WATCH NOW: Recording of Led Primary class, plus Conference

WATCH NOW: Recording of Led Intermediate class

Sharathji is undoubtably the foremost teacher of Ashtanga Yoga in the world today. If you’re unable to travel to India to study with him directly, these recorded classes are the next best opportunity to experience his teachings and the powerful benefits of the Ashtanga yoga practice under his guidance. You’ll get a chance to experience the atmosphere of his yoga shala in Mysore with the presence of many of his most dedicated students.

The Led Primary Class is followed by a conference in which this master of Ashtanga yoga answers questions from students from around the world. And the Led Intermediate recording offers a rare glimpse at one of Ashtanga yoga’s most challenging sessions.

WATCH NOW: Recording of Led Primary class, plus Conference
WATCH NOW: Recording of Led Intermediate class

If you plan to practice along with the recordings:

• For Led Primary, students should ideally be familiar with the Ashtanga Yoga Primary Series.
• For Led Intermediate, students should have been regularly practicing the Ashtanga Yoga Led Intermediate Series and be competent at least up until Dwipada Shirshasana.

“Everyone should practice yoga for their own well-being,” Sharathji says. “Once that happens, the whole planet becomes a spiritual place. The whole planet will become totally different. Everyone will realize their own responsibility in their life toward this planet, toward humanity. Yoga will give you that kind of knowledge.”

The post On-Demand: Watch Paramaguru Sharath Jois’s Recent Led Classes appeared first on Sonima.

Click here to sign up and reserve your spot. Class size is limited, so sign-ups are on a first-come basis.

This is a traditional counted Ashtanga Yoga Led Primary Series class. Ideally, students should be familiar with the Ashtanga Yoga Primary Series.

Hillam started practicing Ashtanga Yoga in 1994, and from 2001 travelled regularly to Mysore, India, to practice and study under Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and Sharath Jois. He continues to visit Sharath in Mysore whenever he is able. He has been the director of Jois Yoga since 2010. Hillam is also a long-term student of Sanskrit, yoga, and Vedic philosophy as well as Vedic chanting.

“At the beginning of the pandemic, the idea that I could teach yoga online seemed at best a short-term replacement for Iive classes,” Hillam says. “However, many students were able to practice more regularly, and those who did progressed nicely. Some were able to add the pranayama and meditation that they were unable to incorporate previously due to time constraints. I was also surprised how much I could perceive through the screen as the teacher. The lack of hands-on adjustments by me was replaced by more consistent and diligent effort by my devoted students, resulting in slow and steady progress.”

Sign up now for the next Led Primary Series class, which starts at 6:30 a.m. PT / 9:30 ET.

The post Online Ashtanga Yoga Led Primary Series With Andrew Hillam appeared first on Sonima.

Class will be live-streamed via Zoom at the following times:

• USA: Friday, February 11 at 7:30 p.m. ET / 4:30 p.m. PT
• India: Saturday, February 12 at 6:00 a.m. IST
• China: Saturday, February 12 at 8:30 a.m. CST
• Japan/Korea: Saturday, February 12 at 9:30 a.m. JST/KST
• Australia: Saturday, February 12 at 11:30 a.m. AEDT

Class size is limited, so sign-ups are on a first-come basis. Click here to sign up and reserve your spot, and follow @livesonima, @sharathjoisr, and @jois.yoga for updates.

This is a traditional counted Ashtanga Yoga Led Primary Series class. Ideally, students should be familiar with the Ashtanga Yoga Primary Series. Class will run for approximately 1 1/2 hours and will be followed by a one-hour conference, including question and answers with Sharathji about the Ashtanga Yoga practice and its philosophy.

“Everyone should practice yoga for their own well-being,” Sharathji says. “Once that happens, the whole planet becomes a spiritual place. The whole planet will become totally different. Everyone will realize their own responsibility in their life toward this planet, toward humanity, so that’s what we have to think about. Yoga will give you that kind of knowledge.”

Sign up now for the Led Primary Class and Conference with Paramaguru Sharath Jois.

The post Paramaguru Sharath Jois Livestream of Led Primary Class and Conference appeared first on Sonima.

It would be another seven years before he got his first clients, and another 11 before he opened his first clinic in San Diego. Today, he has 30 clinics across the world, millions of clients (including an impressive roster of professional athletes) functioning pain-free, and six best-selling books to his credit, with a seventh due out this week, a revised and updated version of his first, Pain Free.

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But it was 50 years ago that he figured out why, despite a year of medical treatment for wounds incurred in Vietnam, he was still in pain and, with that knowledge, began developing the Egoscue Method by which he has helped so many, including himself, become pain-free.

As he writes in this latest book, indeed in all of his books, “Humans are designed as symmetrical bipeds.” Which means we should be symmetrical from side to side, that is, one shoulder or hip should not be higher than the other. We should also be aligned vertically, which is to say that in profile, there should be a straight line from our ears to our ankle bones that runs through the center of our shoulders, hips, and knees.

That is not the case with most of us, and it wasn’t the case with Egoscue 50 years ago. We have eight load-bearing joints—shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles—and he realized that when one of those joints is out of position, some other part of the body has to compensate to enable us to function, which led him to a major discovery that too many medical professionals today still ignore: The source of the pain is rarely the source of the problem.

Related: The At-Home Workout That Will Help You Live Pain-Free

For an event like a car accident or broken bone, yes, the source and site of the pain are the same, but for the chronic musculoskeletal pain that more than 50 percent of all Americans suffer from, the source and site are different and are the result of one part of the body compensating for what another part can no longer do. For instance, if you have back pain, it’s probably because your hip is out of alignment. And yet, most remedies for back pain treat the back, perhaps alleviating the symptom of pain but never addressing the actual source, and therefore never fixing the original problem.

That’s what Egoscue spent years figuring out how exactly to do. Knowing that “bones do what muscles tell them to do,” he experimented with an array of stretches and exercises designed to get our muscles to move our joints back into their proper position. Egoscue had learned that when our hips are where they’re supposed to be, our back stops hurting. Or when our ankles are functioning the way they’re designed to, our knees stop hurting. Or when our shoulder can move as it was intended, we no longer get tennis elbow or carpal tunnel syndrome. It took time for him to learn how muscles move joints, but eventually he learned enough to develop the Egoscue Method, his revolutionary program to return our postures to their original design and thereby relieve ourselves of chronic pain.

