February is National Heart Health Awareness Month!

By Holly Woods

When we hear the words "heart attack" many of us imagine an overweight, middle-aged man drenched in sweat and clutching his chest. Few women consider cardiovascular disease (CVD) as a woman's disease. According to the American Heart Association, cardiovascular disease is the leading killer of women over age 25. It kills nearly twice as many women in the United States than all types of cancer, including breast cancer.

The heart pumps blood that carries oxygen and nutrients to all the tissues of the body. If the action of the heart becomes inefficient, vital organs like the brain and kidneys will suffer. If the heart stops working altogether death will occur within minutes. Our life is completely dependent on a healthy functioning heart. Everyone can take steps to lower their risk for heart disease and heart attack. ItÍs time to get serious about your heart health.

Do not smoke as it drastically increases your risk. Women should get 60-90 minutes of exercise every day. Ask your membership advisor to help you create a schedule that will help you meet this guideline. Eat a healthy diet of fruits, vegetable, low or non-fat dairy, fish and chicken. Avoid baked goods as they are hiding saturated fat and cholesterol. Regular exercise and a healthy diet will help women maintain a healthy weight, a BMI of 18.5 and 24.9 and a waist smaller than 35 inches. Ask your membership advisor to calculate these measurements and to help you create a schedule that will help you maintain these guidelines. Lean; Sacha Taylor; Jennifer Dance

You're young, you're healthy, you probably don't need to worry about your heart, right? Wrong, says Suzanne Steinbaum, a cardiologist and spokesperson for the American Heart Association's Go Red For Women campaign. "If you have a heart, you can get heart disease," she says. "It's not just something that affects old people and men." In fact, heart disease is the number-one killer of women, accounting for one in three deaths each year, according to the AHA.

The difference between you and your 70-year-old neighbor, however, is the type of heart problems each of you is most at risk for. The most prevalent conditions in young women are congenital heart abnormalities, meaning you're just born with them, like a mitral valve prolapse, or genetic problems, Steinbaum says. About five out of every 500 female babies are born with heart defect, according to the AHA.

Your youth also doesn't excuse you from more "traditional" heart issues like heart attacks, clogged arteries, and strokes. Your set of personal risk factors, which include family history, lifestyle factors, and medical history, in addition to age, can give you a better idea of how worried you should be about your heart. For instance, the combo of birth control pills and smoking both common in younger women can up your risk of a heart attack by 20 percent, the AHA says.

Symptoms of heart problems can look different in young women so you should never ignore chest pain, unusual shortness of breath, heart palpitations, or pain on your left side, she adds. And even if you don't have active symptoms, it's still super important to know your risk factors and get regular check-ups.

"Eighty percent of the time heart disease is preventable with early intervention; it's the single biggest health factor under your control," she says. "We could nearly eradicate heart disease if people would get checked early and often."

Still think it could never happen to you? Check out the stories of these seven young women who've all experienced major heart problems.

February is Heart Health month and what better way to promote this that with some great fitness tips from Pole Control Studios! Exercise can have a surprising number of benefits such as:

∙ improve your cardiovascular fitness and muscular endurance

∙ increase in energy

∙ it can dramatically reduce the risk of coronary artery disease

∙ help lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels

∙ aid in weight control

∙ give self-esteem a measurable boost

∙ improve your sense of well-being.

The Elements of Fitness

There are four basic elements of physical fitness: cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, and flexibility. Each can be measurably improved with regular exercise. But keep in mind that exercising to build fitness is not the same thing as working out to improve athletic performance. To be truly fit, you should develop all four elements, not just one or two. Here are a couple examples of how yoga and strength training can improve your heart health.

Yoga may help reduce the risk of heart disease by decreasing cholesterol levels, lowering blood pressure, and by reducing stress and anxiety. In one study, researchers in India followed people with heart disease. At the end of one year, people who practiced a yoga-based lifestyle, including dietary changes and stress management, found an overall drop in their total cholesterol of 23 percent and a decreased LDL cholesterol of 26 percent, and an improvement of their heart disease overall between 43 and 70 percent.

