Someday Melissa

I read about Melissa, who died of bulimia in 2009, in the Sunday New York Times. Her mother took her journal entries and, with others, turned them into the movie Someday, which will be done soon. This is a serious issue. Everyone must band together. Media images and ignorance as to science and fitness play a part. A movie about her life will soon be finished.

See www.SomedayMelissa.com.

Medicine Ball and Lunge for Your Thighs

Hold a medicine ball of a weight that gives you a workout but that you can use for four sets of ten repetitions of this exercise. Hold the ball before you and perform a stationary lung with your right leg forward. Alternatively, you can lunge your right leg laterally to your right or backward. Repeat for the left leg. Each time you move your leg, extend the ball with both hands at chest level, and bring it back to an inch before your chest when you return your leg. Do everything in smooth motions. Do four sets of ten repetitions, choosing to move your leg forward or laterally. For a more advanced exercise, move each leg forward, laterally and backward, and do the same with your left leg, for one repetition.

Disclaimer: None of the above information can be taken as a substitute for advice from a medical professional such as a physician.

My third book, Pocket Guide to Fitness, is available on http://www.Authorhouse.com, www.BarnesandNoble.com and http://www.Amazon.com. If you look up my name on those Web sites, you will find my other books The Boy in a Wheelchair and Life, Work and Play: Poems and Short Stories.

Beauty Sleep

The CBS Morning Show did a piece on a new study published in the British Medical Journal on the idea that beauty sleep may not just be an idea. Go here for a video:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7152379n&tag=mncol;lst;1

This is probably true to an extent: You feel and look more fresh. But, how you feel and intend on the inside will trump the amount of sleep you get. So if you feel good, even if you sleep less, you will still look good.

I will blog more on this at another time.

Ballerina and Critic

A critic Alastair Macauley made a reference to ballerina’s Jenifer Ringer’s weight. I saw her on Channel Thirteen recently and immediately thought she was one size big for a ballerina. That is because my eyes, as others’ eyes, have been accustomed to seeing often little-girl-figured, flat-chested, stiff-backed ballerinas. As a personal trainer and someone who thinks she has great taste in all from food to paintings to dance to furniture, I can say that beauty and fitness come in all packages. However, the truth and most in the world with a good brain, would say balance and proportion are key> Those who obsess on what they eat and body weight all day probably suffer from a psychological disorders, as perhaps do those that are fat or obese for a long period of time. Why not be able to eat a little of what you want while you make sure you eat lots of healthy food too, your blood is good, you have energy and you work out? The middle sizes, in an exciting, not bland way, 6-10 are usually the best in health and beauty.

A person, even a dancer or dance critic, with no biology education, should not declare themselves the expert on what is healthy and fit, or who eats too many sugar plums, Big Macs, or anything else. Obviously a dancer such as Ringer is self-disciplined or she would not be a dancer. 1+1=2. It’s logic. Now, he has the right to his opinion and artistic directors can do what they want. Masterpieces at the Metropolitan Museum of Art represent mostly fat or at least “shapely” women, as Ringer called herself. But in an age where industries such as fashion shove to us either skinny of sometimes anorexic sizes 0-4 or the opposite 12+ plus sizes where women are often out-of-shape, can we go back to a beautiful, exciting middle that is healthy and sexy. I object to the false thinking that a woman with a bust and hips is out of shape. One can be and often is athletic and has a bust and hips. It’s called estrogen. IN other words, how about, in various areas, we have more of what God and Nature intended, the classy ferocious hourglass figure, in other words, that of a WOMAN. I do detect an often abhorrence of this by some, which indicates to me misogyny, fear and stupidity.

As for dance, what matters most, my dears, is ability, and, even more, spirit, energy and that “it”.

Using Band for Abdominal Work

Here are two exercises that work out your abdominal muscles and use exercise bands. They are intermediate level. Most bands come in a package of three, from least to most resistant.

Exercise I

Your abdominal muscles are used as secondary movers here. Choose one exercise band, I recommend the toughest one, and place it below your flexed feet. Hold each end of the band with each hand.  Lie down and use your abdominal muscles to keep your back flat on the floor. Raise and lower your legs slowly, as you would for regular abdominal leg lifts while pulling the band toward you. The more you pull, the harder is the exercise. Do not strain your neck or shoulders. Relax. Just move your legs, and concentrate on using your abdominal muscle to assist in the movement as much as possible. Do four sets of ten repetitions.

Exercise II

Your abdominal muscles are used as secondary movers here.Sit on the floor and place the exercise band below your flexed feet. Hold each end of the band with each hand. Do not strain your neck or shoulders. Relax. Lie down. Then sit up straight slowly but not too slowly, so that your waist and hips are at 90 degrees to each other.  Lie down slowly (but not too slowly) and steadily. Repeat. Do four sets of ten repetitions.

Disclaimer: None of the above information can be taken as a substitute for advice from a medical professional such as a physician.

My third book, Pocket Guide to Fitness, is available on http://www.authorhouse.com, www.bn.com and http://www.amazon.com. Version II will be out in a few weeks! If you look up my name on those Web sites, you will find my other books The Boy in a Wheelchair and Life, Work and Play: Poems and Short Stories.