Egoscue explores all of this anatomical and physiological information in his expansive new Pain Free, the revised and updated edition of his 1999 best-seller. The book is written in such engagingly accessible prose that one needn’t be a PhD in either field to readily grasp what he’s saying. But much of this information has been available since he wrote his first book decades ago. Why the revision?

“When I wrote my other six books,” he says, “we had a stronger tradition of self-reliance in our country. But we’ve lost a lot of that. We’re more isolated as individuals now than we’ve ever been before, and since the advent of social media, we’ve become more reliant upon the opinion of others in everything, including our pain. We’ve succumbed to this idea that somebody else knows more about our bodies than we do. That’s just not true. But we have to convince people now in ways we’ve never had to before that they really do have the capacity to relieve themselves of their pain.”

That gentle convincing explains, in part, the warmer tone in this updated version: less clinical, more consoling and encouraging.

But he also wrote this revision because, as a society, we are in a different place than we were when he first devised the Egoscue Method—and that place isn’t good. “Many Americans now are physically weak, and by weak, I mean they have lost the ability to remain upright,” Egoscue says. “It’s astonishing to me how many people cannot stand on one foot and, sadly, don’t even know they’re supposed to be able to. We have lost postural stability. Forty years ago, we could treat clients by focusing on strength because they were still stable. Now, we have to stabilize them first before we can strengthen them.” The culprit here is our sedentary lives.

Related: The Simplest Change You Can Make for Better Health

As Egoscue points out in the book, “In the 1920s, manual workers outnumbered knowledge workers by a ratio of 2:1. By 1980, that ratio was reversed.” All that sitting impacts our postures and leads to pain.

“Evolution didn’t stop once we got upright,” Egoscue explains. “It continues, and our evolving, or de-evolving, depends upon the stimulus of our environment.” Right now, for too many, that stimulus doesn’t involve movement. Sadly, that affects more than just our bodies, a mind-body relationship that Egoscue also explores in this book. “We know that exercise improves our endurance, strength, and cardiovascular health,” he writes, “but movement is also directly connected to feelings of hope, happiness, connection, and confidence.”

The book also contains testimonials from beneficiaries of the Egoscue Method, some famous, some not, including a wonderful foreword from NFL Hall-of-Famer John Lynch, who gives a share of the credit for his success to Egoscue. “Quite simply,” Lynch writes, “Egoscue is the most brilliant person I have ever encountered when it comes to the human body and unleashing its vast potential.” When Lynch was hired as general manager for the San Francisco 49ers, he immediately incorporated the Egoscue Method into the team’s fitness regimen.

And of course, the book incorporates menus of E-cises (Egoscue exercises) to address the issues in your feet, ankles, knees, hips, and shoulders that are causing pain elsewhere in your body or reducing its ability to function at its full potential. The menus come with pictures and detailed explanations to make sure you’re doing the E-cises correctly.

Egoscue is notoriously reluctant to discuss himself, but when asked to reflect on his accomplishments these past 50 years, he said that his favorite fact is that he’s created competition. “You can imagine the ridicule and scorn I endured when I started talking about posture as a source of most of our pain. But now that thinking permeates the healthcare world, and we have competitors, and I think that’s wonderful. We’re figuring it all out together, and in the end, that can only benefit us all.”

True enough. But it all started with Egoscue 50 years ago, and this newest edition of Pain Free (available on Amazon) is the ideal commemoration of how far we’ve come in our understanding of the relationship between our posture and our pain.

The post Pain-Free Reading: The (Updated) New Book from Pete Egoscue! appeared first on Sonima.

Yes, we like to be heard, but deep down, we all know we could be better listeners. And when we think of self-improvement and healing, whether in modern science or traditional teachings, we think first about how to adjust the body, what to eat, or what medicines to take.

But what if simply listening more closely could unblock the essential areas of life in which we struggle?

In fact, we are all born with unique sound vibrations that can be powerful sources of strength, says Sanjeev Verma, Sonima’s meditation adviser.

“What I have discovered, through my meditative awakenings, is that every single human being is born with 108 sound vibrations,” Verma says. “These vibrations are embedded in you at the time of birth. As soon as you entered the whole world, the whole universe imprints on you not only the light of the planets, not only its electromagnetic fields and its energy, but also its sounds.”

But identifying and reconnecting with these individualized seed sounds can be difficult, especially in a multimedia world full of distractions. “Normally, these sound vibrations are not being recognized by us, because they are deep inside us,” Verma says. “We must try a meditative state to hear these inner sounds.”

The innovative new Ananta mobile application, which launched to the public this week, is specifically designed to help people find their inner sounds and incorporate them into meditations that can help them across all areas of life. The Ananta app is now available on both the Apple and Android platforms.

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Ananta is a Sanskrit word that means infinite and limitless, and this new meditation app focuses on using your sounds to more easily enhance your life, fulfill your desires, and become limitless with the practice of mantras that are unique to your goals.

While each of us is born with the 108 sound vibrations, Verma says, there are six to 10 that most influence all aspects of our lives. The unique feature of the Ananta app is that it guides users through an onboarding process that allows them to quickly identify their core six to 10 seed sounds, and then customize them around specific goals.

Once users have downloaded the app, they choose their birth details and then a specific purpose. Ananta then generates the appropriate seed sound and a related meditation mantra that Verma recommends people listen to for 10 to 20 minutes every day over a 28-day cycle for maximum results.

“The human cycle is 28 days, and so as you listen, it raises your vibrational field and then you start to have a higher experience,” Verma says.

Ananta is designed to support beginner, intermediate, and advanced mediation experiences, and it focuses on six overall areas, with more specific purposes within each:

• Relaxation and stress relief
• Reducing anxiety
• Focus and productivity
• Being more mindful
• Healthy lifestyle
• Manifesting effects in your life

Users can try one customized mantra for free ongoing, and two more for 30 days. A full subscription unlocks many more unique meditations and ways to customize your goals and is $3.99 a month or $37.99 annually.

Every experience is highly customized to the individual and their seed sound that will unblock their challenges. Take career, for example. “You’ll go on the purpose screen, click ‘career,’ and select from some options,” Verma says. “That then identifies and leads you to your sound, which is the vibrational feel of your career. And that will be fixed. That is for you, and it’s fixed. And if somebody else uses that sound for their career, it’s just not for them, because theirs would be different than yours.”

Ready to listen? Download the sound-breaking new Ananta mediation app from the Apple or Android platforms.