Weight-Training more than 30 minutes per week decreased heart disease risk by 23 percent in the Harvard study. ÒWeight training can help lower high blood pressure, improve cholesterol levels and help control blood sugar levels,Ó says Dr. Hu. ÒBy increasing lean muscle tissue and decreasing fat tissue in the body, it may also help boost your metabolism to help you maintain a healthy weight.Ó

Taking a variety of classes offered at Pole Control along with Pole Pilates will help you reach your goals to become healthy and fit!

• Heart Health Guide for women..............................................................FREE

There’s stretching, and then there’s productive stretching. I now only refer to the stretching I do in sessions with my dancers as “productive stretching”.

Mere stretching is not suitable for my dancers. They deserve better than simply to stretch. Why choose to do only a “thing” (to stretch) over an activity with legitimate, progressive returns (a productive stretch)?

Which would you rather choose: Productivity, the act of actually accomplishing something worthwhile. Or, doing stuff for just for the sake of doing stuff.

As much as I like just doing stuff, I came to the conclusion last year that being productive and my happiness level have a direct correlation. It turns out productivity isn't such a bummer, and I actually like getting stuff done.

Case in point: I only do productive stretches with my dancers.

By my above definition of productivity as being the act of actually accomplishing something worthwhile, productive stretching therefore refers to stretching that actually accomplishes something worthwhile: An increase in tissue length and desired improvement in joint range of motion, in a way that improves execution of important movements and skills, AND can reduce the risk of injury. That’s a very important AND.

In other words, flexibility that will help you dance better and not hurt you.

Will it make you more flexible and better able to do gymnastics skills? Yeah maybe… But only up until you need hip replacements at the ripe age of 27. My iliofemoral ligaments hurt just thinking about it.

In real life, at the Pole studio with my dancers, I don’t do crazy stuff like that. I hardly stretch with my dancers at all, and when I do, it is generally limited to some dynamic stretching to warm up, and maybe some specific static stretches at the end of the workout.

Like I wrote about HERE, simply doing common stretches, like lunges to release your hip flexors aren’t that productive. In the case of the pelvis, active mobilization is a better strategy to improve alignment and help with “tightness”. By this I mean using your own muscles to move your bones into a new alignment, and then chill out there and take some deep breaths, praying your body will somehow remember how to stay put while you’re up walking around, dancing, and carrying your too-heavy bag in one hand, Starbucks cup in the other.

In a nutshell, you’re already flexible, perhaps well into a degree of being pathologically lax in the ligaments, and there are better things you can do with your supplemental training time than stretch more. By simply doing more and longer durations of stretching, a few undesirable things could happen:

Muscle becomes overstretched and weak

Muscle becomes inhibited and weak

Joint position becomes altered, causing things to rub together and hurt

Reduction of mobility of joint in one (or more) range of motion

Joint instability

Overstretching of joint capsule and ligaments

Trigger points and adhesions causing pain and weakness of muscle

That being said, there are a few areas of the body that I actually take a bit of time to stretch for longer durations:

1) Quads. Especially the lateral quad and rectus femoris. The need to maximally straighten, and often hyperextend the knee causes the quads to overwork. It’s inevitable-Is there a dance movement that doesn't require your quads to be on? Not really… Here’s a stretch I would do:

Things to consider:

Use a mat under your knee (I didn't because I was lazy, and my knees are in pretty good shape).

Try to bring your butt as far back to your heel as you can.

Squeeze your butt a little bit.

Take deep breaths- Each time you exhale try to drop your ribcage and engage your abdominals to squeeze all the air out of your lungs.

2) TFL and IT band. There guys are hard to stretch. The TFL becomes quite overworked because of the repetitive flexion, abduction and internal rotation of the leg. Fan kicks, and other fun things like that. They’ll get your TFLITBs.

The TFL is a hard bugger to stretch, and we still don’t even have consensus on whether you can even stretch the IT band (because it is a thick sheet of connective tissue, which they actually used to cut back in the day if it got tight and sore).

