Showing posts with label Sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sports. Show all posts

14 Apr 2013

It's time for a reboot

I am not fit anymore, dear readers. While I did lots of sports last year and, hence, was healthy and fit end of 2012, now all these great achievements are gone again. Since December last year, I had to downgrade my sports routine more and more until I didn't do any sports at all anymore since end of January, first due to an operation and then because I moved to the UK.

Recently, I observed that I started to feel quite weak and physically incapable. I don't like this kind of feeling. I suffered of it for many years, but last year I have experienced that this kind of feeling can be overcome with steady and regular physical exercise. It is very empowering to feel strong and physically capable for doing anything. So, I really want to start doing more exercise this month again. Also, summer is coming and it would be nice to be able to wear shorts and short skirts again.

Another thing I don't like that much at the moment is that I also don't eat that healthy anymore. When I am spending time abroad in other countries, I love to experiment with different kinds of foods from that country and at the moment - as I have moved to the UK - I am indulging myself in all kinds of unhealthy foods with far too many calories. Furthermore, I was living in a shared house until recently where I didn't feel comfortable to cook. So, I ate a lot of ready and instant meals. Fortunately, I still fit into the trousers I brought with me but I'm sure that I gained a bit of weight as they started to feel a bit tight lately. Unfortunately, I have not found any scales to check my weight.

All in all I urgently need and want to push life's reset button at the moment! 

found @millenialleader

8 Nov 2012

Meditation: my progress and my thoughts

Hi guys! How are you getting along with the 21-day meditation challenge? I hope you have seen my link to the interview of Oprah Winfrey with Deepak Chopra. I linked it in my comment to my first post announcing the 21-day meditation challenge. It's a lovely interview and Deepak is explaining and motivating meditation. Try to watch it as soon as possible because I think it won't be available for a long time. 

I started the meditation challenge on the 6th of November in the morning. I am using this challenge to also get ahead with my Qi Gong routine with which I really have struggled a lot. My mornings were completely stuffed with biking and showering and meditation didn't fit in anymore. Hence, I tried hard to do it in the evening but it just didn't work. I have to admit that I wanted to do it every evening but did it only for 3 times in the last 2 months. 

So, when I discovered the 21-day meditation challenge, I had to take the chance and change my routine. I moved biking to the early evening and have put meditation into the morning. This is a major change and I was worried to loose my biking habit. But as biking is already a pretty ingrained habit (I'm doing it now for months on a daily basis), I am doing it in the evening, too. I admit that I lost a day in transition but the following day I was able to catch up. And the new habit of meditation which I try to create, is tough but as I usually biked at that time in the morning anyway, I am keeping up with it. Furthermore, the meditation podcasts of Deepak Chopra are pure fun and it's such a joy to follow them. But I am doing it the tough way like I've learned it in my Qi Gong class. And I also try to do a couple of Qi Gong moving exercises before meditating in a Qi Gong pose while listening to Deepak Chopra's meditation podcasts. However, as they are so much fun and as I am no native speaker, I like to listen to each of the podcasts for several times. E.g. I listened to the first podcast for 3 mornings now and will listen to the second podcast starting from tomorrow morning. 

This is my meditation setup for each morning: 

4 Nov 2012

21-Day Meditation Challenge

Tomorrow, a 21-day meditation challenge with Deepak Chopra will start and I will participate and would like to invite you to participate as well. (I'd like to also take the opportunity to recommend reading the blog HappyIch of Sue because it is there where I read about this meditation challenge for the first time. Sue also already participated in such a 21-day meditation by Deepak Chopra in July and reviewed it on her blog.)

Meditation is not new to me. I started to meditate in September to alleviate the stress my thesis is putting me through by starting a zen buddhistic meditation course. Actually, it is a Qi Gong course, but we are mostly meditating. I don't know how common it is to meditate within Qi Gong courses but in my course we are doing it all the time. Currently, I am meditating once a week within that course and afterwards I feel incredibly relaxed and happy and powerful and this sometimes even holds for a couple of days afterwards. I'm quite impressed by the results. Unfortunately, I am still finding it quite difficult to practice meditation also on my own at home. This is why I am looking very much forward to join the 21-day challenge of Deepak Chopra. It will be my first meditation with Deepak Chopra and also my first guided meditation as my meditation practice in my course hasn't been guided yet.

