Archive for the ‘Healthy Lifestyles’ Category

What’s Your Body Telling You! Sports Teach Self Awareness.

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Try This At Home…………………………

Have your child keep a training journal and write down his workouts each day, including specifics like number of repetitions, length of time, etc.  Have him write down how he felt, what he ate before hand and during, how much sleep he got the night before and what kind of recovery he did afterward.  It doesn’t have to be in complete sentences, but it is helpful if he follows the same format every day.  That way he can easily go back and skim it to find the information he needs.  After a few weeks of keeping a journal sit down with him and look for patterns and places where he can make some improvements.

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Sports make young athletes in tune with their bodies.  They learn the difference between good hurt, like pushing yourself to go a little bit harder, and bad hurt, like an injury.  They learn what different heart rates feel like and approximately how long they can go at that heart rate.   They know what it feels like when they are dehydrated or about to bonk from lack of food, and female athletes learn how their body changes with their menstrual cycle. 

Everyone’s different, and while there are some general rules, the best way for your child to learn about his body is to work out a lot and practice paying attention.  Keeping a journal will help, but your child should start putting a few things together even if he isn’t paying close attention. 

We’re starting potty training with our son and we have him watch Elmo Potty Time.  In the video there is a little cartoon about a large gorilla that listens to what his body tells him and acts accordingly.  He’s hungry so he eats, he’s thirsty so he drinks and well, he has to go to the bathroom too.  It’s kind of funny, but it’s a good reminder for all of us, even if we are potty trained.  As an athlete I learned to listen to my body and how to get the most out of my body.  I also developed ways to proactively stave off and deal with fatigue, cramping, muscle soreness, saddle sores, etc.

Here are a few of my rules and favorite tricks that helped me perform at my best. 

Eat Every Hour

If your son participates in an endurance sport or has games or tournaments that last for a prolonged period of time, he needs to eat before he gets hungry.  If he’s hungry, it’s too late.  He should eat something every hour; even if it is just a gel or something else small.  It’s best your child try out the particular food in training so he knows if he will have an adverse reaction to it.  Never have your child try anything for the first time the day of a competition.

Drink at least a bottle an hour

Just like with food, if your child is feeling thirsty, he has waited too long to drink.  Staying hydrated is vital.  During intense, constant exercise your child should drink approximately a water bottle an hour.  (Electrolyte drinks are ideal) If the workout or competition is an hour or less, consuming less water isn’t nearly as big of a deal.  Many athletes compete for an hour or less with no water; your child just needs to make sure he is hydrated when he starts out and be vigilant about replacing lost fluids afterward.

You make good gains when you train tired. 

If your child is always waiting until he feels good to train hard he won’t see big gains, and training by how he feels on any given day won’t give him big gains either.  Having an educated and knowledgeable coach lay out a very specific, day by day training plan and sticking to it, is how gains are made.  (You may find some decent free programs on line depending on your child’s specific sport.)  If your child can push through and train hard even when he is tired, he’ll make big physical gains once he’s gotten the appropriate rest.

Rest is really important

Some coaches get over zealous and drive their athletes into the ground.  Every athlete is different; some need more rest than others.  As noted above, your child has to learn to push through being tired, but getting good quality rest is vital to making gains as well.  Rest includes, time/days off from working out, naps and a good nights sleep.

Deal with an injury right away, don’t wait.

If something is hurting or nagging your child, get it checked out and taken care of right away.  If your child takes care of it quickly he may not even miss a practice, but if he waits the odds are it will become more serious and require time off.  Finding a chiropractor who specializes in Active Release Technique (ART), is what kept me healthy. 

Train with a heart rate monitor

It will help your child become very in tune with his body!  I’ll write a post on heart rate training in the next few weeks.

Be proactive with recovery

If your child is training right, he is going to be sore.  Taking an ice bath, getting regular chiropractic care from an Active Release Provider, getting or giving himself a light massage, getting proper nutrition and taking a natural anti-inflammatory like fish oil will help.  I’m not going to go into great detail on any of these, because most of these are their own blog post.  My pervious blog, Eating to Maximize Performance, touches on some of the nutritional aspects.  I’ll talk about Active Release Technique next week, and an ice bath, is just what it sounds like.

