Whether you do it when you wake up, on your lunch break, or before you go to bed, this simple yoga routine will help you clear your mind in a matter of minutes.
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Health24.com | How Kelvin Trautman trains to be one of the best action photographers
Kelvin Trautman is a ghost. If you’re a trail runner, paddler or mountain biker, there’s a good chance he’s silently snapped you from behind a bush, in a tree or while hanging off a cliff face.
If you’re talented enough to make the top spots at these events, then he’s probably running alongside you for a large portion of the race – hefting his equipment on his back and cradling his camera in this arms for his quick-fire shots.
Read more: This SA photographer with 270k instagram followers is here to teach you everything you need to know
Unlike many of his photographer peers, Trautman doesn’t get ferried around to easy shooting locations – he has to run, paddle, climb or cycle to the next best vantage spot. And to do this, he needs to be seriously fit.
And just to drive home how fit he is, I interview him the day before he does the Non Stop Dusi Canoe Marathon, a race which you paddle the Dusi river in a day. That’s 108km, which entails 35km of portage. It took him and his partner in a K2 just two hours, coming third overall.
Cross training kills monotony
“Unfortunately due to my shooting schedule, I don’t have a structured training plan but I’ve learnt how to squeeze in the right kind of training whenever I can. I’ve learnt the benefits of cross training, so I mix it up by doing open water swimming, free weights, core work, paddling, mountain biking and trail running,” says Trautman.
His favourite cross training sport is swimming, but not the traditional type, he says. “I often do long sea (or dam) swims. I do five ‘ins and outs’ (where you swim out to the backline, catch a wave, run back up the beach, around the life guard tower and then swim back out). In the pool, I often try mixing up my sessions by doing 50m intervals (25m underwater and a 25m sprint).
“I also try to tread water between intervals instead of hanging on the wall for dear life. I sometimes swim with a T-shirt on and I use a kick board. I find that swimming has the best overall benefits and can help you with almost any kind of race goals. I get the most out of my training where the aim is to have fun and be as challenging as possible at the same time.”
Read more: This is the exact percentage road running beats treadmill training
There are crap days
“I have days where I spend hours cold, wet and shivering in mud. But then I look at the race I’m covering, see how the athletes are suffering in the same conditions and it makes me feel better.
“Yes, it does sound sadistic, but there is something to be said for shared suffering. And best of all, when the conditions are rubbish, there’s more to photograph. The human spirit is much more noticeable and there is so much more to capture.”
There are no chain emails in the outdoors
“After sitting with your eyes glued to electronic spreadsheets and emails, running in nature provides a sensory overload that can reset your brain. No gossip, traffic or cellphones.
“It seems crazy to both work and train indoors. What’s even more crazy is that it doesn’t take much to change this. The hardest part is just to start and once you’ve made the decision to tie your running shoes or pack your canoe, it’s all downhill from there.”
Read more: The exact number of emails you should check every day to avoid a stress meltdown
The deep end is the most rewarding
“People don’t enjoy being challenged. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s where you grow the most. Going on a new adventure can be daunting, no matter if you’re hurling your parachute-clad body off a cliff with your camera in hand, or simply exploring your local park for the first time. It’s scary but it’s bloody addictive. You’ll learn more about yourself when you’re in the deep end than any other place in the world.”
Fitness is a job requirement
“I need to see and know the whole race course that I’m covering, and get to places that other people wouldn’t physically. I need to be able to stick with the front runners to be able to shoot them. As much as it is important to get to the perfect location for the right shot, it is also about being creative on the spot. Keep your eyes open for the right photographic opportunity.”
This article was originally published on www.mh.co.za
Image credit: iStock
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If This Marathon With 23 Wine Tastings Doesn’t Make You Want to Run, Nothing Will
If your idea of a triathlon consists of an appetizer, entrée, and wine pairing, there’s a marathon in France that should excite your athletic instincts.
The annual Marathon du Médoc is a 26.2-mile race in Bordeaux, France, every September. What makes this particular race interesting is that there are 23 different wines that participants are supposed to try as they make their way through the course. There is at least one break for steak.
The route winds through vineyards, past chateaux, and allows “runners” time to sample cheese, ice cream, and oysters as they race through all 26 miles. Despite the extreme conditions, no contestant has ever died at the Marathon du Médoc. (It perhaps helps that every participant must submit a medical certification in order to compete.) But, according to one journalist for The Guardian who participated in the race, there is an awful lot of projectile vomit on the course.
The race takes about six-and-a-half hours and participants are encouraged to take their time. Oh, and all the athletes of the Marathon du Médoc are required to show up in costume, by the way.
