Post-Run Yoga Routine to Restore Your Legs

From Active​.com

If you have tight ham­strings (and what run­ner doesn’t?), the prob­lem may have as much to do with the front of your legs as the back. Tight hip flex­ors can pull your pelvis for­ward, putting stress on the ham­strings and lower back. These mus­cles, which con­nect your back and hip to your femur bone, become espe­cially inflex­i­ble after long peri­ods of sit­ting. So if you have a desk job or a long com­mute, you’ll find this series of stretches—which tar­gets the hip flex­ors and the hamstrings—especially ben­e­fi­cial. Do this rou­tine after a run once your mus­cles are warm. Hold each pose for at least 30 seconds.

1. DANCER

Start in a clas­sic quad stretch. Then, hinge for­ward, kick­ing your right foot back. Extend your left arm for balance.

2. DOWNWARD-FACING DOG WITH LEG LIFT

From downward-facing dog, lift one leg. Lower. Repeat on the other side.

3. FLIPPED DOG

From down­ward dog, lift your right leg, and rotate upside down. Reach your right arm out. Flip back. Repeat lift­ing left leg.

4. LUNGE WITH SIDE STRETCH

From down­ward dog, bring your right foot between your hands and come to a lunge. Reach your left arm overhead.

5. LUNGE WITH QUAD STRETCH

From a low lunge posi­tion (right knee on the ground), reach your right hand back and hold your foot.

6. BOW POSE

Lie face down. Bend your knees and bring your feet toward your glutes. Reach both arms back and grab hold of your feet.

SOURCE: Sage Roundtree, a USA Triathlon-and RRCA-certified coach and yoga teacher in Chapel Hill, North Car­olina, is the author of The Athlete’s Pocket Guide to Yoga. Watch her demon­strate this rou­tine at run​ner​sworld​.com/​y​oga.

How to Run Downhill

From Active​.com

Run­ning uphill is a chal­leng­ing car­dio work­out, but run­ning down­hill requires great tech­nique and strong form. The fol­low­ing tips can help you run down­hill by con­serv­ing your energy, reduc­ing your chance of injury, and improv­ing your speed.

 
1. Build up slowly to steeper hills.
Prac­tice hill tech­nique on small hills first because the steeper the hill, the harder it is to stay in con­trol on the decent. Small hills help build your con­fi­dence and per­fect your form.

2. Con­trol your pos­ture and keep your strides short and fast.
Short, fast strides allow you to adapt quickly to chang­ing ter­rain and keep you in con­trol of your speed so you don’t end up doing som­er­saults down the hill. Work with grav­ity. Instead of try­ing to pull back, focus on keep­ing your pos­ture straight and your legs mov­ing constantly.

3. Con­trol from your core and relax your legs.
The far­ther the mus­cles are from your core, the more relaxed they should be. So keep your core tight, but your lower leg and foot mus­cles as relaxed as pos­si­ble. This helps you adapt to ground changes quickly.

A strong core is your best asset for con­quer­ing hills. You may also find that your legs move faster when they are relaxed, although you are exert­ing less energy.

4. The steeper the hill, the more fore­foot your land­ings should be.
Your feet are more adapt­able when you land on your fore­foot going down­hill. This helps pro­duce a bet­ter turnover rate and sup­ports a speed increase.

5. Reduce fric­tion with rapid, con­trolled strides.
As you run down­hill, grav­ity pulls you for­ward. To keep from falling on your face, you need to either slow your­self down using fric­tion, or speed up your foot land­ings. Opt for faster foot land­ings. This can help you run both faster and more safely.

6. Rest as grav­ity pushes you for­ward.
After a hill ascent, this can be a wel­come rest. Let grav­ity do most of the work here. Use your core mus­cles only to hold back enough to main­tain control.

The key to run­ning down­hill is to main­tain con­fi­dence, stay relaxed, and work with grav­ity. Don’t be afraid as you gain speed. Increas­ing your cadence can pre­vent you from falling. Remem­ber: short, fre­quent, and con­trolled steps are essen­tial for run­ning down­hill effi­ciently and safely.

Mission possible: A fast, easy low-carb angel food

BY J.M. HIRSCH
ASSOCIATED PRESS

This cake is easy to love because it is fast and sim­ple to make, is deli­cious and is great for dieters. It makes a stan­dard size angel food cake, but has just 133 calo­ries, 3.5 grams of fat, 23 grams of pro­tein and 2.75 grams of car­bo­hy­drates per quar­ter of the cake. That’s right. Per quar­ter of the cake.

It seemed impos­si­ble. I wanted to make a zero-sugar, low-carb ver­sion of a cake that is made from almost noth­ing but sugar and carbs.

And it took 20-something attempts. But after many dis­ap­point­ing – and some down­right dis­gust­ing – ver­sions, I finally man­aged to bake an amaz­ing and sweet angel food cake that rises beau­ti­fully and has the same del­i­cate, almost spongy tex­ture as tra­di­tional recipes.

My moti­va­tion was sim­ple – Mom. A long­time vegan, she has lived with­out her (and my) favorite cake for decades. But she recently started eat­ing egg whites again, which put angel food back on the table. Except she isn’t eat­ing sugar and is try­ing to limit carbohydrates.

