March 05, 2020 at 10:00PM by CWC Running gets written off as a leg-centric sport, and for good reason: pounding the pavement demands a lot of your quads, hamstrings, and hips. What people often forget, though, is that a powerful arm swing can shave seconds (or even minutes!) off your race pace. So to get your full body on board for lightning-fast miles, trainers recommend a little something called the “hip to lip” method to teach you how to swing your arms while running. “A proper arm swing counterbalances and stabilizes the body,” says Melissa Wolfe, a coach at New York City’s Mile High Run Club. “While one leg is driving upwards ahead of us and the opposite arm is driving back behind us—and vice versa. That balance is enabling us to move forward in a straight line.” When you drive your elbows back powerfully and then swing your arms up beside your face (the “hip to lip” method), your lower body reacts by kicking your heels up higher and creating a more forceful stride. “For sprint pacing, when we pump our arms faster our legs will also follow with a faster turnover.” Wolfe tells me that everyone’s body and running form is unique, but generally, two things will get in your way of performing the hip to lip swing. First, your arms should be swinging forward. “If you had an imaginary line down the center of your body, you’d want to keep your arms and hands from crossing to the other side,”
Category: Fashion
How to style the OV exercise dress for winter, because we’re team no pants all year round
March 05, 2020 at 05:00PM by CWC Many months ago, I packed away my shorts, skirts, and dresses for winter—already wishing that I could rewind the “lazy-hazy-crazy” days of summer and sport them all once more. There’s was one wardrobe exception, though: the Outdoor Voices Exercise Dress ($100) in winter proved too versatile to be exiled to the back of my closet. So with the help of fashion stylist Alyssa Sutter, I learned how to style the garment come sun, slush, or blizzards. “My general rule for styling summer dresses in the wintertime is incorporating layers and textures,” says Sutter. “You can layer a turtleneck or tights under your dress, or pair it with a knit sweater and boots.” Since the dress itself is made with a thin, sweat-ready combo of nylon and spandex, you’re going to want to make sure the rest of the ensemble is built around staples that keep you warm. To help you do just that, Sutter dreamed up three ways you can wear the exercise dress no matter the weather forecast. Then, once you get to the gym or barre class, you can peel off the under layers and get down to doing things. 3 ways to sport the Outdoor Voices Exercise Dress in winter 1. The LB(exercise)D “This LBD can be your new winter go-to if you want to look effortless,” says Sutter. “Pair it with a fitted turtleneck under and a great pair of black, sheer, or opaque tights.” To switch things up,
The ‘overhead squat assessment’ tells you everything you need to know about your mobility, stability, and coordination
March 05, 2020 at 03:00PM by CWC Sometimes it really feels like you’re playing whack-a-mole with your fitness routine. You get your strength under control at the price of your mobility. Or you head to yoga to tackle stability and end up losing your strength. It’s hard to find the right balance of movement, but one trainer-approved tactic called the overhead squat assessment tells you everything you need to know about your body in one rep. According to the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), the overhead squat assessment (OHSA) determines how all of your body parts work as a whole. “The overhead squat assessment is the best measure of how healthy your client’s kinetic chain is,” reads NASM’s website. “This assessment enables the trainer to analyze every part of the kinetic chain for proper function. Since an overhead squat will utilize all musculature from head to toe to successfully complete, it’s the perfect movement to measure overall musculoskeletal function.” From an outsider’s perspective, it may look like you’re just performing a squat, but don’t talk about OHSA that way! The move deserves way more clout than that. Because the trainer will ask you to raise your hands overhead and repeat the movement 15 times, the exercise reveals your body’s weaknesses and where it’s really, really strong. For example, if your knee moves slightly inward when you complete the overhead squat assessment, NASM says that could mean your glutes and hamstrings are underactive and a move like ball squats could strengthen
6 trainers tell us their favorite lower ab exercises that actually work