Registration for the Marathon du Médoc costs $102 (€87) and is limited to 8,500 participants. The only qualification is that you must have been born before September 9, 1997. This year’s race, taking place on September 8, is closed but you can try to get on the waiting list — or just go to Bordeaux to watch the spectacle from the sidelines.
And hey, it’s never too early to start training for next year with a bottle of wine. See you at the finish lane.
Can You Lose Weight Just from Your Butt?
No, you’re not imagining it. With almost half-a-million posts on Instagram, #bootygoals is definitely a thing. If you’re already familiar with the peachy pics taking over your social feeds, you’re probably wondering (as we did!) how these stars shaped their glorious glutes.
As always when we have questions, we turned to the experts: certified personal trainers Morgan Olson, founder of Babe Go Lift and Roxie Jones of Tone House. Here's what they had to say about transforming the tush.
RELATED: 11 Celeb-Approved Workouts for a Toned, Sculpted Butt
Can you lose weight from just your butt?
The idea behind losing weight from one particular body part is called spot reduction. The thinking goes that you can target specific areas of the body and selectively decide where the fat will disappear. But science has shown time and time again that spot reduction is as much of a myth as unicorns. That's because fat cells are distributed all over your body, Olson says. To see them disappear, you'd need to reduce your overall body fat. “Working a certain muscle group doesn’t mean that you’re going to lose the fat that covers and surrounds that muscle,” she says.
However, you can still train a specific muscle group. People often use the terms “spot reduction” and “spot training” interchangeably, but they’re actually different. “One is BS, and one can help build a booty,” Olson says. "Spot training is the idea that you can develop a certain muscle or muscle group by training those muscles."
RELATED: Can You Lose Weight Just from Your Stomach?
How to spot-train your butt
Exercises that force you to activate and engage the muscles that make up the booty—the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and gluteus minimus—will help you increase the size of those muscles, Jones says. “Any glute-specific exercises technically allow you to spot-train your booty."
If you’ve never trained your peach before, experts suggest starting with resistance band exercises (like kickbacks or lateral or monster walks) or bodyweight exercises (like air squats, unweighted lunges, and step-ups). “Adding in these beginner-level exercises will teach you how to activate your glute muscles. Once you know how, you add in more complex, weighted lifts,” Jones says.
Learning how to activate your glutes is crucial. “You can do squats until you’re blue in the face, but if you’re not actually activating the muscles, you won’t see any results,” Jones adds. To test your ability to activate your glutes, stand in front of a mirror so you can see your booty. Try to squeeze one butt cheek as hard as you can. If nothing happens, you’re not engaging your glutes. If you can see one of your cheeks contracted, the glute is activated.
Once you're ready for weighted lifts, Olson has a few favorites that "will make your butt burn real good," she says, including sumo squats, deadlifts, barbell glute bridges, reverse lunges, weighted step-ups, and curtsy lunges. These work the glute muscles from all angles, too. "They'll give you a firmer lower back, fuller side butt, perkier upper butt, and rounder lower booty,” she adds.
After your pump-up session, remember to give yourself time to recovery properly. “Help your booty recover and grow back stronger and perkier with proper sleep and nutrition and foam rolling or stretching,” Jones says.
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Bonus: Training your butt could help reduce body fat
Whether or not losing weight is the goal, working your glutes with these exercises can help reduce overall body fat and rev up your metabolism. “Squats may be working your glutes, but they also work your core, quads, hamstrings, and lats. And the more muscles groups you use, the more work is required from your body and the more calories you are going to burn,” Jones explains. Having more muscle also means you're burning more calories even when you're not exercising, increasing your overall fat burn, she adds.
The bottom line: Whether you’re trying to lose weight or build a peach, training your booty-muscles can help get you to your goal.
Anna Victoria Started Posting ‘Honest’ Photos of Her Body on Instagram for ‘Transparency’
Fitness influencer Anna Victoria used to only post “perfectly posed” photos of herself on Instagram, with her stomach sucked in and muscles popping. But she realized that it could be negatively impacting her followers.
Victoria, 29, came to realize that she wasn’t accurately depicting her life.
“Through sharing my own posed photos over the last few years, I noticed a trend of young girls and women of all ages leaving a variety of comments from ‘#goals’ to ‘I hope I can one day look like that,’ to ‘I will never look like that.’ It began to weigh on me,” she wrote in an essay for Today.
Victoria laments that as much as she loves and relies on social media, it “tends to remove the human component” as people try to make their lives look perfect.