The post Tap into Your Seed Sounds to Unlock Your Full Potential appeared first on Sonima.

Before we reveal how our bear crawl differs from others, first, a quick anatomy lesson. The body has eight load-bearing joints—the shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles. When those load-bearing joints are in alignment both vertically and horizontally, the body is symmetrical and functions the way it was designed to. However, when one of those joints gets out of alignment, the body begins to compensate in other areas, leading to postural dysfunction. This can lead to many unwanted consequences, including a limited range of motion in your other joints. Most bodies become out of alignment largely because of our sedentary lifestyles. I won’t claim sitting is the new smoking, but I do see it as a sport that we need to train our bodies for. (If you prepare for the chair, sitting can burn calories and create energy. Here’s how!)

One very common unwanted consequence of a compromised posture is pelvic dysfunction, and this has an unfortunate effect on the psoas muscle. The psoas is a major, complex set of three muscles that extend from the lower middle spine down to the top of the thighs, or femurs, and includes something commonly called the hip flexor. In its original design, the body uses the psoas and hip flexor for a great number of activities, including walking, running, standing up, and sitting down. But for many of us, that hip flexor—and the psoas in general—has gone long underused, and the pelvis has grown so accustomed to never having to engage the hip flexor that, in many instances, it simply doesn’t anymore.

Related: The Muscle You’ve Never Heard of But Need to Know

That’s amazing, right? I never cease to marvel at how incredible the human body is in its ability to work for us even when it’s not functioning properly. That said, we are healthier when it is fully functional.

Now, back to the bear crawl. When most people do the bear crawl, they do so with the pelvis up higher than the head and in trunk flexion, which means the back is humped up. I will refer to this as the traditional bear crawl, and it looks like this:

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Our modified version of the bear crawl in Elev8d Fitness anticipates and counteracts pelvic dysfunction. The move starts in the same position as the traditional bear crawl on your hands and feet. Next, focus on keeping your hips on the same plane as your head so that your back resembles a table top—flat and un-arching. Lastly, drag the hips back to your heels, creating a straight line through the shoulders, hips, and knees. It looks like this:

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In this position, the psoas is engaged, and that has major benefits: It causes the big posture muscles in the front and back of your body to activate the eight load joints throughout this exercise in a range that they’re designed to achieve. Thus, it becomes a total-body exercise so that you are getting twice the workout in half the time. You are now maximizing the efficiency of the exercise.

What’s more, when done correctly, our bear crawl is fatiguing, and in a good way. You emerge from doing it feeling more energized, and that’s neither an illusion nor a fluke. Engaging the entire body—especially parts that have been long dormant like the psoas—facilitates a utilization of glucose through all of your cells and promotes a huge upsurge in blood oxygen. In other words, the Elev8d bear crawl gives you a natural sugar high and oxygen high.

While most people perform this exercise in only one direction, Elev8d challenges you to move backward and sideways too, kicking one leg out wide and using the hands to move you to that leg before you bring the other along. Aim to pinch your shoulder blades together throughout the movement to achieve the best form.

By doing Elev8d’s bear crawl correctly in all directions, you are overcoming any inherent postural dysfunction, engaging the psoas, and compelling your joints and limbs to have full range of motion as the body was intended to move. The exercise, then, is an unbelievably demanding total-body activity. As you’ll see in our Elev8d Fitness workouts, it is incorporated with other exercises in a very specific sequence to help align your body and maximize your effort in minimal time. But don’t wait. Start practicing Elev8d bear crawls now—in your living room or at your gym—and start reaping the rewards of this game-changer.

Photography by Hailey Wist

Discover how efficient and effective Elev8d Fitness workouts are! Try the 8-Minute Weight-Loss Workout Series and the Total-Body At-Home Workout Series.

The post Master the Bear Crawl, Change Your Body appeared first on Sonima.

“Enjoyment and performance depend upon the body working as a unit,” says Pete Egoscue, co-creator of Elev8d Fitness, a new premium home fitness program brought to you by the experts of Sonima. Too many runners skip upper-body work in lieu of calf stretches, not just in their warm-ups but in general. Because of this, Egoscue can usually spot runners even in street clothes. “Their lower-body muscles such as the quads and calves are quite developed but their upper body is very slight,” he says. “Their shoulders are rounded forward and they’re in a forward flex position.”

That positioning can have countless detrimental effects, creating a feedback loop that perpetuates dysfunctional posture. “If you’re just concentrating on your lower body and not paying attention to your upper body, several things happen that provide inefficiency and degradation of performance,” Egoscue says.

The main issue is functionally: You lose efficiency of the counterbalance of the shoulder load joint, one of the eight major load joints in the body. Without proper shoulder functionality, runners often see a trickle-down effect.

For one, you lose the flexion-extension and straight ahead action of the leg. Runners in particular need to move forward in an efficient way, Egoscue says. Think about it: The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. However, if your feet turn out (a common issue for many of us as modern day life doesn’t promote a vertical flexion-extension posture), you’re not able to access your full potential. “Your talent is writing a check and your body can’t cash it,” Egoscue says.

Related: How Much Muscle Soreness Is Too Much?

Connecting your body’s load joints can lead to running proficiency and performance. Elev8d Fitness warm-ups and cool-downs work your entire body and load-bearing joints through full ranges of motion. Plus, a post-workout cool-down puts the body back in ‘neutral’ when you’re finished, Egoscue says. This gives you the ability to meet your run talent with an efficient body, furthering an effective fitness routine.

Ready to be a better runner? Try this running primer:

Core Abs | 30 Seconds Each Side:

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Crunch to Hip Bridge | 30 Seconds:

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Elev8d Flying Trapezius | 30 Seconds:

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Da Vincis | 30 Seconds:

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Become a more efficient, faster runner with Elev8d Fitness! While any of the workouts can help, we recommend the Total-Body At-Home Workout Series or the 8-Minute Strength Workout Series for runners.

The post Why Elev8d Fitness Is the Perfect Warm-Up for Runners appeared first on Sonima.

But it shouldn’t come as a surprise; busted shoulder blades are endemic among computer users. When we sit at a desk all day, staring into a computer, we’re basically doing the opposite of everything our strong, erect-spined, solid-hipped ancestors did—our shoulders round forward, our back hunches, our head juts out, and our pelvis tilts under. This modern day position inhibits the shoulder blades’ ability to pull back and down…which is where nature intended them to be, so they can create space for the shoulder joint to move as our arms pull, pull, reach, and stretch. That’s why the position of the shoulder blades can be indicative of other dysfunctions happening in the body. To discover what they are, you just have to tune in.

