Got Sleep?

Sleep does your body and mind good. Denying your body necessary sleep will reduce your daily energy and productive levels. Depriving yourself of sleep also leads to increased risk of obesity and cardiovascular disease.

Here are some tips for better sleeping habits.

-Maintain your sleeping schedule, even on your days off work.
-Schedule in 10 hours of sleep. Two hours should be for rewinding and relaxing and 8 hours are for actual sleep. Try to avoid stressful conversations or activities two hours before bed (i.e. paying bills, heated arguments, and other worries)
-Remember that you are only human. Everyone has 24 hours in their days, but your 8 hours of sleep are the most important

Jogging/Running Workout

Running in the Governor's Cup? I have help for novice runners!

If you have never trained to run or haven't run in the past six months make sure to start out slow. Don't expect to go out for a one or five-mile run the first day (or even the first month). If you are going from couch potato to running or from elliptical/bicycle/walking/aerobics classes to running, you are entering an entirely different atmosphere.

Running is very high-impact meaning that more demands are put on your bones and muscles. Even if you are very fit and can easily handle the stair climber or weight machines - you might have a hard time running at the beginning. It uses your bones and muscles in very different ways. I suggest training three times per week (i.e. M,W,F).

Week 1: Walk briskly for 5 minutes. Run (jog) 60 seconds. Walk 90 seconds. Repeat this running/walking for 20 minutes.

If this is a breeze for you after a workout, that is great! Don't over do it. Don't blow off the training and immediately make it harder or try it for 30 minutes. Too much running for a new runner will only increase your risk for injury like shin splints. The goal it to progress slowly to get our mind and body used to the demands from running and to decrease your risk for injury and overtraining.

If you want to start on a different week, you can do that too! If one of the weeks is very hard for you, repeat it for another week so that you conquer it! Don't let the training defeat you!

Week 5 is a huge jump. You will go from running with walking mixed in to running for 20 minutes. Think positive. Try it out. If you can only last for 9 minutes. That's okay. Walk for 2 minutes and try to run another 9 or 11 minutes. Positive thoughts get you far! Don't psych yourself out! You CAN do this!

ONE MORE THING! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: With all of your training, try to stay at the same speed. If you stick to the same speed, it will be easy to gauge if you are truly progressing. If you don't stick to a certain speed some days might be easy and some days might be hard even though it may be the same workout. You need to keep your speed consistent but change your time/mileage. That's a huge thing. Don't change all of the factors. Just change one. I have shown you how to change up your time/mileage. You just need to pick a good speed that you can run/jog.