“When young girls and women of all ages see countless pictures of seemingly flawless women, it can seem like these beautiful women are in the majority,” she said. “This leads these normal, everyday women to feel like there’s something wrong with them. Why can’t I look like that? Why am I eating so healthy, working so hard in the gym, yet my body doesn’t look like that?”
Thinking about these issues led Victoria to post an honest photo in January 2016 of the belly rolls she has when sitting down. The Instagram post immediately went viral and she received an “overwhelming amount of support.”
“I could tell this was something women clearly needed: to know that they don’t have to live up to the unrealistic expectations of never showing a bad angle, cellulite, stretch marks or belly rolls,” she wrote.
Victoria has since shared several more “normal” photos, from ones of her bloated stomach after a big meal to her “real life booty,” and wrote that it clearly makes a difference.
“I received a variety of comments, from women thanking me for showing it’s OK to be human, to others sharing that they’ve struggled with body dysmorphia and eating disorders because of all the perfect images they constantly see online, and that my photo saved them,” she said. “If all I have to do to help so many overcome such serious internal battles is to share a photo of myself sitting with a few belly rolls, it’s the least I can do.”
Victoria said her goal is for women to “feel confident in themselves.”
“I want women to love themselves and appreciate themselves from all angles because a bad angle doesn’t take away from our worth or our beauty,” she said.
4 Health and Wellness Influencers Share the Mantras They Live By
Everyone needs that one go-to phrase for motivation.
The Fitbit Charge 3 Is Here—and Has Some Incredible New Features
In the market for a new fitness tracker? You're shopping at the perfect time: Fitbit just announced an update to their bestselling Charge 2 device. The Charge 3, which the company is calling their "most advanced tracker ever," is available for presale now and officially ships in a few weeks.
Preorder now: $150 and up; fitbit.com
The Fitbit Charge 3 has many of the features you've come to love about the previous Charge model: insights on heart rate, distance traveled, and calorie burn; smartphone notifications; and a sleek, durable interface. The new model is also water-resistant up to 50 meters and boasts a significantly larger touchscreen (it's about 40% bigger, but 20% lighter, thanks to aerospace grade aluminum). If you have an older Fitbit, you might also notice that the Charge 3 feels more like a smartphone; you can easily swipe between apps, and the backlit display automatically adjusts to different types of light.
But our senior fitness editor Rozalynn S. Frazier is probably most excited about the better-than-ever battery life. "A single charge should last you seven days, which is a game changer—especially for someone like me, who always seems to forget to plug in my device at night," she says.
Also cool, according to Roz? The ability to easily swap out bands. The Charge 3 offers three different types: silicone sports bands in four cheery hues for $30, woven bands in two colors for $35, and midnight blue or plum leather bands for $50. The different textures make taking your fitness tracker from a workout class to dinner and drinks totally seamless.
The 10 Best Sports Bras for Large Breasts
Unfortunately, the bounce factor for bustier women can be an exercise deterrent. Who wants to go for a run or knock out burpees when every hop, skip, and jump leads to pure pain? In fact, we're pretty sure we all have that friend who's had to double up on support. What’s more, a larger-breasted woman in the wrong bra can have serious health implications.
“If a sports bra has not been specifically designed and built to carry the weight of larger, heavier breasts, the bra straps may be too narrow and exert extra pressure on your shoulders,” explains LaJean Lawson, PhD, a sports bra researcher at Oregon State University and consultant to the sports bra industry. “If the amount and location of the pressure crosses over an area in the shoulders where nerves and blood vessels exit into the upper arms, a medical condition known as thoracic outlet syndrome can result.” Symptoms of TOS include numbness or tingling in the arms or hands, pain in the neck, shoulder, or hands, and even a weaker grip.)
So what do the well-endowed need to look for when shopping for a sports bra? Lawson says, there are three key things:
1. Look for minimal (controlled) stretch throughout the bra in areas like the cups, straps, and band.
2. Forgo the traditional sports bra, which has a single flat panel across the front, and opt for one with two separate cups that will control each breast instead.
3. Choose athletic supporters with more coverage such as a higher neckline, wider straps, and a substantial bottom band.
Armed with Lawson’s tips, we did the leg work for you and found these 10 amazing sports bras perfect for big breasts. They're easy to get on, offer stellar support and, most importantly, are still cute!
Athleta Front Zip Stealth Bra
This wireless, high support bra is ideal for cups up to DD. Convertible straps and the front zipper closure allow for a more customized fit.
Sizes: XS-XL
To buy: $72; athleta.gap.com
Panache Underwire Sports Bra
With the click of a hook, this bra takes you from regular to racerback. It also has flexible underwire and three-part-foam-lined cups.