Why Your Shoulder Blades Matter

Your shoulder blades, or scapulae, are a duo of triangular-shaped bones in the back, bookending your upper spine. Each scapula forms the socket of the ball-and-socket joints that are your shoulders. (The head of the humerus, or upper arm bone, is the ball.) Connected to the body by multiple muscles and ligaments, the blades slide along the upper back as you move throughout your day.

“I can tell so much by looking at someone’s shoulder blades,” says Brian Bradley, fitness director of Elev8d Fitness, the new home workout platform developed by the experts at Sonima. “The position of the shoulder blades tells me what’s happening in the thoracic spine, the lower back, and the hips.” It’s all connected. Dysfunction in the shoulder blades is an indicator of misalignment in the rest of the body, and vice versa.

The shoulder blades are intended to support other smaller muscles in the back and shoulder. When they are imbalanced and weak, the structure of the body collapses and these smaller, secondary muscles end up compensating. This leads to strain, dysfunction, and a host of physical effects. Slumping over at a computer, for example, contracts your back and collapses your abdominal muscles, which weakens the torso and deactivates the hips.

Related: The #1 Most Overlooked Muscle in Your Workout

And it’s all about the hips. “If the upper back, the spine, and the thoracic are out of alignment and creating compensation, it’s because there is a hip problem below,” Bradley says. The hips are like the epicenter of the body. If your pelvis is out of alignment, then your movement is compromised and your upper back tries to take over, which can lead to backaches and overall discomfort. But if you align and activate the hips, you remove limitations from the spine and shoulders, and they can move freely and functionally. Moreover, misalignment can affect lymph drainage, breath, and digestion. All systems are interconnected. “Think about it: You have 32 feet of intestines sitting on your pelvic floor,” Bradley says. “If your hip is out of alignment, so is your digestion.”

What’s more, activating foundational muscle groups increases your metabolic rate. “When you engage the psoas (the deep core muscle connecting the lumbar to the femur), it turns on the rest of the hip flexors, which carries into the spine and up into the neck and shoulders,” Bradley says. “By doing this, you are using your body at full capacity; you are engaging 100 percent of your muscles.” This total-body activation simply asks your body to use more energy, breathe more oxygen, and in turn, burn more calories.

Related: Always Tired? Put Down the Coffee, and Try This Energizing 8-Minute Workout Instead


The Key to Balancing Your Shoulder Blades

This isn’t about sitting up straighter or willing yourself into better shoulder position. “Pulling your shoulder blades together is a waste of your time without the link to rest of the body and activating at the hips,” Bradley explains. Your focus should be on working the deep muscles in the thoracic spine, the core, and the hip flexors—strengthening from the inside out.

The move below can help restore balance and strength to your shoulder blades. Of course, one exercise is not enough to keep everyone’s scalpulae happy and healthy; that can only happen in the context of a full-body plan, such as Elev8d Fitness. This new home workout program from the experts of Sonima keeps your four key sets of load-bearing joints—the shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles—properly aligned. But an exercise like the one below can help you connect the shoulder blades to the hips, activating and strengthening the deep core muscles.

Standing Arm Circles

The foot position in this exercise is crucial: pointing your feet straight forward essentially traps your hips to react to the shoulder position. As your upper body moves, your hips work to stabilize. The movement of the arms fires the abdominal wall and the hip flexors and pinches the shoulder blades back.

Begin by standing with your feet hip-width apart, your toes pointed straight ahead. Extend your arms out to your sides at shoulder level, palms down with your fingers gripped flat onto the pads of your hands. Squeeze your shoulder blades together and down, pretending you are tucking them into some imaginary back jeans pockets. Keeping them squeezed and down, rotate both arms forward in small circles (about six inches in circumference). Complete 40 circles. Next, face your palms up and complete 40 backward rotations. If your shoulders begin to shrug or roll forward at any time, take a break, then recommit your shoulder blades to the down-and-back position.

Experience how Elev8d Fitness can keep your entire body healthy and balanced in little time. Check out the 8-Minute Strength Series and the 8-Minute Weight-Loss Series.

The post What Your Shoulder Blades Can Tell You About Your Health appeared first on Sonima.

Running can be hard on the body, and doubly so if you’re out of alignment. Impact from each stride travels through the body, and if the eight load-bearing joints (shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles) aren’t aligned, you’re asking for trouble. This alone is a good reason to incorporate dynamic warm-ups and cool-downs before and after your runs.

Another common pitfall for runners is driving forward motion from the shoulders rather than the hips. “If you’re running with your elbows winging out and your shoulders rounded forward, it could be because your hips aren’t activated,” says Brian Bradley, fitness director of Elev8d Fitness, the new home workout program from the experts of Sonima. “People are tearing their rotator cuff running because they are overcompensating with the shoulders.” But there’s a way to fix this.

The Shoulder Problem

The shoulders shouldn’t factor into the forward motion of the run. “It’s just not natural for you to drive your gait from your shoulders,” Bradley says. But when the back and shoulders are rounded forward and the hips are tucked under and inactive (and can happen when we sit most of the day), then the shoulders take over for the gait, rotating forward and back. This compensation is a surefire path to injury.

Your body should operate like a well-oiled machine—joints, muscles, and skeleton working in concert. If you have full range of motion in the load-bearing joints and your hips are driving the forward motion, this will naturally take your shoulders out of the equation. A smooth stride and pace is really all about functionality.

Related: A New Approach to Improving Flexibility

In order to be a functional runner, the arms should swing back and forth, and the shoulders should be down and back. If you look at a professional runner, you’ll notice they are upright, shoulders pulled back, upper back relatively still. Their arms swing, but their shoulders aren’t punching forward and back.

A Sequence for Function and Speed

It is essential to set your body into proper alignment before you introduce impact and rapid movement. These three exercises—excerpted from one of Elev8d Fitness’s eight-minute home workouts—free up the shoulders and activate the hips so that you are prepared to stress your system with a cardio workout (or strength training, for that matter).

To improve range of movement in the upper body, you need to free up the scapula, a.k.a. the shoulder blade bone. “The first exercise in this sequence, active cows face, teaches the arm bone how to function correctly in relationship with the shoulder blade. It’s really the same with the relationship between the femur and pelvis,” Bradley explains. This simple movement addresses range of motion in the shoulder, which shifts the mid-back, thoracic spine, and pelvis into better alignment.