Fill the tub with cold water and dump in some ice, quite a lot.  Go ahead and sit in it or submerge you arm, shoulder etc. and stay there for fifteen to twenty minutes.  The first few minutes are a bit painful, but after that you’re child will go numb and when he’s done he’ll feel much better.  I love my ice baths!!!!!  I used to take ice baths every night I could during my stage races.  (A stage race is a multiple day bike road race.) Be aware, your child’s body temperature will drop significantly from the bath.  If he is only soaking his lower body, have him wear a sweatshirt and winter hat.  Drinking a warm drink afterward will also help him stop shivering. 

Being in tune with his body is a great asset for your child in and out of sport.  The sports and life style benefits are obvious, but it may also help him notice non sports related disease and illness early and allow him to effectively communicate all the potentially related issues or causes with you and his doctor, etc. 

Try doing the journal with your child for the next few weeks.  Maybe you’ll learn something new about yourself too!

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The New Super Food

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Try This At Home………………..

Sit down with your family and pick one thing you can add, substitute, or take away from your diet to make it healthier.   Each month for the rest of the year add, substitute or take away one more thing.

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It seems like every year there is a new “hot” super food.  Last year it was the Acai berry and maybe this year it’ll be Chia seeds.  Yup, you remember the commercial, Ch Ch Ch Chia; the same seeds you smeared on your Chia pet may be the newest health craze.  No, they aren’t purposed to grow new hair, but for a tiny seed Chia has a pretty impressive resume. 

One ounce of Chia is 137 calories, and has12 grams of total carbohydrate, 11 grams of fiber, 4 grams of protein and 9 grams of fat.   The best part is the 4915 mg of Omega-3 (Alpha-linolenic acid) and 1620 mg of Omega-6 (Linoleic acid.)  Chia is purposed to promote a healthy heart and cardiovascular health, good mental health, healthy hair, skin, joint and immune system and be high in antioxidants.  It is also gluten-free, kosher and relatively inexpensive.  It sounds pretty amazing to me. 

My husband Chris first introduced me to the Chia seeds after he read Christopher McDougall’s book, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen.  I haven’t had the chance to read it yet, but Chris says it’s a great book.  McDougall focuses on the Tarahumara tribe in Mexico and searches for the answer to what makes them such phenomenal ultra-distance runners.   The book delves into things like their running stride, choice of shoes and diet.  Their diet consists of basically no animal protein, and is high in complex carbohydrates.  A staple of their diet is corn, and it’s probably no surprise to find out their diet includes Chia.  Chia absorbs nine times its weight in water, so when it’s mixed in liquid it turns into a gel like substance. The Tarahumara created a mixture with it called Chia Fresca, which they take on their runs.  Similar I guess to our gels or sports drinks.

We ordered our first bag of Chia seeds online a few weeks ago and have been really impressed.  Chris mixes his in with his grits in the morning; I put it in my yogurt, salad, smoothies and have even tried it in my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.   The seeds have a mild taste and a slight crunch; you don’t really notice them.  You don’t have to grind them up like flax seeds and they don’t give you gross fish burps, like fish oil.

Throughout my cycling career I ate pretty well balanced meals, but I didn’t dwell on nutrition too much.  In general, I stuck to the theory everything in moderation.  I still follow that motto, but I am starting to give more thought to all the processed foods, pesticides and other chemicals in the American diet.  I am meeting more and more people who are eating organic and raw, and it makes me wonder if eating a much purer diet would have helped in my cycling career with things like recovery.  Recently Chris and I have started making small changes in our diet, one thing at a time.  Our hope is, overtime, to be eating healthier

There are some foods which are really beneficial and for what it’s worth, my new favorite super hero food is Chia.  The typical American diet is low in Omega-3 and Omega- 6 fatty acids.  Adding Chia to your child’s diet is a great way to increase his intake of these important lipids.