Sizes: 30-42, C-DDD
To buy: Starting at $40; amazon.com
Freya Active Underwire Molded Sports Bra
This supporter’s molded cups play up your curves (and provides each breast with individualized support!) instead of smashing your girls into one unflattering lump.
Sizes: 28-40, B-G
To buy: $62; amazon.com
Enell High Impact Sports Bra
A high neckline not only ensures that your breasts won’t play peekaboo, but also reins the girls in from unwanted surge.
Sizes: 00-8
To buy: Starting at $59; amazon.com
Nike Pro Rival
Sick of the chafing caused by stitched straps? The bonded seams on this bra help put an end to skin irritation.
Sizes: 30-38, B-E
To buy: $70; nike.com
Nike Impact Strappy
This high support bra is great for all types of exercise including running and cross training. With a strappy design for a custom fit, you’re sure to find the perfect fit for your girls.
Sizes: XS-XL
To buy: $55; nike.com
Sweaty Betty Ultra Run Bra
This running-specific bra combines compression and encapsulation technology that cuts down breast movement in all directions. Also good: The mesh lining puts the kibosh on in-between-breast sweat (yay!).
Sizes: 32-38, A-F
To buy: $65; sweatybetty.com
Anita Maximum Control Wire-Free Sports Bra
If you’re looking for high-impact support without wires, this is your sports bra. Molded double-layer cups keep you covered with a three-column, three-row hook and back closure to keep the girls supported.
Sizes: 30-46, C-H
To buy: $69; barenecessities.com
Moving Comfort Jubralee Bra
The Velcro straps are surprisingly secure and make it super easy to adjust this supporter on the fly.
Sizes 34-44, B-E
To buy: $55; amazon.com
New Balance The Shockingly Unshocking
There are few things more embarrassing than showing off your nipples when you sweat—built-in modesty cups ensure your “headlights” stay hidden.
Sizes: 32-42, C-DD
To buy: $25-48; amazon.com
7 Fitness-Inspired Halloween Costumes You Can Throw Together Fast
Between work and workouts October has been pretty hectic. Suddenly, as you absentmindedly flip past Hocus Pocus on your TV, you remember: Oh right, Halloween is this weekend! The kids have costumes, but do you have one yet? Don't worry. Health staffers have you covered with seven last-minute, costumes you can throw together using gear you already have.
RELATED: Halloween Candy to Pick or Skip
The Zumba zombie
When Thriller and dance cardio mix you get the Zumba zombie. With neon gear and some deathly looking makeup, no one will even notice your lack of rhythm on the dance floor. You'll need: What you normally wear to Zumba class and non-toxic face paint.
The obnoxiously zen yogi
Pictured: Kristine Thomason, editorial assistant
Here's a costume anyone can pull off. In addition to your outfit, be sure to greet everyone with "Namaste" instead of "Trick or Treat." You'll need: Yoga pants, a motivational tank top, and mat.
The boxing champ
Pictured: Jacqueline Andriakos, associate editor
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, this costume is easy as can be. You'll need: silk shorts, towel, boxing gloves ($15; amazon.com), and "Eye of the Tiger" on repeat. Don't have gloves? Use tape instead and go as UFC champ Ronda Rousey.
The color runner
Pictured: Alexis Reliford, editorial assistant
You've seen these beyond happy runners all over your Instagram feed. Now's your chance to get in on the fun… without having to run a 5k. You'll need: colored leggings, white T-shirt smeared with sidewalk chalk, safety pins, and a homemade runner's bib (we made ours in Microsoft Word).
RELATED: Here’s What Happens When You Tell Kids You Ate Their Halloween Candy
A Workout #TBT
Kristine Thomason, editorial assistant
In the immortal words of Olivia Newton John,Let's get physical, physical…You'll need: leotard, leggings, leg warmers, scrunchie, and a DIY Instagram "screen" (we made ours with a cardboard box and print-outs from Google images).
The gold medalist
Pictured: Jacqueline Andriakos, associate editor
Here's one to catapult you to #GoldMedalStatus. (Plus, it's an excuse to carry around a healthy snack all night.) You'll need: a box of Wheaties, race medals, track jacket, and all things red, white, and blue.
Your favorite Soulcycle instructor
Pictured: Julie Mazziota, assistant editor
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Honor the teacher that helped you find yourself by dressing up just like her this year. You'll need: SoulCycle T-shirt, headset, free weights, and cycling shoes.
RELATED: How to Apply (and Remove) Halloween Makeup Without Wrecking Your Skin
These 3 Lower-Body Moves From Anna Victoria Will Kick Your Butt—in a Good Way
This routine is perfect for toning below the belt.