Related: The #1 Most Overlooked Muscle in Your Workout

Sequence, Bradley stresses, is everything. Only when your shoulders are in a better position, are you ready for the next exercise, mountain climbers. “With your shoulders down and back, you’re ready to load them and fire your deep hip muscles,” he explains. “Your core will stabilize during this second movement.” Activating your core and hips further establishes function in the spine and shoulders.

Finally, the downward dog bent knee requires you load up the torso and the shoulders and hold the very position that was just activated by the mountain climbers. You’ll notice that in this final static position your upper body wants to collapse. It is crucial to pull the weight off your hands by pulling your hips back, tilting your pelvis forward, and firing the front hip flexors.

How Does This Translate to Running?

Once you’ve aligned your joints and activated your hips, how do you optimize for speed? Leg stride is actually the easy part. The key, Bradley says, is the arm swing. “The body naturally knows how to run, your legs know how to move,” he says. “But if you want to be the fastest person, you need to learn to arm pump as fast as you can.” The hips are driving the movement, yes, but the arm swing will take your pace to a new level.

Faster, stronger, fitter—whatever your goal, Elev8d Fitness can help you reach it! Try the Flat Belly Workout Series or the Move Better, Feel Better, Look Better Workout Series and see for yourself.

The post 3 Targeted Moves for a Faster Run appeared first on Sonima.

When you perform drills and exercises at full-tilt, your body’s stronger muscles overpower the small-but-all-important stabilizers. Those little muscles play a huge role in protecting you from injury.

If you slow things down and force those tiny muscles to work, the results can be profound as 30-year-old former pro lacrosse player Roy Lang discovered.

“Slowing down is the hardest thing,” Lang says. “The lacrosse mentality is that if you aren’t moving as fast as you can all the time, you aren’t working hard. Everything I did throughout college and high school was about how to be the fastest and how to do the most reps.”

So it was surprising, to say the least, when Lang launched into his first-ever Elev8d Fitness workout and “got my butt kicked.” How could that happen to a guy who trains sometimes twice per day? Because when you focus on movement quality, rather than quantity (number of reps), resistance (how much weight is on the bar), or speed, you challenge your body in an entirely different way. It’s a training technique that Lang wishes he’d tried years ago.

“The reason I got injured after college was because I wasn’t paying attention to those little things,” Lang says.

Like many gifted athletes, Lang got by on raw talent, strength, and speed for years. Those traits took him far: He earned all-everything honors as a captain at St. Ignatius College Prep, one of the top-rated lacrosse high schools in California. He was then recruited by Cornell University, where he played in the National Championship and the Final Four. He was a First Team All-American Midfielder, a two-time First Team All-Ivy, and a two-time Academic All-Ivy. Lang was then drafted by the Rochester Rattlers and played two years professionally. But early in his pro career, he paid a hefty price for his all-out, all-the-time approach to training.

“My lower back gave out at 24,” Lang says. “It was the off-season. I was doing a workout with heavy power cleans and heavy squats when a shooting pain went through my left leg. I’d never missed a game in my life, but suddenly I couldn’t lift my leg for a few months.”

The injury, along with some of the financial realities about playing lacrosse at the pro level (let’s just say there isn’t NBA money in it), led Lang to switch careers. He’s now a salesman at a Silicon Valley software firm. And while he walked away from the pro athlete life, he’s just as demanding on his body as ever, regularly competing in basketball and club-level lacrosse, and training in the weight room to stay sharp for both.

Lang’s hardcore workout regimen is evident when you meet him. He’s tall and chiseled with formidable shoulders. Visible veins run down his arms and marble his forearms. How could someone who’s already in such great shape benefit from adding Elev8d’s short workouts?

Related: Low-Intensity Interval Training: Better Results by Doing Less

“An extreme athlete can view this training as a ‘work up’ rather than a ‘workout,'” says Brian Bradley, director of Elev8d Fitness. “Consider it like the dynamic warm-up soccer teams use in Europe.”

Elev8d Fitness is an alignment-based, home workout program co-founded by Pete Egoscue, renowned physiologist and creator of the Egoscue Method. There are two elements of method that make it even more effective than a typical dynamic warm-up. First, the moves help you develop better body awareness. Second, they are distinctly effective at improving your alignment and balancing your musculature. So not only do you get a great workout, but the benefits last long after your training session ends.

Lang, who did an Elev8d Fitness workout before training and games with his club team, says he noticed big differences.

“[During workouts] I noticed that I was ready to go a lot faster,” Lang says. “I used to need the first 5 to 15 minutes of a game to loosen up. But having those muscles activated helped a lot. I definitely plan on using it before lacrosse from now on.”

Meanwhile, off the field, Lang is standing a little taller, feeling more energized, and generally has a better idea of what’s going on with his body overall.

“I’m slowing down and actually listening to my body,” Lang says. “You start to realize how you’d let some things go, like hip mobility and alignment. Now, I can tell when my hips are tight—and I know how to fix it.”

Related: How Working Out 4 Times a Week Will Change Your Body

Those are a lot of benefits to reap from workouts that can take as little as eight minutes to complete. (Some old habits die hard, however, so Lang consistently took on the 16-minute versions.) As his new job has taken up more of his time and led to some travel, he found that the workouts gave him a way to stay in shape on those days.

“I think I’ll be doing Elev8d Fitness even more as I get older. I have kids and can’t spend an hour and a half at the gym,” Lang says.

Lang wanted to be clear, however, that he’d recommend Elev8d Fitness to any athlete, especially younger ones. In fact, it may be even more important for up-and-coming athletes because the program helps strengthen the things that other training methods miss.

“My advice would be to take it slowly and seriously. I would recommend [Elev8d Fitness] even more than yoga because it’s strengthening the joints. And the joints are what goes first,” Lang said. “You’ll find a lot of value in correct posture, hip strength, and mobility. This is 100 percent about taking care of your body.”

Boost energy and athleticism and feel amazing with Elev8d Fitness! Try the Move Better, Feel Better, Look Better Workout Series or the 16-Minute Challenge Series.

The post The 8-Minute Cross-Training Workout Every Athlete Should Do appeared first on Sonima.

The same is often true with our physical fitness. Exercise gets relegated to its own corner—a gym, perhaps, or maybe a yoga studio—and is something we schedule around our busy lives, sneaking a workout in before or after work or a day chasing the kids.