Erin Mirabella is a two-time Olympic cyclist and children’s book author.  For more information please visit www.erinmirabella.com

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Eating to maximize performance

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Try this at home…………..

Have your child keep a journal of what she eats for a week.  This isn’t meant to encourage her to go on a diet, only to make her more aware of what she is eating.  Encourage her to eat normally throughout the week; it isn’t a helpful exercise if she alters her eating habits because she is recording he food intake.  At the end of the week help her analyze her meals.  Stick to the basics, is she eating well rounded meals?  Is she getting enough fruits, vegetables, protein and dairy?  Are her pre and post workout meals the best choices for optimum performance?  This isn’t just about sports.  Eating good meals can help her focus better during tests as well.

Based on her journal have her pick two things to change.  Maybe she is going to incorporate a recovery drink into her post-workout routine, try to eat one more serving of fruits and vegetables every day, or eat more protein before she works out/competes/tests. (adding some veggies to a fruit smoothie is a great option for picky eaters.)

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If it’s true that you are what you eat, then today I am a Christmas cookie, because I have had absolutely no will power. 

During my ten-year career as an elite athlete, I met athletes that ran the gamete from health nut to junk food junkie.  I tended to be right in the middle.  I ate well balanced meals, but since I have a major sweet tooth, I didn’t deny myself the occasional treat.  My philosophy is everything in moderation. If however, you and your family eat on the healthier end of the spectrum, keep it up.  Certainly making healthier choices is beneficial.

My husband, Chris, coached me from 2000-2006 and most of my education and direction on nutrition comes from him.  He is a chiropractor and certified strength and conditioning coach.  (And he thinks it’s fun to read all the latest research on nutrition and supplements.) Here are Chris’ top four eating musts for workouts, competition and exams. 

Top Four Eating Musts

1. Eat both protein and carbohydrates before workouts, competitions, and tests. Simple sugars, like cereal or pancakes, break down very quickly and the burst of energy they give you is generally short lived.  Protein, complex carbohydrates, like whole wheat foods and foods high in fiber, break down more slowly and give you longer lasting energy.  Here is an example of two of my favorite pre-race meals: Two eggs any style, whole wheat toast, yogurt and a banana.  Or, oatmeal mixed with a scoop of vanilla protein powder, a yogurt and banana. .  (Try to chose a yogurt higher in protein, like Stonyfield’s Oikos Greek yogurt.)

2. In the first thirty minutes after your workout or competition, have a recovery drink.  Recovery drinks get into you system quickly.  Timing of the drink is important for recovery, because in the first thirty minutes after exercise your body is driving nutrients into your muscles.  There are many different drink mixes out there; chose one that has simple sugars and fast absorbing protein, like whey.  A four to one ratio of carbohydrates to protein is ideal.  A good drink generally has about 200-400 calories.  Make sure to follow up your drink with a meal an hour or two later.  While not perfect, a cheap alternative to a recovery drink mix is chocolate milk.

3. Eat and drink often during exercise.  The general rule is, if you are hungry or  thirsty you waited too long.  Try to eat something, a energy gel for example, and drink a bottle of water or energy drink, every hour you exercise.  Believe me, bonking is miserable.  I’ve gotten to the point before, in both training and races, that my body just quit and I couldn’t think even coherently; I was pretty much useless.

4. Make sure you give your food enough time to digest before you exercise. Everyone is different, but I generally ate about two and half to three hours before I competed.  I found when I was nervous, my food digested slower and once I started warming up, my food didn’t digest at all.  All the blood went to my legs atnthat point.

Here are some additional tips.

Taking a multi-vitamin is a good idea when you are training hard, just to ensure you are getting all of the appropriate nutrients. 

Fish oil is a natural anti-inflammatory.  When I was training hard, my legs would throb every night.  I often couldn’t sleep, so I would take ibuprofen every night.  Once I started taking two fish oil every night, and morning, I needed ibuprofen much less often.  (If you find you are burping up the fish oil, they sell odorless fish oil capsules, which sometimes make the fish oil more manageable.  Or you can try just taking the fish oil at night.)

