Recently I asked our contributing personal trainer and coach Jason Onserud (remember his great rundown on how to create a resistance training program?) to talk about the best ways to warm up before you start strength training. Here’s what he said…

First of all you should know why it’s important to warm up. It’ll help improve the performance of your session and in turn the result of your hard work. Warming up helps reduce the chance of injury and wear and tear on your joints too.

Start with a cardio warm-up: Complete 10 minutes of a low intensity exercise at 50% of your maximum heart rate. If you aren’t tracking your heart rate, this is a pretty easy pace–think a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. Try jogging, biking or skipping rope. This will increase your heart rate and actually warm up your body and muscle temperature as well as your mind. Read the rest of this entry »

Anytime you add an element of instability to your ab workout, you’ll make it more challenging. The Prone Jackknife from Oxygen Women’s Fitness is one way to do it.

Start in a plank position with your arms slightly wider than shoulder width apart and your feet and the tops of your shins balanced on an exercise ball (choose a ball that’s at a comfortable height). Keeping your arms and back straight, engage your abs to bring your knees toward your chest rolling the ball along with your feet. Keep squeezing your abs and return to the starting position. Do 2 to 3 reps of 15.

Plenty found a way for us to row, row, row our boats greenly down the stream with Echo Paddles made from sustainably harvested local wood certified by the Managed Forest Program.

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If you’re looking for a new innovative and HARD workout to try, sign up for Budokon. Developed by Cameron Shayne, Budokon is a fusion of martial arts and yoga that’s designed to create a healthy body and a sound mind which rings true to the JivaFit motto. And celebrities like Courtney Cox and Jennifer Aniston have been fans for awhile.

It’s a workout that requires you to use every inch of your body and every single muscle from head to toe. This class will help you get stronger without lifting a single dumbell–it’s all about using your body. The class starts with a yoga session, though you’ll do dancing dogs in addition to your downward dogs and classic Vinyasa movements will be modified to the rolling wave. The moves get progressively more challenging as the class gears up for the martial arts set. The crocodile for example requires you to jump to a fighting stance from lying flat on the ground. The practice finishes with kicking, punching, blocking and so on in a martial arts series.

If you want to give it a try, search the site for an instructor near you or watch one of Shayne’s workout DVDs. I tried a couple of them and unlike some fitness videos that aren’t don’t even compare to taking an actual class, these were pretty challenging.

Thanks to everyone who entered the Skin Appetit beauty giveaway a few weeks ago. We have a winner! Congratulations to Pamela Scott who revealed her favorite super food saying, “Gosh, this is hard. I love all of them, but I guess I would have to say dark chocolate.” She’ll get a set of all five Skin Appetit products.

But if you didn’t win, you’re not entirely out of luck! Click through to read more for a printable coupon that’ll save you $2 off any Skin Appetit product at Walgreens, Rite Aid, Longs or Duane Reade. Happy shopping!

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If you love working out and being active, I’m sure you’ve suffered from post-exercise sore muscles before too. And while you could pop a couple pills for relief I’ve found a couple of natural soothers.

Organics by Noah’s Naturals Sea Salt Soak ($16.99): I poured a bunch of this organic blend of sea salt and lavender into a warm bath for a very spa-like pain relieving experience. The intoxicating scent of lavender relaxed my mind and the warm bath combined with the sea salt (which they say helps draw out the impurities from my skin) did offer some subtle soothing. Now whether or not it came from the warm bath water alone or the stuff I was soaking in, I don’t know, but either way I felt better when I stepped out and it was enjoyable.

Topical Anti-Pain By142 ($35): This cream is like a luxe version of Icy Hot. Menthol and camphor work instantly to relieve your pain, but then you’ll feel another sensation sneaking up on your muscle aches. Cehami, a plant-based ingredient first used by Australian Aboriginal people, has an anti-inflammatory power 3,000 times that of Aspirin–with that kind of reputation why bother popping pills! Supposedly the effect lasts up to 4 hours, but I get the most relief in the first hour.

Here’s a nice mind-body workout I found from MyYogaOnline. The ten minute routine will help you relax after the long holiday weekend, find inner balance and ease your mind and body before you start another hectic week.

Last year I was searching for a fitness watch to calculate distance. I was surprised to find the only kind that existed were bulky GPS varieties that didn’t look much like a watches at all or ones that included a foot pod. Now, Garmin has finally come out with a style that looks like a watch but tracks mileage and calculates speed and pace using GPS–the Forerunner 405.

You can upload your date to free Garmin Training Center software where you can keep track of workouts and calories burned, map routes you’ve run and design future workouts. You can also connect with other users online and even compete against other 405 users with the unit nearby. The watch is available with or without a heart monitor. If you workout indoors you can opt for a foot pod to track treadmill mileage (since GPS won’t work inside your gym) and if you’re a cyclist you can get a cadence sensor. I don’t think you’ll find a more fully-funtional fitness watch.

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There are plenty of abdominal exercises that can make you feel a little silly when you’re doing them at the gym, but it’s all in the name of flat abs, right? Here’s one of those exercises–the Wicked Wiper straight from an Olympic trainer as shown in Women’s Health. Only thing is, if you can actually pull this exercise off any snickering will be replaced by worship. Something to work towards…I’ll try it tomorrow, I swear.

If you’re up for the challenge, hang from a pull-up bar (you may want to enlist a friend to spot you) with your arms shoulder-width apart and palms facing outward. As you continue to hang, raise your hips, back and shoulders as much as you can to try to get your body parallel to the floor. Lift your legs up into a pike. Now like a windshield wiper, lower your legs to the right, raise them to the center and lower to the left. Amateur variation: Do the same action on a mat.