“If people thought differently about exercise and moved their body through 360 degrees of range of motion as part of daily life, they would be so much healthier,” says Brian Bradley, fitness director for Elev8d Fitness, the new home workout program from the experts of Sonima. Instead, most of us sit for the majority of our day. And when we do exercise—or rather “work out”—many of us default to activities that favor repetitive motions, like running, walking, cycling, and weightlifting. These may be good for boosting cardiovascular fitness, but they’re not so great for putting the body through all of its natural motions.

Elev8d Fitness has a radically different approach. Centered around easy, short routines that tap into eight core movements (over, under, around, sideways, rotation, flexion, extension, and push/pull), Elev8d Fitness encourages the body to move in the way that it was naturally designed to move. When done correctly, these eight core movements help re-align the body, creating total-body functionality and fitness.

Even more, moving this way is fun. It turns out that many of the schoolyard games that we played as kids organically incorporate the eight core movements. These workout games don’t require any special equipment, and they cost you nothing. So grab your friends or recruit your kids and get moving in a playful way. Here goes:

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Hopscotch

A game that dates back to Roman times, hopscotch is about as simple as it gets. You can draw a series of blocks with sidewalk chalk, or just use sticks or the existing lines and cracks in a sidewalk to create your course. Toss a stone (also called a “lucky”) into one block, then hop/jump on one foot, alternating right and left, skipping over the block where the stone landed. Make it harder by jumping with two feet over several blocks or adding a hopscotch hurdle (i.e., something you have to jump or step over like a brick, log, or tree trunk), using your hands and arms to propel yourself—all of which incorporates the over movement principle in the eight core movements.

Related: This 8-Minute Beginner Workout Will Make You Love Exercise

Limbo

Have your friends or kids hold a broomstick or small tree limb chest high, then you know the drill. Do your best to gracefully go under it. To use the core under movement, try doing an Elev8d Side Under or Elev8d Front Under—loading your weight on alternate hip joints to duck under the stick. After each successful limbo round, the stick gets lowered. The one who gets cleanly under the stick at its lowest point wins!

Dizzy Izzy Race

This one was always a camp favorite. The objective is for participants to get so dizzy you can’t run straight, which becomes hilarious, if not dangerous. But the Elev8d Fitness version is a bit tamer (and safer). Make a starting line, then about 10 long strides away, place a golf club or softball bat (a tennis racket or umbrella will also do). You and your opponents line up behind the starting line, then run to the object and place your forehead on the top of it. Sidestep circles around it five times in one direction, then five times in the opposite direction. After the “dizzy” circles, drop the object and run (carefully!) back to the finish line. The movement objective here is around, moving your body in a circular motion. (You can skip the “dizzy” part by beginning in a plank, then circling your feet five times around in each direction, racing to see who does it fastest.)

Related: Your Workouts Really Don’t Need to Be That Long

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Crab Walk Relays

This one will get you moving sideways and might also cause side-splitting laughter! If you have four or more people, do this as a relay. If not, just do it as a two- or three-person one-way race. Divide into pairs about 15 feet apart from each other. One partner assumes the crab walk position then shuttles/scurries/crabwalks sideways to the other person, who then takes off back to the original starting position. The first crab to cross the finish line wins!

Twister

Bonus points if you have an actual Twister game mat and spinner for this one. If not, improvise using whatever you have on hand in four different colors (bandanas, t-shirts, yard leaves) and two different coins (heads on one = hands, tails= foot; and on the other coin, heads = left, tails = right). Appoint one person the “caller,” who either spins the Twister board or tosses the coins to come up with a color and body part (ex: right hand orange). Then you have to move your right hand to an orange spot. The core movement at work here is rotation. The twistier, the better!

Skipping Races

Want to put an instant smile on your face? Try skipping! It’s almost impossible to skip down the sidewalk without feeling childishly joyful. It’s also a terrific exercise, getting your arms pumping and your hips flexing as your knees come high (incorporating the flexion core movement). So challenge a friend to a skipping race, or do a skipping relay across a lawn.

Reverse Tree Climb

Climbing up a tree as an adult can be a little iffy (some things are best left to the kids), but a reverse tree climb is a great way to incorporate some gentle back bending—tapping into the extension core movement. Find a tree or pole (or a wall will do) then with your back to the tree, raise your hands over your head and reach back for the trunk (or wall). Your body will go into a gentle backbend. Challenge your exercise partner to see who can “climb” your hands down the lowest. Go easy if you have neck issues.

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Tug of War

A classic! So easy, so fun, and occasionally useful, if you need to settle a score in a playful way. Tug of War is also a wonderful way to tap into the push/pull core movement that engages upper-body strength. Grab a rope (a beach towel or blanket will also do) and make a line in the sand or yard. Line up your team on one side, and pull and tug to your hearts’ delight. The side that successfully pulls the other over the line wins. Domination at its best!

Discover how much fun working out can be with Elev8d Fitness! Try the classic 8×8 Workout or the 16-Minute Workout Challenge Series.

The post 8 Fun Exercise Games to Make You Forget You’re Working Out appeared first on Sonima.

“The fitness world has convinced us that you can be fit only with extreme effort,” says Pete Egoscue, world-renowned physiologist and co-founder of Elev8d Fitness, the new home workout program from the experts of Sonima. “They’ve convinced everyone that fitness is hard and that the key is the more effort you apply, the better your results. In essence, more is better.”

But the focus on quantifying anything and everything in your fitness routine is counter-productive. Doing so takes the focus off of the goal—being healthy—and puts it on numbers and ever-increasing levels of effort.

First, there’s no correlation between an increase in numbers and fitness. We’ve all seen the guy with hulking arms who can bench press 400 pounds but can’t lift his arms over his head. In no way should that lack of mobility be construed as fitness. Indeed, one of the primary ingredients that defines fitness for Egoscue is a full range of motion. So much of what we do, especially in gyms, provides zero benefit for our range of motion.

But there’s another reason that obsession with numbers can lead to an unproductive cycle: It’s not very fun. “That’s why so many people who join gyms stop going after a few weeks,” says Egoscue, who considers fun the second ingredient that defines fitness.

