of eight killer DVDs based on the Tracy Anderson Method. And while her lifestyle advice and exercise routines continue to have their detractors—who feel her views on dieting are too extreme and her routines for dance-based workouts too quick and complicated to follow—her program has been proven to work if you can hunker down and stick with it. Read more
FIVE-MINUTE-YOGA | Perhaps we lose touch with our feet because they’re so far from our heads. How else could we shove them into narrow shoes and ignore them until they hurt?
Good yoga feet with active, mobile toes bring life to every pose. They help you connect with the ground in standing poses and pull your energy upward in inversions.
In fact, if there were just one practice you were to take on for five minutes a day, this one would give you the biggest and fastest rewards.
JUST DO IT | Marathon walking is a pretty big deal right now, and it’s getting bigger because fitness fanatics who’ve been jogging their shins off are finding that while finishing a 42-km race may be an accomplishment, it isn’t necessarily the best thing for the body. Read more
One of the most fruitful areas for a new yoga practitioner to explore is something I call television yoga. It’s not a formal practice. You don’t have to put on special clothes, roll out a mat or light a candle. And if you watch TV, talk on the phone or sit and listen to music, you don’t even have to make time for it. You just have to be willing to devote some of your sitting-down time to gentle, intelligent work with your body. Any seated hip opener will do. But if you’d like to stretch your front thighs, it’s hard to beat the half-hero pose. Read more
FIVE-MINUTE-YOGA | Most of what we do, including typing, cooking, driving, reading and gardening, encourages us to lift our shoulder blades, jut our heads forward and round our backs. Don’t get stuck there. Instead, reverse the curve with a chest-opening pose. You’ll make more space for your lungs, bring your shoulders back into place, relieve upper back tension and stretch your front chest muscles. Even five minutes a day makes a difference—as long as it’s every day. Read more
FITTER BY THE MINUTE It is well known that heart disease is one of the leading causes of death among Canadians. But a recent study was shocked to find that going to the gym does not make up for all the sedentary time we spend. This is bad news for professional sitters (i.e., those of us who sit at desk to make a living). A recent New York Times article indicated that even if we live reasonably healthy lives but sit for more than 23 hours a week, we are 64 percent more likely to die from heart disease. According to the study, even for those who have nixed cream and go jogging, it is not enough to counteract the effects of all of that sitting. So unless you are planning on a career change to bike courier or rickshaw driver, insert a bit of activity into your office hours by giving your daily grind some heart.
This simple active routine will boost your heart rate (not to mention your popularity and productivity). Read more