Both of my children’s books, Gracie Goat’s Big Bike Race and Shawn Sheep The Soccer Star, include a fitness fact.  One book’s fitness fact is on hydration and the other is on nutrition.  They are a great help in starting a discussion with your child on healthy eating and drinking habits.  Visit www.erinmirabella.com for more information.  For more information on my husband, Chris Mirabella, D.C. please visit www.tellercountychiropractic.com.

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Help your child combat nerves.

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Try This At Home……………….

Have your child make a list of the ingredients that make up his or her perfect performance, whether it is for sports, school, or something else.  For example, do they need to be aggressive, patient, calm, thorough, go harder on a certain cue, watch for a certain tactic, etc.  Once he or she has written it down, have them close their eyes and visualize having the perfect performance, by doing all of the things on the list. Have your child visualize this daily.  Next time he or she starts to get nervous, pull out the list and have them focus on the specific things he or she needs to do to be successful. Your child’s pre-performance routine is also important.   I’ll discuss that in next week’s blog.

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Are you one of those people like me, who gets nervous before competition, or are you more like my husband, Chris, who hardly gets nervous at all?  How about your kids?

If your kids get very nervous before their performance, they may not be competing at their best and worst-case scenario may develop an aversion to competing.   Pre-competition jitters are good to a point, but past that they become detrimental. Help your child deal with extreme nervousness, by discovering the root of the problem and teaching them tactics for combating their nerves.

During my cycling career I got extremely nervous before races.  The more important a race was to me, the more nervous I got.  Since track racing was my main focus, I was painfully nervous before every race.  Once I started racing I was fine, but it was not uncommon for me to make myself ill to the point of puking before a race.  The question always became, whether or not I could control my nerves enough to prevent them from negatively affecting my racing. Even through I loved track racing, I started enjoying road racing more, simply because I didn’t get as nervous for it. Thankfully I learned some tactics to combat my nerves, but it was still something that I struggled with at every race. 

One of my motivations for doing this weekly blog is to help the next generation overcome some of the detrimental hang-ups that I watched myself and other Olympians battle with during our careers.  Each of us had our own personal nemesis that, left unchecked, inhibited us from reaching our full potential.  A lot of the reason I would get so nervous was due to my nemeses, my unrealistically high expectations and fear of failure.  These are topics for their own blog posts, but I mention them because I think it’s important to get to the root of the problem.  You and your children might have different reasons for being nervous, but no matter the cause, here are some things that I found that helped me. 

I tried not to think; it was my worst enemy.  I have an overactive imagination and the what-ifs always got me.  One of the reason’s I trained so hard, was so that when race time came instinct would kick in.  If I could turn my brain off and go on autopilot, my body would take over and do what it did every day in training. I knew if I could just get to the start line with out psyching myself out, I’d be fine.

The what-ifs can be motivating for some, but for me they became all consuming.  I knew that in order to be successful at racing, I had to stop thinking about the end result and focus on the things I had to do  in order to be successful.  So, Instead of thinking about winning or losing, I focused on things like my pre-race routine, my aggressiveness and pack positioning during the race. (For those readers who aren’t cyclists, a group of cyclists is called a pack.)  Since in the end I couldn’t control what my competition did or didn’t do, I tried to stop worry about them and focus on what I could control.  If I focused on the small picture things, I found the big picture took care of itself.

Lastly, and this was something I was crummy at remembering, our past does not have to be indicative of our future.  Each new competition is just that, new.  It is a fresh start, and while it’s important to learn from our past mistakes they don’t need to define us.  In addition, Remind them  to have some fun.

Hopefully these will give you a starting point when it comes to fighting nerves. If you have any tactics that help you, please share them.

My children’s book, Gracie Goat’s Bike Race, addresses Gracie’s fears and anxiety’s.  It is a great book to read to kids who are nervous because they are worried about all of the what-ifs.  For more information on Gracie please visit www.erinmirabella.com.