Remember How to Play 

In an effort to track and quantify, we’ve lost our ability to simply play. Think about play in decades past—a sepia-tinged, nostalgic vision of kids playing. It’s one part Calvin and Hobbes, one part summertime stickball, a dash of “Ring Around the Rosie”—all innocence and effortless joy. No one calls it fitness; they call it childhood. There’s no counting reps or judgments about whether Sally ran faster today than she did yesterday. It’s just about having a good time.

Related: How Your Feelings Affect Your Workout

“Play is fun because there are no judgments associated with it,” Egoscue says. “There’s just the joy of participation. There’s the joy of self-actualization. That’s where games came from. That’s where sport comes from. All sport started with a sense of play.”

It may be tough to scare up enough players for a game of stickball in the street, but it’s probably not especially difficult to go for a run in the woods. Or instead of today’s trip to the gym, why not head to the local playground for a half-hour of tag with your kids and see how you feel afterward? Or say you do go to the gym. Rather than follow a prescribed workout, just do what you feel like doing. Jump around or do a few somersaults. A sense of play can breathe life into your fitness routine. You just have to let it.

Fun Is More Effective

I ran a lot one summer and fall, training for the New York City Marathon. Spend 15 seconds Googling and you can find any number of marathon training guides, every week mapped out, each day with its own goal. (Even rest is programmed.) I had a GPS watch that I’d wear on training runs, which told me how fast I was running, how far I went, and how many strides I took per second. I was constantly aware of numbers, times, speed, and more. Information overload.

On one long run, I left the watch at home. I had an approximate path mapped out in my head, but I let my body guide me. If I wanted to turn left, I turned left. If one street looked interesting, I ran down it. I saw my surroundings and enjoyed the run. And when I got home and checked my time, I realized that I ran faster than I had previously. By letting go and having fun, I improved.

Related: This 8-Minute Beginner Workout Will Make You Love Exercise

Elev8d Fitness is predicated, in large part, on having fun. It’s full of exercises that recall childhood freedom. The workouts get you down on the ground and moving around in ways many of us haven’t in far too long. What’s more, there are no set numbers. Yes, the workouts are structured in eight, 16, and 24 minutes, and within each workout, each exercise is prescribed for a timed interval. “But you don’t have to do it for the whole time,” Egoscue says. “Do it as long as you can. If you can only do it for 15 seconds, fine. No one’s judging. That freedom takes away all the sense of drudgery and duty with fitness.”

The key to returning to play is to change what you’re experiencing. When it comes to working out, you should be looking to have a good time, have fun, experiment, and enjoy. Forget numbers and reps, and the neurosis of perfection. You’ll love the change and see the benefits.

Take it from Egoscue, a man who knows: “If you’re not having any fun in life, then what’s the point?”

Looking for more fun, playful workouts? Try the Elev8d Fitness eight-minute Get Back in Shape Workout or the Weight-Loss Workout Series.

The post The Secret to a Better Workout? Have More Fun with It appeared first on Sonima.

Some studies say 21 days is the magic number of repetitions necessary to establish a habit, while others triple that and swear by 66 days as the necessary length of time for a behavior to become ingrained as routine. Yet most of us know—by good old unquantifiable but undeniable personal experience—that even with more than 66 days, we’re going to slip.

One way to get around potential habit pitfalls is to focus less on creating and establishing enduring habits and more on mastering small, doable streaks. A four-day “streak” of daily jogging, for example, or a three-week streak of balancing exercises might not be a total fitness game-changer, but it can help elevate and energize stale routines or jumpstart new and more lasting habits. By essentially lowering the bar, these fitness streaks help you achieve some early, easy “wins” that build confidence and lead to bigger payoffs down the line.

Related: 14 New Workout Ideas That Will Make You Love Exercise

Here’s how it works: Pick your activity of choice—jogging, cycling, swimming, walking, yoga—and commit to doing it for a specific, short amount of time or distance during a streak of a specific number of days. The idea is to make it doable and fun.

And here’s the other part: Your “streak” should meet the following acronym requirements. (Disclaimer, this is borrowed and tweaked from the popular Project S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting rubrics.)

Specific

Don’t say I’m going to be “active”. Instead, define the exact activity, as in “I will run one mile.”

Time-bound

Be clear as to how long you will do this specific activity over what period of days, e.g.: “I will run one mile every day for 4 weeks.” You could further set time frameworks for how fast or slow you will do said activity if you wish.

Relevant

The activity should be relevant to your personal goals and to your history. For example, if you’ve never run a mile in your life, don’t make that your streak. Bike to the corner store and back or do 45 jumping jacks every day for five days. Choose something that fits into your lifestyle and your fitness toolkit.

Energizing

Choose a streak goal that will be an uplifting and fun energy boost, not a drag.

Related: Your Workouts Really Don’t Need to Be That Long

Attainable

This one speaks for itself. Don’t set yourself up for failure. Make a streak goal that’s reachable. Shorter is better. Need an easy option? Streak with these eight-minute home workouts from Elev8d Fitness, the new alignment-based fitness method from the experts at Sonima.

Kid-approved

As in, the KISS principle (Keep It Silly, Stupid). Have fun! Be kid-like and make your goal streak-worthy. If it’s fun, then you’ll be happy to do it and will ultimately be a successful streaker.

Start your streak now! Try the Elev8d Fitness eight-minute Sculpted Butt and Hips Workout or the Total-Body At-Home Workout Series.

The post The #1 Way to Create a Fitness Habit That Sticks appeared first on Sonima.

But here’s the thing: These aches or knots often give you insight into other areas of your body (not just that specific muscle) and your overall alignment. For instance, tight hamstrings could mean you have a limited range of motion in the joints above and below the muscle, or your pelvis, knee, or lower leg, says Pete Egoscue, co-founder of Elev8d Fitness, a total-body eight-minute workout program developed by the experts of Sonima.

Of course, massaging the area—or spending some time stretching—might help temporarily, but it doesn’t address the root of the problem. Here’s how to get to the bottom of poor flexibility and muscle tension.

Activating One Muscle to Stretch Another

“Instead of stretching a tight muscle, we’d rather ask why is the muscle tight,” says Brian Bradley, fitness director of Elev8d Fitness. Typically speaking, “tight muscles are essentially doing what the non-activated muscle group should be doing,” he explains.

In other words, if you have tight hamstrings, that could mean they’re working in overdrive to make up for the lack of effort from your hip flexors. Or if your lower back is feeling uncomfortable, that might reveal your core is putting in zero work. That’s why stretching that hamstring or your low back might feel good for a little while, but without addressing the opposing muscle group, it’ll just keep going back to its uncomfortable state.

