Leslie 1/5/10

Here is a part of an article about balance that I wanted to share with you. It stresses the importance of balance training to prevent injury. I'm excited to see how each of your balance improves this month--mine too. We'll all be standing on one foot doing the dishes and pretty soon we'll be able to walk on a ball like a circus clown.

Pain caused by sprained ankles, and a variety of other injuries common to highly trained athletes, often have nothing to do with strength. They often have little to do with flexibility. And rarely do they have anything to do with endurance. More often than not, sprains and strains have to do with balance.

So you’re not a runner. Why should you care about balance? Well, for starters, it’s the basic skill needed in practically every sport. From soccer to tennis to rock climbing, changing your center of gravity to match your moves is the key to efficiency in sport. The technical term is agility. Agility is what allows us to move gracefully, wasting little motion. It allows our joints to move through the full range of motion smoothly and confidently. While the start of hiking season might require that your entire attention remain focused on the trail to avoid falling, after several weeks for hiking, you may notice that you are more confident in your ability to adjust to the terrain by foot feel alone, and you need to pay less attention to the trail. In this way you increase your kinesthetic coordination, and in turn your balance improves.
Kinesthetic awareness, or the ability to know where your body parts are in 3-dimensional space, is required for every movement we make. So it's not surprising that balance can be learned, challenged, and improved.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty eager to improve my balance.

Exercise- I'm going to be running a 5 mile paced run. I want my pace to be around 8:00 min miles. I'll let you know how it goes. I hope I dont hit my head on the ceiling.

Meals-
M1- muffin
M2- chicken taco in 2 corn tortillas
M3-string cheese and yogurt
M4-cottage cheese and yam
M5- Some kind of soup I'm making for dinner with ground beef
M6- Protein shake

How I'm feeling- I'm feeling great. I'm a little tired but so happy. Our life is changing very quickly. Many things are uncertain, but I love my husband and kids, and life is good.

Gratitude-
1. I'm thankful for Andy who loves me no matter what. He always has and I know he always will.
2. I'm thankful for my little terrorists. They add the spice and fun to life. They also add a lot of dirt, grime, and crumbs, but it's a package deal so I guess I'll take that too :)
3. I'm thankful that you all are letting me train you this month. I've had so much fun.
4. New ideas
5. New days