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Work or Play?

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Try This At Home…….

Take turns setting up an obstacle course.  For example: Run up a hill, around a tree, do five pushups, then run back down the hill, crab walk to the water bottle, jump over the bottle, run to the slide and slide down it.  You can just do it just for fun, or race and see who wins.  You and your kids will get some exercise and you won’t even realize it.

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When you were growing up, was exercise work or fun?  Why?  How do you feel about it now? Are you making exercise fun for your kids?  I know it is an odd question because by definition exercise is work.  So, I guess the real question is, do you and your children enjoy it. 

Kids exercise should be play.  They don’t need to go to the gym and work out, they just need to go outside and be a kid (unless they are older and are really training for a sport.)   Get them signed up for some sports, encourage them to play games like tag with their friends, take them to the pool, walk to the park, and limit their television and video game time.  I know kids love video games, so make a system.  They get to play 30 minutes of a sedentary game for every 30 minutes they play of a physical game, like Dance Dance Revolution or Wii Sports. 

Your actions and your attitude will lay the foundation for how your kids view exercise.  So, even if you don’t like to do it, don’t grumble in front of the kids on the way to the gym, and make a point of doing physical activities as a family.  Go for a hike, bike ride or shoot some hoops together.  The more it is part of your family life, the more your kids will incorporate it into their life when they grow up. 

This summer we started a running/walking group through my husband’s chiropractic office.  I pushed my kids in the jogging stroller.  Micah, my two year old, got really excited about running because he saw us doing it.  After our group run, he would run around my husband’s office building.  He asks to run to the park, instead of ride in the stroller and he likes to run on the treadmill. (With very close supervision.)  It is a great reminder that kids take their cues about what to think about exercise from their parents. 

Here are some tips for you and your kids. 

1. Find something you/they like to do.  There are all sorts of forms of exercise out there.  You don’t have to just run, or walk.  You can dance, ride, climb, swim, hike, roller blade, jump rope etc.

2. Get your kids involved in a team sport or class; it is more fun to exercise with other people and it’s good for your kids to be held accountable.  For the exact same reasons, find someone to work out with you too.  Accountability is key. No quitting allowed.  My mom used to tell us that we could try any sport or activity that we wanted, as long as, even if we didn’t like it, we finished that session or season of the activity. (This is a whole separate post, but worth mentioning here.) 

3. Be creative and make it fun.  I started riding bikes with my parents when I was very young.  We would go on a bike ride and on the way home stop and get an ice cream cone or ride to the park.   The more fun it is, the more you and your kids will want to do it.

4. Mix it up.  Doing the same thing every day is boring.

Final note:

If you don’t enjoy exercise, you won’t do it.  Most of it is a state of mind.  You have to decide that you are going to do it and remind yourself you will feel better afterward.  My husband was an international level, Greco Roman wrestler. He cut a substantial amount of weight for his tournaments and got pretty good at dieting.  He loves sweets, so to make it easier, he started thinking of desserts as poison.  Every time he reached for a brownie, he would stop himself because it was poison.  The mind is a powerful thing.   You can use it to change your attitude about working out. 

Exercise isn’t meant to be easy, or comfortable.  If it were, it wouldn’t be defined on dictionary.com as: bodily or mental exertion, esp. for the sake of training or improvement of health.   The benefits of it far out weigh the discomfort.  Very little in life worth doing is easy. 

You may have made up your mind about exercise, but that doesn’t mean your kids have.  I really like working out, I always have.  I don’t necessarily love the uncomfortable ness involved with excising vigorously, but I love the way I feel afterward.  If I don’t exercise I feel gross.   I believe that I like exercising because I grew up doing it.  If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for your kids.

I’d love to hear from you: thoughts, comments and stories.   What are your ideas about making exercise play?  The Barnsville Sports Squad children’s book series emphasises healthy lifestyles.  Visit www.erinmirabella.com to learn more.

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