Griffen Fitness - Newsletter

March newsletter

Greetings healthy people,

What a great month February has been… The first ever WeightShed Boot Camp last week was a complete success, and Life Coach Eilidh and I now are looking forward to our summer camp from June 29. It will be held once again in the well-appointed surrounding's of Stewarts Melville College sports centre. It was fabulous working in such a great environment, which has all the equipment, natural light and space we needed. The boot camp ladies enjoyed (endured?) the equivalent of 15 PT sessions over the week, with equal work looking at their lifestyle through Eilidh’s life coaching. Check out www.weightshed-bootcamp.co.uk for full details.

What’s in Season for March

It's good to eat seasonal fruit and vegetables, so here's a list of what's in season locally:
Brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, celeriac, chicory, forced rhubarb, leeks, Jerusalem artichoke, kale, parsnip, purple sprouting broccoli, shallots, squash.

Easy Recipe: Rhubarb! Rhubarb!

I have been enjoyed ‘forced’ (grown in the dark) rhubarb since early February as it’s perfect in crumbles and for warming me up on a chilly day. Forced rhubarb is replaced with field-grown rhubarb from April, which is less tender, but often more flavourful. The leaves contain poisonous oxalic acid, however the stalks have a lovely tart taste.

Rhubarb fact of the day – the word rhubarb has often been used by extras acting in crowd scenes in film and TV, think about a hubbub of conversation when actually the actors are saying “rhubarb, rhubarb” over and over again.

When growing up, one of the first recipes I learned from my Mum was fruit crumble, which I always believed was made with muesli! When I moved to Scotland, friends thought I was mad for making my crumble in such a fashion. Having tried it once though, I have converted a number of folk, so have a go at this easy recipe and decide for yourself.

For the stewed rhubarb:
4 –6 rhubarb stalks, washed, topped and tailed and chopped into 1 inch chunks
75 g caster sugar
1 Tab Orange Juice
- cook all in a heavy bottomed sauce pan and on a lowish heat. Cook until tender.
Stewed rhubarb can be made a day or two in advance and also tastes good with yoghurt.

For the crumble topping:
Enough muesli to cover top of crumble, I like Dorset Cereals muesli
Melted butter
Sugar and mixed spice to taste

-    It’s unscientific I know, but when making crumble I just toss the stewed fruit into a heat proof dish and then manually work out how much crumble topping I will need.
-    In a separate bowl pour enough muesli to top the fruit and mix in enough melted butter to coat the muesli (a couple of tablespoons).
-    Add in a couple of tablespoons of plain flour, some spice and sugar to taste and mix through. Top the fruit with this mixture.
-    Cook on 175 degrees C until heated through and golden on top.

A quick and easy alternative for a chilly day is to spoon some stewed fruit into a bowl, top with muesli and microwave until warm. Yum!

Resisting Temptation Hint of the Month: A Chocolate Challenge!

Do you consider yourself a chocoholic? If so, what kind of choccy do you nash on? Is it Cadbury’s Dairy Milk or is it dark 85% chocolate? If it’s the latter, then you can officially consider yourself a chocoholic, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Dark chocolate in moderation (i.e. one or two squares) can have health benefits. It’s contains flavenoids that are thought to help lower blood pressure and also antioxidants which help fight free radicals. And according to nutritionist Nell Nelson:

“Dark chocolate in moderation can boost your mood as it contains the amino acid phenylalanine which is linked to mood boosting. Look for 70% or more cocoa solids.” Some milk chocolates have as little as 7% cocoa solids (the rest is fat and sugar), so go for the higher cocoa content.

So next time you crave something sweet, ditch the Dairy Milk and go for a square or two of the darkest chocolate you can find and discover ‘proper’ chocolate.

Fad or Fab: iJoy Ride

Just like riding a horse… in your lounge room. It’s worth having a look at the website just for the demonstration. If you know anyone personally with this particularly daft fitness innovation, please let me know! Andy wonders what people actually use them for… Yours for £390 from John Lewis. Seriously, this is one hilarious fad. Watch it in action in this YouTube clip.

Article of the Month: Exercise in the Great Outdoors

As the days get longer and the weather warmer, it’s a good time to start exercising outdoors. Fair weather cyclists and runners have started to appear on the cycle paths and parks of Edinburgh, but what else is there to do outdoors? Following is a typical outdoor workout that I would do with a client on a lovely day.

Warm up: Jog around the park. Both Inverleith Park and the Meadows are about a mile in perimeter, so an easy jog or even fast walk around makes a good warm up to raise the heart rate and core temperature. Wear a heart rate monitor to make your cardio exercise measurable and to ensure your heart rate remains in the ‘training zone’ for the entire workout.

Dynamic stretching:Shoulder circles and shrugs warm up the upper body, combined with some gentle torso twisting. You can combine this with some dynamic legs stretches to prepare for strength work.

Strength / Resistance exercises: A park bench makes a fine foundation for strength exercises. Press ups on the back of a bench, tricep dips on the front, and using a resistance band looped through the bench all work the upper body without you even having to set foot in a gym. For lower body, try outer and inner thigh exercises holding onto the back of the bench, as well as ‘buns of steel’. Grassy areas are perfect for lunges and squats, which you will find more challenging outdoors as your have to balance on uneven terrain. Grassy areas are also perfect for plyometrics (to put it simply, jumping type of exercises) as they absorb the shock more than a gym floor.

Interval Training: Interval training is basically where you go faster for some bits, and then let your heart rate recover before pushing yourself again. This can have a strict structure or you can utilise ‘Fartlek’ training where you use natural landmarks such as trees and light poles as distance markers (i.e. sprint to one lamp pole, then recover for one, then sprint again etc). Alternatively if you have never run before, you can build up by jogging one lamp pole, walking the next, then jogging again. You can build up good distance this way and eventually run the whole way.

More cardio: Extra space means you can push yourself more, so set up some cones for sprints drills, using low walls for stepping (outside Dynamic Earth has some excellent steps), hills for training your heart to push your performance to the max all are ways of using your everyday outdoor environment to add interest to your workout. Skipping rope and hula hooping are fun ways of keeping your heart rate up.

Cool down: Use a park bench or wall to intensify calf stretches, if you are bendy enough, you can get your foot on the back of a park bench to stretch inner thigh and hamstrings. Alternatively walk / jog back home and enjoy a well deserved stretch (and abs session if you wish) from the comfort of your lounge room.

Drop me a line if you would like to book in for an outdoor workout and I can go over lots of ideas to keep you moving into spring and summer. The article above is as a guide only, always check if you’re unsure about any of the exercises.

And Finally… Extreme Unicycling Kris Holm extreme unicyclist

In response to my favourite fitness videos posting from last month, have a peek at this clip of freestyle unicyclist Kris Holm submitted by Life Coach Mark Lister.

Speaking of unicyclists, has anyone spotted a unicyclist commuting down Leith Walk around 9am weekdays? I think he works somewhere on Balfour Street, but haven’t been able to track him down. It’s one way to avoid the traffic jams anyway!

Have a happy and healthy February,

:)
Tracy

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March newsletter