The meditation challenge that will start tomorrow will be all about "Creating Abundance". The participants will be taken to a journey to an authentic abundance consciousness. According to Deepak, we'll discover what true abundance is, the source from which it springs, how consciousness and the mind affect its flow, and that each and every one of us is worthy and deserving of an abundant life. We will learn how to leverage the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success to manifest our heartfelt intentions and live a more abundant life, attracting more comfort and ease, joy, peace, love, or anything we desire. Sounds great, doesn't it?


Joining the 21-days meditation challenge is free. You can subscribe here either with your facebook account or with your email. Starting from tomorrow, each day a 15-minute guided meditation will be made available. Here you can find more information about Deepak Chopra who is well-known for his books on yoga and meditation.

Are you interested in meditation as well? Will you join the challenge? 

10 Aug 2012

July recap of fitness activities

Unfortunately, I have had an inflammation in the beginning of July and as it was pretty bad, I even needed to take Antibiotics. Hence, I wanted to support my body to heal and I have been very careful with sports. Even when the inflammation was gone, I tried to listen to my body and not to exaggerate with any kind of sports endeavour. This is why I have not done that much sports in July.

Another thing that changed in July is that my horseback riding course ended and at first I considered to start a new course but in the end I decided to rather try some Yoga. The horseback riding classes and the Yoga classes are at the same time and since horseback riding takes also much more time (at least 3 hours with driving to the riding stables, grooming the horse, cleaning hooves, and especially feeding, pampering, cuddling and spoiling the horse :-)), I decided heavy hearted to skip horseback riding this summer altogether. I'm a bit sad and already started to miss horses (I even have visited the horses at my former riding stable in the weekend to cuddle and spoil them without any conditions), but my thesis goes first and I also have to prioritize my spare time and my sports activities. As soon as I have more time, I'll do horseback riding again. For sure.

My aqua running course ended as well and in summer, no courses are offered. Hence, I started to try Pilates and am in love with my Pilates course. I am also in love my Pilates instructor who is incredibly fit and looks up to 20 years younger than he is - he is nearly 60 and looks like 40! - this is something I admire and I definitely think that it is because of him doing Pilates that often. My Pilates course indeed is very demanding and exhausting and I have sore muscles all the time but the results are really great.

The Yoga course is nice as well but I like the Pilates course much more. Below is my sports recap of July.

7 Jul 2012

Towards a stronger, healthier and fitter me

You might have noticed the goal bar on the right column of my blog. This post shall provide an explanation. With this bar I track my weekly progress with biking and keep myself motivated. Each day I update the progress and seeing the progress motivates me to keep going. Knowing that you guys might check my progress every day as well, motivates me too. ;-)
A recent status of my biking progress bar on the right border of my blog

Currently, I am trying to do a lot of sports in order to become more healthy and fit. Of course it is a very nice side effect that the body becomes slimer and more defined as well. There's no doubt that I am enjoying the improvement of my body shape a lot. However, at the moment my focus lies on the health and fitness issue. I want to become stronger and healthier and improve my posture and physical capabilities in general. I have never been a sports enthusiast in my whole life and just focussing on getting a better body with sports has never been enough to keep me motivated on the long term. Maybe it was because my body has never been in a terrible shape anyway. My fitness, however, is in a terrible shape! And it has gotten worse and worse over the last years.

In the last years I have experimented with different kinds of sports: Yoga, weight training @the gym, weight training @home, cycling, running, horseback riding, rock climbing, swimming and aqua running. I have also experimented with different times for the workouts: I tried to do sports in the morning, sports during the lunch break, sport in the evening or somewhen during the day. But I have never been able to keep a regular exercise schedule for a long time. It was rather a discipline issue. I had and still have severe issues with work life balance. Resolving these issues is a challenge for me but I am aware of these issues and I am dealing with them and it gets better and better - very slowly however (like all changes that affect your whole life, i.e. you habits and your belief system). Recently, I have managed to find a way to integrate regular sporting activities into my life, however, and it's working well for a couple of months already. That's longer than ever before. Obviously, the only way to integrate sports into my life that works for me is doing sports on a daily basis. When it becomes an every day routine, it just works without a second thought and I start to really need it and still can focus my mind on other things (because the sports routine does not involve any thinking anymore). If I am not able to do my sport routine, my day just feels incomplete. Additionally, it is important for me to make the time - whatever happens, I have, have, have to do it, unless I am  suffering from a cold or an inflammation. There is no other excuse. There are no deadlines or obligations that are more important than my sports appointments!