March 05, 2020 at 12:00AM by CWC Ah, the lower abs. This part of my body feels, at least to me, impossible to tone. Apparently, strengthening them can make sex better, so I may at long last be motivated to put in the effort lower ab exercises require. To find out the best exercises for my lower abs, I surveyed the most notable trainers in my rolodex (read: iPhone, if you’re under 100). Before I dive into their go-to moves, Nicholas Poulin, celebrity trainer and online coach at Poulin Health & Wellness, offers a word of caution around the importance of engaging your transverse abdominals during these exercises. “Your TVA is a vital muscle that acts as a stabilizer for the entire low back and core muscles; a weak TVA is often one of the many reasons people may experience low back pain,” he says. “Think about pulling your belly button in toward your spine and not pushing your stomach out when doing any ab exercise,” he says. With that in mind, here are a few pro-approved exercises that’ll get the donut around your waist looking like a grill or, at the very least, like a… pancake? And now, I’m hungry. These are the best trainer-approved lower ab exercises you can do 1. Reverse Crunch [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyv14e2QDq0] This one’s a classic, and there’s a reason it’s in every ab class ever—it works. This is also why both Poulin and Joan MacDonald, a Women’s Best Athlete and The Vitamin Shoppe ambassador,
A *lot* of people are ditching bootcamps for Pilates—and there’s a science to why
March 04, 2020 at 08:00PM by CWC In 2020, Pilates will celebrate its 94th birthday. It’s the OG boutique fitness class, and Joseph Pilates’ 34 original exercises set the stage for a number of other workouts, like barre and Megaformer (which BTW: was one of our 2020 Trends) to become mainstays for those with stacked studio fitness calendars. Nearly a century after its advent, people (particularly women) are trading their sneakers and HIIT workouts for grippy socks, as Pilates has proven to be more popular than ever. According to a 2019 survey from MINDBODY, the modality ranked among respondents’ top choice for “what to try next,” and a third of those surveyed said they were looking to start doing Pilates. But they won’t be the only newbies in class: Nearly half (48 percent) of people currently practicing Pilates have only started taking classes within the last 12 months. Across the country, studios are seeing the effects of this increased interest. In early 2015, Club Pilates had only 30 studios—at the end of 2019, there were 650. Elaine Hayes, founder of MNTSTUDIO Pilates in San Francisco, says that she saw business increase 25 percent last year, and is opening a second location in Palo Alto in 2020. “My business is better than ever,” she told Well+Good. “I’m starting to see more and more people flock to reformer classes.” But what is it that’s sending so many people to the chair, mat, reformer, box, and tower? In a word: burnout. Forty-eight percent
I didn’t expect Harvey Weinstein to be convicted—and that’s a problem
February 26, 2020 at 06:22PM by CWC On Monday, a jury in New York convicted producer Harvey Weinstein on two of the five charges for which he faced trial: rape in the third degree and criminal sexual assault in the first degree. As the news broke, my colleague Katie (who asked to use a pseudonym) and I—both victims in our own right—were shocked; we didn’t think Weinstein’s victims would be believed or protected. And that, I think, is a pretty good indication of how far we still have to go in the war against sexual assault, harassment, and discrimination, despite sporadic victories yielded by the #MeToo movement. My #MeToo experience involved the movie business, and it has given me an empathy for the victims that I just didn’t think Weinstein’s jury would be able to muster. Much like his victims, I’d had to walk a tightrope; on one side, my livelihood was threatened and on the other, my sense of safety. In order to report the male executive who was harassing me (I was an assistant), I’d had to strategically circumvent the “old boys club” that ran the studio. I knew that if I told my (male) boss what was happening, he would protect the (male) perpetrator, and that I would be the one to lose my job. I was too scared to approach the (male) colleague who headed human resources department, so I instead confided in his (female) assistant. She told me she had to report it to her
Mercury retrograde doesn’t have to suck—here are Susan Miller’s 4 tips for making the most of it
February 25, 2020 at 05:00PM by CWC In its most straightforward translation, Mercury being in retrograde just means it appears to be traveling backward. And that’s fitting because when Mercury is in a retrograde cycle, many of us feel like our entire lives are backward—what with travel, communication, and technology woes throwing all of us for a loop. But when I sat down for a cup of coffee with astrologer Susan Miller of AstrologyZone (and used chocolate caramel creamer, per her suggestion, to match my Taurus star sign), she pointed out that good things can also happen during retrograde. The benefits of Mercury retrograde are simply about using that power of going backward to refine our lives. “You have a chance to repolish things up and do a better job,” says Miller, who adds that it’s important to not fight against going backward. Rather, lean into it as a superpower and mindfully go back to reclaim what you’ve lost. In order to maximize the benefits of Mercury retrograde, below find Miller’s four tips. 1. Remember comforts from your past Mercury retrograde encourages you to revisit a specific flavor from your childhood because the planet’s mysticism allows you to enjoy certain foods that trigger happy memories and their healing powers. “You go back to a restaurant you loved or a meal that your mom used to make or prepare that she hasn’t made in a long time,” Miller says. But if nothing nostalgic manifests on your plate (or you don’t live
