10 Worst/Best Holiday Habits

(did i miss any??)


Below is a list of the 10 Best & Worst Holiday Habits.

The Best Holiday Habits:1. Maintain a healthy lifestyle
2. Be with those you want to be with
3. Stick with a holiday budget
4. Balance work and pleasure
5. Get enough sleep
6. Stay at home and have fun
7. Do things you’re passionate about
8. Shop locally
9. Buy & receive only healthy gifts
10. Share healthy food

The Worst Holiday Habits:1. Spending money you don’t have
2. Visiting people you don’t like
3. Going to parties you’d rather avoid
4. Eating things you don’t want
5. Drinking too much alcohol
6. Last minute shopping
7. Holiday travel (especially at peak periods)
8. Going on a diet January 1st
9. Gaining weight
10. Buying unhealthy gifts

Feel free to post these 10 Best & Worst Holiday Habits in your office, on your refrigerator or other places, and send to all friends and family. 

Summarizes my Training For 2011

From The New World Order for Endurance Training by Brian MacKenzie


Speaking of recovery, that’s the next limiting factor we have to work on with distance athletes.  Most of them are training exclusively in the oxidative pathway, and highly overdoing it at that.  Even if you are just training this way, would it not behoove you to have the ability to actually recover from these workouts so that you could actually benefit from them? We make each of our athletes recover to a heart rate of 120 in less than two minutes when doing intervals or hill work.  If they can’t recover, then the workout is done.  Walk away! When they run pace work, nothing is more than a half marathon so that they have the ability to go out and actually train the next day with purpose.

Toe Separators (from the Gait Guys)

Interesting I just saw these for the first time this week.  Example of one brand: 



From the Gait Guys: They are pretty bulky but that could be a good thing, for some though they are just too bulky we have found.
Some people are running in them……We think our friend Dr. Mark Cucuzzella does (naturalrunningcenter.com) .
We use them with clients to walk around the house barefoot and get used to engaging toes with a flat press (not gripping…like those silly, flexor dominant promoting towel scrunch exercises !)

So they MIGHT help someone retrain some muscles if used in this fashion but just wearing them does not produce magical results without some awareness use. 

Keep in mind……forcing something doesn’t make it so……… spreading the toes with an object such as these doesn’t make them automatically go where they are supposed to.
Most people need to relearn toe separation (actually abduction)…we do alot of that in our offices….and then learn to bring the whole toe flat to the ground with a good, firm toe press……..no grip/scrunch/hyperflexion.  The last thing we would ever want to do is overfacilitate the long toe flexors (flexor digitorum longus) because when we do, we inhibit other foot intrinsic muscles (ie. lumbricals).