5 Ways to Improve Your Day… in Just 5 Minutes

Make your bed. This isn’t about being a clean freak. It’s a small rit­ual that can help cre­ate a calm envi­ron­ment for you in your bed­room — and a sooth­ing bed­room is part of “sleep hygiene” — lit­tle habits that can help you sleep bet­ter. Author Gretchen Rubin rec­om­mends mak­ing your bed as a daily habit in her book, The Hap­pi­ness Project . Do it first thing in the morn­ing, and you’ve got one less thing to worry about for the rest of the day.

Stretch. No need to put on your yoga pants or get all bendy. Just a few easy moves will do. Stretch your arms over­head. Raise and lower your shoul­ders a cou­ple of times. Stretch your legs as you lean your torso against a wall. Be gen­tle, so you don’t overdo it.  Stretch­ing can help improve your cir­cu­la­tion and flex­i­bil­ity, and may help ease the tight mus­cles that come with stress.

Keep a grat­i­tude diary. Take a minute every day to write down what you’re thank­ful for — big or small. It’s easy to vent about weather, traf­fic, or job woes, but com­plain­ing brings neg­a­tive energy along with it. Being thank­ful for what you have can make you appre­ci­ate all the pos­i­tives in your life.

Turn off your elec­tron­ics. Take a lit­tle break, already, from all your gad­gets. Star­ing at com­puter screens and elec­tron­ics all day long can zap your energy and encour­age inac­tiv­ity. So log off — of every­thing — every now and then. This is espe­cially impor­tant to allow you to unwind and relax before bed. Just because the world is on, 24–7, you don’t have to be!

Pri­or­i­tize. Give your­self per­mis­sion to admit that you can’t do every­thing, all at once. Instead, you can nib­ble away at your to-do list, and feel more sat­is­fied, by set­ting some pri­or­i­ties. So make a list, fig­ure out what really mat­ters, what can wait, and what you can skip. Work your way down the list, han­dling your top pri­or­i­ties first. Bit by bit, you’ll get there!

More sim­ple improve­ments here→

Summer Run Training: How to Acclimate to the Heat

From Active​.com

With sum­mer weather comes sum­mer run­ning, and with it a period dur­ing which your body needs to adjust to the higher tem­per­a­tures and, in many regions of the coun­try, dras­ti­cally increased humid­ity. Know­ing how these atmos­pheric changes affect you phys­i­o­log­i­cally can help you pre­pare and ensure that you race safely and with min­i­mized detri­ment to your endurance performance.

The Basic Time­frame
Run­ners respond dif­fer­ently in a bat­tle with heat. One study Jack Daniels con­ducted found that some run­ners per­spire twice as much as others—in iden­ti­cal heat con­di­tions and with match­ing body com­po­si­tion, weight, and run­ning speeds. It takes about two weeks of train­ing in warm con­di­tions to accli­mate prop­erly, and it is impor­tant to know when to train in these conditions.

You must start this two-or-more-week process with runs early in the morn­ing or late in the evening. These are the coolest times, though morn­ing is the most humid and evening gen­er­ally hot­ter than the cooler morn­ing. Even­tu­ally, you need to put in runs at the time of day and under the warm con­di­tions in which the race will be occurring.

What to Expect
Cool­ing occurs when sweat evap­o­rates off the body. To achieve this, the body diverts blood to the skin to cause sweating—this means less blood is car­ry­ing oxy­gen to the exer­cis­ing mus­cles. In this way, the body reduces the amount of blood avail­able to enhance performance.

When con­di­tions are above 69 degrees Fahren­heit, even well-acclimated run­ners should expect slower race times.

Min­i­miz­ing the Effect of Heat
Fluid loss is influ­enced more by time spent run­ning than dis­tance run. You can com­pen­sate by weigh­ing your­self with­out clothes on before and after runs in var­i­ous con­di­tions over a set period of time. Doing this will give you an idea of how much fluid you ought to be replac­ing to stay safe at, say, a 2 per­cent net fluid loss. Longer times out in the heat sim­ply become a mul­ti­ple of this cal­cu­lated replace­ment amount.