Angel food cake has three pri­mary ingre­di­ents – egg whites, sugar and flour. Egg whites and sugar are whipped until they form a thick, airy bat­ter, then flour is gen­tly folded in. Could I make a cake with only one of the key ingredients?

From the start, struc­ture was the chal­lenge. Using egg whites and the nat­ural sugar alter­na­tive known as ste­via, I was able to bake up cakes with the proper taste. And they would rise beau­ti­fully in the oven. But as soon as they came out, they wilted into near pud­dles of cooked dough.

To get the struc­ture I needed, I turned to two ingre­di­ents pop­u­lar in gluten-free bak­ing – guar gum and xan­than gum. Most baked goods get their lift and struc­ture by work­ing the gluten (a type of pro­tein) in wheat flour until it forms bonds that trap air. Peo­ple who avoid gluten need to find a way around this, so they use other ingre­di­ents to repli­cate those bonds.

The cake still needed dry ingre­di­ents, and for that I turned to more egg whites. A blend of pow­dered egg whites and egg– or whey-based pro­tein pow­der was a good start. A bit of almond flour com­pleted the dry mix, giv­ing the cake a bit of extra body.

A cou­ple things to keep in mind:

• Tra­di­tional angel food cake is made from a very del­i­cate bat­ter. This is why the flour is gen­tly folded into the whipped egg whites by hand. The bat­ter in this ver­sion is much stur­dier and eas­ily stands up to using the mixer to add the dry ingre­di­ents at the end.
• Whey or egg white pro­tein pow­ders are widely avail­able in the grocer’s nat­ural foods or pro­tein bar sec­tions. Look for a brand that doesn’t con­tain sugar. We used Biochem’s 100 Per­cent Whey Pro­tein vanilla powder.
• Pow­dered egg whites are exactly what they sound like. They are sold in the bak­ing aisle.
• The recipe was writ­ten to be gluten-free. If you aren’t avoid­ing gluten, it also can be made sub­sti­tut­ing 1/4 cup cake flour for the 1/4 cup almond flour called for.
• Want to make a choco­late ver­sion? Sub­sti­tute 1/4 cup unsweet­ened cocoa pow­der for the pow­dered egg whites.
• If you pur­chase pack­aged liq­uid egg whites at the gro­cer, be sure they are appro­pri­ate for whip­ping. Some brands will not whip; the car­tons usu­ally are marked to indi­cate this.
• Xan­than gum and guar gum are widely avail­able in the gluten-free sec­tion of most gro­cers. Almond flour gen­er­ally is sold in this sec­tion, too.

Get the recipe →

A Guide to Tracking Health & Fitness Online

Greatist​.com — which itself entered the health and fit­ness mar­ket this past year — has put together a best-of list of web­sites, iOS apps, Android apps and gad­gets to keep you fit and healthy.

The info­graphic also pro­vides some pow­er­ful incen­tives for track­ing your health and fit­ness using these new tools. Use one not listed in the info­graphic? Tell us about it comments!

Understanding the Glycemic Index

The glycemic index (GI) ranks car­bo­hy­drate foods by their effect on blood glu­cose lev­els. High GI foods like corn flakes and gra­ham crack­ers elicit a greater increase in blood glu­cose — mak­ing more energy avail­able to your mus­cles more quickly — than low GI foods such as apples, beans and yogurt. How­ever, con­tro­versy sur­rounds the use­ful­ness of the GI because the blood-sugar effect varies depend­ing on the amount of food eaten, how it’s pre­pared and each person’s indi­vid­ual response.

Despite its lim­i­ta­tions, nutri­tion­ist Gidus sug­gests that an ath­lete fine-tune her food intake with the GI. “I rec­om­mend eat­ing low-GI foods before exer­cise to pro­vide a more sus­tained energy release. Mod­er­ate– to high-GI foods are best dur­ing and post-exercise for imme­di­ate reple­tion of glyco­gen,” she says.

Before: apples, plums, cher­ries, peanut but­ter, milk, yogurt
Dur­ing: grapes, sports drinks and gels
After: bagels, pota­toes, juices, sports drinks and gels

The GI doesn’t tell it all, how­ever. It mea­sures the effect that 50 grams of carbs in a par­tic­u­lar food has on blood sugar, but it doesn’t fac­tor in the rel­a­tive amount of carbs in an aver­age serv­ing of that food.

That’s why some nutri­tion­ists use the glycemic load (GL) instead. Water­melon, for exam­ple, has a high-glycemic index because 50 grams of car­bo­hy­drate in the fruit has a large effect on blood sug­ars. But since a typ­i­cal slice con­tains only about 6 grams of carbs, watermelon’s GL and it’s effect on blood sugar is small. The same is true for car­rots. They have a high GI, but a low GL.

For more info and to find out GI/GL val­ues of cer­tain foods, search the GI Data­base on glycemicin​dex​.com. Exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent pre– and post-exercise meals to learn your best strat­egy. The glu­cose response varies from per­son to per­son and even from meal to meal.

Excerpted from Carbs to Love on Active​.com