Anecdotally, one day while I was walking for a prolonged period of time (think 45 minutes+), my knees got suddenly very sore. I stopped and did the stretch below for what was probably about 30 seconds on each side, and I miraculously made it home with no knee pain

For me, that anecdotal experience is enough for me say that I recommend stretching your TFLITBs for about 30 seconds, two sets, AFTER class. Before bed or something. And ideally drink a bunch of water.

I like these two stretches:

Considerations:

Cross legs as much as you can.

Shoot your hips first back towards the wall behind you.

Twist and reach towards the rear heel.

Try to keep both feet flat on the ground.

BREATHE DEEP!

Hold for about 30 seconds, or 5 deep breaths each side, for at least 2 sets

Considerations:

Put your legs wider than hip width.

Cross one leg over the other and if you can, tuck your foot behind your ankle.

Flop your leg across your body.

Engage your abs and round lower back slightly.

Take 5 deep breaths (dropping the ribcage and squeezing your abs each time).

If you feel discomfort of pain in your knees or lower back, don't do this one!

3) Lumbar erectors. Again- when are these muscles NOT on? The lower back muscles often become hypertonic, and very overdeveloped, appearing visually hypertrophied (big and sausage-y).

You must be careful, very very careful, when stretching the lumbar spine area. Too much stress too soon will hurt your vertebrae, and rather than improving the length of the muscles you might increase their stiffness due to the additional stress and weird forces on the vertebrae and disks themselves. You don't want that.

The following 3  explanations aren't technically static stretches, but are repositioning exercises which I have found to be productive in helping to release tension from the lumbar spine erectors.

Considerations:

I stole this exercise from the Postural Restoration Institute. This one helps to release the lumbar erectors while activating the abdominals, hamstrings and adductors, and making you breathe a lot (which is a good thing).

Push feet into wall and pull heels down.

Lift tailbone slightly off the floor.

Squeeze a foam roller (or something) between your legs, hard. Breathe (you know what to do with your ribs and abs…).

You should feel this one in your hamstrings and inner thighs. If you don’t, keep practicing. Same goes if you feel your quads tense up (hint, your quads should stay relaxed)- Keep practicing!

Considerations:

This is more of a stretch for your upper back and neck.

With your knees slightly bent, try to reach your chest to your knees.

Flop your head down and gently press on the back of your head if you want to increase the stretch.

Take deep breaths and sink lower into the stretch. I shouldn't have to even mention your ribs or abs at this point.

Considerations:

Another PRI exercise to actively release the lumbar erectors.

You are trying to maintain contact with your mid and lower back (from about bra level to tailbone). Really round your lower back.

Same cues as the 90/90 hip lift, but now up on your feet! Breathe, squeeze, reach your arms.

4) Gastrocnemius and soleus. Another muscle group that is on about 85% of the time (not an actual statistic, but you know what I’m saying) are the plantar flexors (foot pointing muscles).

Ever wonder why dancers get really big juice calves? Because they use them for everything. Even things that don’t require the use of your calves. You’ll find a way! Use a muscle more and it will get bigger. For those of you who want bigger calves? Try dancing 6 days a week for 10+ years. That’ll do it.

Use this active drill to help mobilize your ankle to get more ankle flexing ability and release the plantar flexors a little:

Considerations:

Put your foot about 3-4 inches from the wall.

Try to get your knee to the wall without your heel coming off the ground and hold for 5 seconds.

Aim your knee over the middle of your foot or pinky toe.

Rock back onto the heel and flex your foot as hard as you can- You will feel the muscles at the front of your ankle working.

Repeat 5-6 times on each leg, for a few sets.

There might be other muscles that are productive to stretch statically for longer durations (like the hip external rotators and glutes), but I’m not 100% sure yet, so for now I keep the list short. And productive.

I’d love it if you try these out for yourself and see how they feel. I hope this was helpful. From now on you must only stretch productively. Deal?