For a couple of months now, I cycle on my bicycle ergometer in my bedroom almost every morning immediately after getting up. On average I cycle for about 40 minutes each morning, sometimes less and sometimes a little bit more (since I have my progress bar on my blog it's rather more then less ;-)). Additionally, I also do aqua running once a week for 1 hour - at least during the lecture period of my University since I am attending a course at University. So, in good weeks, my weekly cardio routine has a duration of around 6 hours. Furthermore, I do horseback riding once a week for 1 hour. I also do 1.5 hours of weight training a week but not that regularly, unfortunately. I'd like to do more weight training and some Pilates and Yoga on a regular basis as well and have to find some exercise routine and schedule that's appropriate for me.

In order to motivate myself to keep up with my sporting activities, I'll write a monthly recap post summarizing my sports efforts. Such a recap would also help me to review why my fitness and looks have improved or not improved (either is possible ;-)).

During the last weeks I have managed to loose a bit of weight and my body shape has started to improve a lot. Although I am focusing on health and fitness, the looks of course are not unimportant at all and do count as well. Hence, I really hope to be able to wear some short dresses soon, e.g. the ones shown below are really lovely:

picture & dress are both from COS
picture & dress are both from COS

29 Jun 2012

Horse Love

Have a look at the struggle of this cute horse. It is frightened and a glutton at the same time: It is very much interested in eating that carrot but it also is very much frightened of me (we didn't know each other yet, ya know ;-)). It took ages for the horse to work up the courage to get closer to me and grab the carrot. When it had the carrot, it jumped away immediately to chew it in safety. :-)


And afterwards it wanted more:

28 Jun 2012

Horseback Riding

One year ago, I started to do horseback riding mainly because of my back. Good orthopedic specialists often recommend horseback riding as a good way to improve back and posture problems. For my back it has paid off indeed. Especially my lower back is now both stronger and more mobile at the same time. Additionally, I get the best pelvic floor training available and have a lot of fun. Horses are so fascinating. It's impossible to resist their beauty and cuteness. What I love most about them is that they are so predictable. They are easily frightened scaredy-pants and food is their weakness - with apples and carrots you can charm the pants off any horse. ;-) 

Later today, I'll go horseback riding and this is how I want to charm my horse's pants off ;-)

In theory, you can also feed sugar and sweets to horses and a lot of people do so. Horses eat everything that you give them and sweets are highly addictive, unfortunately - not only for us humans. But would you like to be seduced by sweets and sugar yourself? I personally wouldn't and this is why I prefer to feed them healthy stuff like fruits and vegetables. Since I started to do horseback riding I always have some apples around for horses. This is why I snack on apples myself more often now too. Apples and carrots are also great ingrediences for my favourite breakfast cake.

Here is some eye candy for all other horse lovers out there:

          (found @Reddit)

(found @Reddit)

(found @Reddit)

(found at @Reddit)

(found @Reddit)

7 Jun 2012

Dear hard work ... (fitness motivational Video)

I need motivation ... and the video below is really cool. :-) It doesn't only work for sports.



How do you like the video? Does it motivate you to do sports or anything else that has to be done? :-)

31 May 2012

Anatomy of a new Fitness Routine

As mentioned in the very first post, this blog will deal with different topics. I don't want it to be yet another beauty blog (although beauty of course is an important part of a woman's life ;-)). In the future, I also want to write about other things that are important to me. e.g. my sports routine and how I try to keep myself fit. So, to make a start with sports, have a look at the Anatomy of a new Fitness Routine (from Vibram FiveFingers):
The Anatomy of a Fitness Routine - Vibram Five Fingers