Dress for heat by wear­ing as lit­tle cloth­ing as pos­si­ble, and keep­ing it loose fit­ting. Porous fab­rics are best. Keep in mind that a sun-protecting brim may be help­ful, but a cap can make your head much hot­ter, so a visor is preferable.

Dry vs. Humid Cli­mates
Fail­ure to replace flu­ids becomes more of a prob­lem in dry climes. Neg­a­tive effects on per­for­mance begin to occur with a loss of 3 per­cent of body weight due to fluid loss. At 5 per­cent, expect to be severely affected. In dry heat, you may fail to notice that you are sweat­ing because, as with high alti­tude, fluid does not drip off the body in the amounts notice­able in more humid envi­ron­ments. Be espe­cially mind­ful of fluid replace­ment in a dry cli­mate, and remem­ber in gen­eral that your per­ceived desire for fluid does not keep up with the body’s needs.

It’s impor­tant to also under­stand the effects of humid­ity. When sweat evap­o­ra­tion cools the skin, cir­cu­lat­ing blood is also cooled. This process is the key to main­tain­ing a rea­son­able body tem­per­a­ture. In humid cli­mates, sweat evap­o­ra­tion, and there­fore cool­ing, can slow to a stand­still. The warm weather heats your body, exer­cise adds to an increase in body tem­per­a­ture, and the humid­ity keeps you from cooling.

By stay­ing aware of these effects and start­ing the acclima­ti­za­tion process, your body will adapt more read­ily to higher tem­per­a­tures, mak­ing it safe and more pleas­ant for you to con­tinue your reg­i­men and to race, even if com­pro­mises in race times and in train­ing inten­sity are inevitable on the hottest days.

Learn more →

Drip Tips: Exercising in Summer Rain

From Fit­Sugar

Exer­cis­ing in the heat and humid­ity of Sum­mer can be unbear­able, not to men­tion, it can be a health risk. So when the clouds roll in and rain starts to sprin­kle from the sky, it can offer relief. If you’ve never con­sid­ered exer­cis­ing in the rain, it’s time to give it a try. You just need to arm your­self with these tips:

• Check the weather map. A lit­tle driz­zle is much eas­ier to run in than a full on down­pour. Be patient and wait for a bad storm to pass before head­ing outside.
• Just because it’s rain­ing, doesn’t mean you need to get wet. Wear a water and wind­proof light­weight rain­coat made of breath­able mate­r­ial that will keep you dry on the out­side and cool on the inside.
• Get a pair of shorts or pants made of water­proof mate­r­ial that will repel droplets from the sky and splashes from puddles.

For more essen­tial tips, read on →

Heat and Exercise: Keeping Cool in Hot Weather

May’s start­ing out HOT HOT HOT. Don’t for­get water!

From Mayo Clinic

Exer­cis­ing in hot weather puts extra stress on your body. If you don’t take care when exer­cis­ing in the heat, you risk seri­ous ill­ness. Both the exer­cise itself and the air tem­per­a­ture increase your core body tem­per­a­ture. To help cool itself, your body sends more blood to cir­cu­late through your skin. This leaves less blood for your mus­cles, which in turn increases your heart rate. If the humid­ity also is high, your body faces added stress because sweat doesn’t read­ily evap­o­rate from your skin. That pushes your body tem­per­a­ture even higher.

When you exer­cise in hot weather, keep these pre­cau­tions in mind:

Watch the tem­per­a­ture. Pay atten­tion to weather fore­casts and heat alerts. Know what the tem­per­a­ture is expected to be for the dura­tion of your planned out­door activity.

Get accli­mated. If you’re used to exer­cis­ing indoors or in cooler weather, take it easy at first when you exer­cise in the heat. As your body adapts to the heat over the course of one to two weeks, grad­u­ally increase the length and inten­sity of your workouts.

Know your fit­ness level. If you’re unfit or new to exer­cise, be extra cau­tious when work­ing out in the heat. Your body may have a lower tol­er­ance to the heat. Reduce your exer­cise inten­sity and take fre­quent breaks.