Let’s focus on the core for a second and how weakness in your midsection can lead to discomfort and tightness in other areas. This is particularly true of your back. Research actually says there’s a strong tie between back pain in runners and weak core muscles. But strengthen your middle, and you could relieve those aches.

Related: The Surprising Muscle Weakness Linked to Back Pain

Taking that even further, many runners also often experience IT band syndrome. Often times, they’ll spend days on a foam roller trying to work it out and loosen it up. But really, they should look to their core. “Stretching alone will generally not be successful,” says Theodore Shybut, M.D., assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. “Many people don’t realize that tightness or contracture [shortening and hardening of the muscles] is usually secondary to a core weakness or muscle imbalance. A program of core strengthening that addresses the underlying deficiency and corrects running posture and mechanics will be much more successful.”

This same principle holds true in strength training. Take the deadlift, for instance. If you teach your core to fire properly, then you take the movement out of your back into your hamstrings and glutes where it belongs, Bradley says.

Why It’s Time for More Active Stretching

The debate about stretching—whether static works better before or after a workout or whether you should do more dynamic movements—has been going on in research for some time. But experts have come to a pretty agreeable conclusion: To get your body to move most efficiently during your workout, warming up with movement is key. In fact, one review concluded that static stretching pre-workout could hinder your performance, while another said it doesn’t reduce your risk of injury anyway.

“Your body is designed to warm to the task naturally. Walking warms your muscles for running, and running warms you up for jumping,” Egoscue explains.

The Best Way to Increase Range of Motion

Besides simply warming up the body with light movements, another solid way to get started in improving range of motion is with proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF), or a contract, relax, repeat approach to stretching or strengthening, according to research.

This is the exact approach Elev8d Fitness takes in their GLAM sequence, a workout to help improve your body alignment and range of motion. “Elev8d exercises go after balancing mechanics, which allow your body to become driven by, say, the hips, which are a load-bearing joint, rather than driven by the peripheral, tight muscles,” Bradley explains.

GLAM specifically fires up your glutes and hamstrings. “The GLAM sequence is great because it helps activate your balancing mechanism by using your big leg muscles, so your hip flexors can turn back on and your lower back and glutes won’t be firing all day or all workout,” Bradley says.

Ready to improve your flexibility and gain strength, in less than 10 minutes? Try the 8-Minute Strength Series or the 8-Minute Total-Body Transformation Workout.

The post A New Approach to Improving Flexibility appeared first on Sonima.

We asked Brian Bradley, fitness director for Elev8d Fitness, the new home workout program from the experts at Sonima, to tackle three frequently cited tips on creating a healthy routine. Below, he debunks each and offers a fresh, flexible way of thinking.

Old School Rule #1

Leave your gym clothes out at night so you can exercise first thing in the morning.

New school advice: Work out at a time of day that feels right for you.

If you’re an early bird with time to spare first thing, fantastic. But what if you need to be at work at 6 a.m. or work the night shift? What if you tend to wake up as Crabby McSloth and don’t feel human until your coffee kicks in? “The advice has to fit your lifestyle and your personality,” explains Bradley, a self-declared non-morning person. He also notes that morning workouts are often endorsed for their ability to jumpstart your metabolism for the day, “but a night workout can increase your metabolic rate in a similar way, keeping it elevated all night long while you sleep.” With an eight-minute Elev8d Fitness workout, specifically, “your body will be awake and more functional for the following 23 hours and 52 minutes, no matter what time of day you do it.”

Related: How Your Feelings Affect Your Workout

Another point to consider: “Scheduling tough workouts for the morning can be dangerous because your spine isn’t necessarily ready,” Bradley says. “As you spend all night in a horizontal position, the discs in your back are rehydrating with fluid. When you stand up in the morning, it takes time for those discs to return to a healthy thickness. Before they do, they have less give, leaving you more vulnerable to injury.” (That’s also why bending over first thing in the morning often feels so uncomfortable.)

Old School Rule #2

Set aside 30 minutes to an hour every day for exercise.

New school advice: Work out for eight to 16 minutes.

Elev8d Fitness workouts emphasize alignment and quality of movement so that you yield results without diminishing returns. You’ll break a sweat, but for less than 20 minutes. In other words, you can get the job done in far less time and with much better results, and still have 30 minutes left over to read a magazine, nap, play with your kids, or just veg out. Elev8d Fitness strongly believes that, when it comes to improving your fitness, alignment, and health, quality matters far more than quantity.

What’s the point of slogging away for 45 minutes on a recumbent bike if your body functions the exact same way afterward, if your hip flexors are just as tight, if your glutes still aren’t activated, and if your upper body hasn’t gotten a lick of action? Bradley likens the phenomenon of whiling away an hour at the gym, mindlessly bouncing from machine to machine, to a family staying home to spend “quality time” together…while everyone is glued to their phones.

Related: Low-Intensity Interval Training: Better Results By Doing Less

Elev8d Fitness rallies against the “more is better” philosophy and prioritizes sequence and efficiency. The eight core movements that underpin the program are designed to align the load-bearing joints (shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles), so that your body can function as it was designed to—as a unified, synergistic system. And the exercises are arranged in a specific order intended to align your body, activate deeper muscles, and take your joints through a full range of motion in fun routines that take only eight, 16, or 24 minutes. (Try the 8×8 Challenge.)

Old School Rule #3

Schedule your workouts in your calendar.

New school advice: Find your motivation.

Scheduling your workout in your smartphone calendar or day planner makes it feel like something to get out of the way. But you should enjoy moving, not think of it as a chore that needs to be ticked off your to-do list. Schedule your work meeting, not your workout.

Instead, find a workout you love, that feels joyful, free, and fun, and you won’t feel the need to slot it into the same “must-do” category as “dentist appointment”.

Bradley wants you to create an inherent motivator, or as he likes to say: “Find your why.” Your why is your main motivation for exercising. It doesn’t matter what it is—health, appearance, stress relief—so long as it speaks to you and gets you moving. Once you’ve tapped into your inspiration, fuel it with moves that set your inner kid free: jumps, crab walks, bear crawls, and backbends. The more you do them, the less they feel like work and the more fun they become. Pretty soon, these eight to 16 minutes will organically weave themselves into your everyday routine—no calendar alarms required.

The post The New Thinking on Old-School Workout Advice appeared first on Sonima.