Whether you are a seasoned and experienced runner, or you are just beginning to enjoy the fruits of this incredibly addictive sport and pastime, you need to train if you are going to run a marathon.  There are several marathons happening during the year. They occur in major cities and smaller cities. They can be hundreds of runners, or literally thousands of runners.

The Chicago marathon usually has about 40,000 participants believe it or not. These are not all seasoned runners either. Often times they are people who have signed up for the challenge and camradery of it all. They like to see what their body can do.

One thing that I’ll admit I don’t work out often enough, is my back muscles. I don’t do it as often as I should because quite frankly, I don’t think about my lower back needing to “look good” so I often forget and instead do things that are really major problems for me, like my outer and inner thighs and upper arms.

Hey, a woman’s got priorities, and while I love to feel great and be healthy, I’m also very cognizant that the primary reason I started working out was because I wanted to shape and whittle my body into something that appeared sexy and desirable.

I read one of the best books I’ve read in a long time about the body’s natural healing abilities, and natural ways to help keep your body healthy, energetic, and vital well into your older age. It’s by a well known holistic doctor, Dr. Andrew Weil, and it was actually written several years ago.

It will still be a relevant book many years from now even though, in my humble opinion. It’s called “Spontaneous Healing”. It is not only an eye opening and educational read about how to keep your body healthy using nature, but it is also an incredibly entertaining and well written book for a man who is not by trade a writer. 

One of the most powerful ab exercises that I have ever done, and ever felt the next day results from, are plank poses.  Not just the gentler version of the plank pose that you typically think of when you think of this yoga posture, but the more dynamic planks, where you are jumping and moving around, and really working deep into those ab muscles for maximum burn. And maximum pain the next day I might add!

I’ve realized after years and years of doing various ab workouts, that it’s not the reps (repetitions), or the intensity or speed at which I work my abs that really helps me to build a six pack, or at least help it all to suck in all of the time, when standing or sitting so I don’t have a muffin top. It’s actually more the positions and angles that I’m at when I’m doing my ab workouts that makes the most impact on my results.

I’ve been a bit obsessed with plank exercises as of late. Why, you ask? Well, because I find they are one of the most effective exercises to not only tone and define and sculpt the abdominal area, including the obliques, but they also tone the arms, legs and back while toning other trouble areas as well. They are kind of an all in one exercise for your body. They really test the boundaries of your strength too, as they are one of the hardest poses that you can put yourself in for any extended period of time.

I have always, and always will in to the future I am sure, battled the war of the thighs. Thighs run in my family. Although the women in my family are generally fairly petite, we have always had a little “kadunkadunk” in the back end and a little extra on the sides of our thighs as well. Even at my thinnest and most fit shape, I still have that slight “pear shape” the my booty and thighs. Hey, I’m glad to have the body I do, and believe me, I’m glad that I’m healthy and fit to begin with.

You know that as time goes on, we think of more and more ways to work our bodies out into peak fitness and performance. That’s the cool thing about time progression, at least as it applies to our bodies and the technologies, diet and health innovations, and new exercise techniques and equipment.  One example of what is sort of an exercise fad right now (which I also happen to love by the way), is plyometrics.

This is where you make short, explosive moves that are high impact, but they also give results fast, and get your heart rate up very fast, so they are often included in these newer short but very intense and very effective workouts you see on DVD.

So, I was on the elliptical machine that we have at our gym where I work the other day, and I discovered that there was a new way I could position my feet and legs on the machine so that I could really target one of my consistent problem areas – my saddle bags on the sides of my thighs. They are definitely partially genetic, because even when I lose a boatload of weight and am at my leanest, I still have those two stubborn, albeit smaller, pouches on the sides of my thighs, just clinging to them like some sort of extra appendage.

Yep, that’s right, not only can you exercise your body to shape it, tone it, and whip it into the exact shape you want it in most cases, but you can also perform facial exercises that will help keep your face, your cheeks, your chin, your jawline, and underneath your chin where your neck is where the infamous “double chin” phenomenon occurs.