Drink plenty of flu­ids. Dehy­dra­tion is a key fac­tor in heat ill­ness. Help your body sweat and cool down by stay­ing well hydrated with water. Don’t wait until you’re thirsty to drink. If you plan to exer­cise intensely or for longer than one hour, con­sider a sports drink instead of water. Sports drinks can replace the sodium, chlo­ride and potas­sium you lose through sweat­ing. Avoid alco­holic drinks because they can actu­ally pro­mote fluid loss.

Dress appro­pri­ately. Light­weight, loos­e­fit­ting cloth­ing helps sweat evap­o­rate and keeps you cooler. Avoid dark col­ors, which can absorb heat. If pos­si­ble, wear a light-colored, wide-brimmed hat.

Avoid mid­day sun. Exer­cise in the morn­ing or evening, when it’s likely to be cooler out­doors. If pos­si­ble, exer­cise in shady areas — or do a water work­out in a pool.

Wear sun­screen. A sun­burn decreases your body’s abil­ity to cool itself.

Have a backup plan. If you’re con­cerned about the heat or humid­ity, stay indoors. Work out at the gym, walk laps inside the mall or climb stairs inside an air-conditioned building.

Under­stand your med­ical risks. Cer­tain med­ical con­di­tions or med­ica­tions can increase your risk of a heat-related ill­ness. If you plan to exer­cise in the heat, talk to your doc­tor about precautions.

Heat-related ill­nesses are largely pre­ventable. By tak­ing some basic pre­cau­tions, your exer­cise rou­tine doesn’t have to be side­lined when the heat is on.

6 More Weeks of Winter?!

By Jason Samenow, The Wash­ing­ton Post

At 7:25 a.m. this morn­ing, amidst mostly cloudy skies, and tem­per­a­tures in the low 30s, Ground­hog Phil saw his shadow in the lit­tle town of Punx­sutawney, Pa.

Accord­ing to folk­lore, Phil’s sight­ing of his own shadow means there will be 6 more weeks of win­ter. Had Phil not seen his shadow, it would have meant “there will be an early spring.”

If Phil’s fore­cast is right, it sig­nals a dra­matic rever­sal from the mild weather pat­tern affect­ing much of the coun­try. Many parts of the cen­tral and east­ern U.S. have seen tem­per­a­tures 20 to 30 degrees above nor­mal in recent days. On Feb­ru­ary 1, just 19% of the Lower 48 had snow cover com­pared to 52% at this time last year.

His­toric odds heav­ily favor a fore­cast for win­ter to last deep into March. Since the Groundhog’s first pre­dic­tion in 1887, Phil has seen his shadow 99 times and failed to spot it just 16 times. There are 9 miss­ing years in the record, but Phil has issued an fore­cast with­out exception.

But just how accu­rate is the prog­nos­ti­ca­tor of prognosticators?

It depends on the source.

The offi­cial web­site of Punx­sutawney Phil, per­haps not impar­tial, claims the Ground­hog has issued a cor­rect fore­cast 100% of the time.

AccuWeather’s grade for the groundhog’s accu­racy is slightly lower, but still quite respectable.

“Because the year’s cold­est quar­ter, also known as mete­o­ro­log­i­cal win­ter, runs from Dec. 5 to March 5, Phil’s accu­racy in pre­dict­ing a longer win­ter is about 80 per­cent,” AccuWeather wrote.

But Storm​Fax​.com says Phil has got­ten it right just 39% of the time.

NOAA’s National Cli­matic Data Cen­ter issued the harsh­est assess­ment of the accu­racy of the “seer of seers” find­ing “no pre­dic­tive skill for the ground­hog dur­ing the most recent years” in its analy­sis. It con­cluded: It really isn’t a “bright” idea to take a mea­sure such as a groundhog’s shadow and use it as a pre­dic­tive mete­o­ro­log­i­cal tool for the entire United States.

Not­ing long-range pre­dic­tion is hard, at least one scientifically-minded mete­o­rol­o­gist expressed resent­ment over the attention-grabbing rodent.

“…Punx­sutawney Phil is a punk when it comes to weather fore­cast­ing,” blogged Tim McGill, a mete­o­rol­o­gist for WGN in Chicago.