A key element to living a healthy lifestyle is simply getting in some form of exercise that is enough to raise your heart rate and which is typically recommended to be 30 minutes per day. It doesn’t sound hard, but for some reason, sometimes getting in 30 minutes of heart pumping exercise is the last thing you want to do. If you’re tired, injured, bored, indifferent, frustrated, too busy, or any number of other excuses we can conjure up, there is one thing that will almost always bring motivation–the unconditional loving eyes and happily wagging tail of a four-legged friend.
My furry pal is Murphy Brown, a chocolate lab/pitbull mix who sits under my feet all day long, loyal and content. Her real passion is playing fetch; it’s something she could do for hours on end no matter how tired she gets. When she was a puppy she was more than happy to run alongside me for three or more miles. As she got older she cared much more about smells and marking various territories than she did at keeping pace. She can still run with me, but only for about 3 miles and I’m sure she’d rather be sniffing or chasing her ball in the backyard. Continue reading
The past couple weeks I have 
There are several names that came to mind for this post: “That’s the Spot!” “Ouch!” “Digging Deep,” “Seven,” and plenty of others, some of which sounded totally inappropriate and others that could be misleading. So as not to leave you wondering what all these possible post names relate to, they are tied to the deep tissue sports massage I had over the weekend.
Lately it feels like life has been moving full speed ahead; this is definitely true for me and many of my friends and people I come in contact with on a regular basis. We cram as much as possible into each day, we start early, end late, we say “yes” to everything, and end up rushing from one thing to the next.
Running is a fascinating sport to me because nearly anyone can run and it can be done at almost any stage in life. Of course, not everyone likes to run and there are many other sports that welcome athletes of all levels with open arms. I have a number of friends who consider themselves beginner runners and I know plenty of people who hate running but love biking, lacrosse, swimming, tennis, pilates, and every sport in between. In trying to define what kind of athlete I am, I also find myself asking what kind of athlete to I want to be. I have always considered myself a runner at an intermediate level with middle distances as my preferred “
They say that 
Usually whenever you are most tired, least motivated, and want to do anything but exercise is when you really should just strap on your running shoes and do something to get your heart rate going. I can think of many a run I dragged myself out to do and at the end I was always glad I had gone. Today was one of those days when I really just didn’t feel like putting on my running shoes.
The lower back is an integral muscle in the core and having a strong lower back and core contributes greatly to being able to maintain