‘Lastics stretching’ teaches you how to get limber like a human rubber band
February 24, 2020 at 11:00PM by CWC The recovery revolution is well underway, and there are about a million (and one) ways to stretch. That’s why ballet dancer Donna Flagg, an instructor at New York’s Broadway Dance Center, sought to create lastics stretching, a method based on “micro-movements” that takes you back to the basics of getting into your body’s tightest nooks and crannies. “Picture holding a rubber band while it’s slackened between your thumb and index fingers of each hand. This is how your body responds to a stretch—unless you do something else! That’s where micro moves come in,” says Flagg. “Micro moves are small, tiny moves you can make to take the ‘slack’ out of your muscles so you are sure to get the fullest, deepest stretch possible.” Rather than just throwing your body into a stretch—which, let’s face it, many of us are guilty of doing—Flagg’s technique asks you to really think about the mechanics of the move you’re doing. If you’re doing a forward fold, for example, what makes the stretch happen? “It’s all a matter of learning how to articulate your body in a way that can take a muscle—like the rubber band—and pull one end away from the other. It makes a huge difference in how your body responds to being stretched,” she says. To be honest, this method is one you really have to feel to believe. So, below, Flagg offers up three ways to start using the lastics stretching technique. 3 lastics stretching
The soothing yoga pose variations that provide a stretch where you need it most
February 24, 2020 at 08:00PM by CWC [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTbsrp55Ns] Yoga itself is incredibly soothing. A simple flow will have you rolling up your mat feeling more limber and energized than you did before. And the best part about the practice is there are so many yoga pose variations you can do to engage more full-body benefits—especially in those tight and often overlooked areas that need your attention the most. According to New York City yoga instructor Beth Cooke, some simple tips and tricks could turn you into your own masseuse. “It’s a really cheap way of self-soothing the body,” she says. “You don’t have to spend millions of dollars at the spa. You can do it right here on your own.” Start by focusing on three unexpected areas that will make you feel like a million bucks all throughout your body: your abdominal muscles, armpits, and calves. The next time you’re looking for relief, use these easy-to-follow yoga pose variations. Once you go through this flow once, you’ll want to do it every day. The most soothing yoga pose variations for full-body relief Photo: Elena Mudd 1. Tabletop with calf massage variation Start in a tabletop position. Take your right shin and place it on top of your left calf. Roll your shin down your calf so you’re rolling through the calf muscle. Keeping your shin in place, move into a child’s pose, pressing your left hip slightly more to the left. Complete 5 inhales and exhales. Repeat on the
Why some experts think lab-grown, ‘cultured’ meat is the sustainable future of protein
February 24, 2020 at 02:00PM by CWC Even though vegan meat tastes more like “the real thing” than ever before, there’s still a great divide between meat eaters and non-meat eaters, and if we’re being realistic, there will likely always be one. The truth is, a lot of Americans really love meat. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, meat-eating reached a record high in 2018 (the latest year stats are available): Americans had access to an estimated 222.4 pounds of meat and poultry per capita. Whether you eat meat or not, virtually everyone can agree that factory farmed meat is the least sustainable route to go; the environmental impact has been calculated to be particularly high. Many believe the solution lies in eating less meat, whether consuming one of the many plant-based substitutes or blended meat options. But others say that it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to give up meat forever, especially when meat offers up benefits like protein, iron, and B vitamins. This tension is giving rise to another possible solution: cultured meat, also often referred to as cultivated meat or lab-grown meat. Never heard of it? Cultured meat is made from the stem cells of animals, which are collected and then taken to a lab where they are fed nutrients in order to grow into living tissues. The end result, in theory, is ready-to-eat meat, without having to grow, feed, and kill an entire animal. It’s a “best of both worlds” type solution, and one