How to Start Running – Without Feeling Like a Failure
Dec/090
Do you sometimes wish you were fitter? And maybe slimmer? I do. In fact, I’m determined to lose 7 kg in four weeks and get really fit. But how to get fit in a hurry – without spending hours at the gym?
One of the fastest ways to get fit is to start running.
It can be daunting if you’ve never run before. Especially if you have friends, colleagues or family members who talk casually about how they run 7 miles each morning before breakfast. (Don’t you sometimes want to throttle them?)
I just spent three weeks with my family and two of them, my brother and my niece, thought nothing of running for an hour-and-a-half after spending an exhausting day stumbling through thick rain forest. It made me feel like a fitness failure…
In the end, I started to run too. Because running is great for getting fit fast. There are some important advantages of running as a fitness strategy:
- It boosts cardiovascular fitness.
- It tones your whole body because so many muscle groups are involved when you run.
- Weight-bearing exercise, such as running, is especially good in promoting bone density and protecting against osteoporosis, which affects men as well as women.
- Running is a natural movement. The body is designed to be able to run.
- As one of the most vigorous exercises out there, running is an efficient way to burn calories and drop pounds.
Here are some tips that will help you develop running:
1. Buy good shoes
It’s worth going to a specialty shop to buy a pair of running shoes. Make sure that the salesperson looks at the shape and arch of your foot to figure out the best shoes for you. The reason good shoes are important is because it will soften the impact and protect your joints.
2. Take it slow
When you start running, it doesn’t matter how slow you go. Remember that your body needs to get used to new movement.
3. Ease into running with interval training.
The best way to get fit fast is through interval training. This means short burst of high intensity exercise alternating with recovery periods. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, more calories are burned in short, high intensity exercise.
Try alternating 5 minutes of walking and one minute of running for twenty minutes. As you get fitter, you can lengthen the periods of running. Once you get used to running, you can alternate slow jogging with fast sprints.
4. Warm up first
It’s important to warm up your body before running. Otherwise running will feel very hard and your body will moan and groan. Walking is a great way to warm up the body. Stride out and pump your arms. Start with a medium paced walk and then speed up until you start to sweat. Once your body is warm, you are ready to run.
5. Use correct running technique
Beginners like me find it difficult to relax while running. Keep your head up and your lower arms in hip height, and run without bouncing. It all helps to work your body more efficiently. Check out this video about correct running technique.
6. Run with others
A great way to keep up your motivation is to run with others. See if a colleague or a friend is willing to come running with you. Set an interval schedule for your run and stick to it.
7. Keep an exercise diary
Keep a record of your new exercise routine. Write down each day what kind of exercise you have done. A great way to track your growing fitness is by measuring your resting pulse before you get up in the morning. As you get fitter, your resting pulse will get lower.
8. Add strength exercises to the mix
Building strength in your legs will help you to run. A simple way to build your leg muscles is by doing squats. Stand with feet a little more than shoulder width apart. As you squat, keep your feet on the ground and swing your arms to the front in order to keep your balance. Start with 3 sets of 10 squats but don’t get carried away. If you do too many at one time, you might have difficulty walking the next day! As you get fitter, you can add more sets to your squat routine.
9. Add a cool-down period after exercise
It’s important for the body to cool down after running. The best way is to walk at a medium pace until your heart-rate returns to normal.
10. Stretch after running
It’s a good practice to stretch after running because it keeps your body flexible. Watch this short video on which stretches to do after running.
If you follow the ten points above, you will become a runner – without feeling like a failure. Remember that you can start running at any age. Bob Hayes took up running when he was 60. After a little while, he decided to enter a 5km fun-run and his son gave him his first pair of trainers. He said afterwards, “I wasn’t feeling as fit as I would have liked to. Perhaps age is catching up on me?” Yeah, right!
Fast forward 20 years…
At age 80, Bob completed his tenth 50-mile ultra-marathon in Montana and has made running history. He said afterwards:
“I’m in the best shape of my life.”
If you follow these 10 tips, you will get into the swing of running. Soon you will feel your body tone up and slim down in response to the exercise. Best of all, you’ll begin to feel confident, healthy, and attractive.
Mary Jaksch is an author, Zen Master, and psychotherapist who likes dancing tango in skimpy dresses. Her blogGoodlife Zen focuses on personal growth for intelligent people. Get her FREE eBook Overcome Anything: Finding Light after Darknessclick here.Mary is also Chief Editor of Leo Babauta’s blog Write to Done
8 Keys to Internet Security
Jul/093
In a recent post, I recommended Panda’s Cloud Antivirus as a decent free antivirus program. Others have recommended different programs, and that’s fine – in the end, I don’t think there’s much meaningful difference between the various antivirus programs, at least in terms of security.
Much more important than which antivirus program you use (or anti-spyware, or firewall, or any security software), or even if you use one at all, are the practices that make up your online behavior. People who do risky stuff on the Internet will get a virus, sooner or later, regardless of how good their security software is. On the other hand, many security experts don’t use any antivirus software and still manage to avoid viruses.
I don’t recommend that you follow in the footsteps of the security experts – the nature of their calling demands a kind of paranoia that few of us can maintain. I recommend a solid package of security software (I run Cloud Antivirus and Windows Defender) but only as a safety net – something to pick up the slack when we make mistakes, not a first line of defense.
The thing with security, online or anywhere else, is that it’s always a trade-off between protection and convenience. I can tell you how to absolutely avoid any risk of computer virus, spyware, or trojan: stay offline and never install anything or use any removable storage media. That’s 100% perfect protection, but it would severely hinder your computer usage. It’s like securing a house: You could build a door-less, window-less titanium-sheathed reinforced-concrete bunker around your house and be absolutely sure burglars couldn’t get in, but you probably wouldn’t want to live there.
The tips below are sufficient to account for all but the most determined attacks against your computer. No amount of software or behavioral change can protect you from every possible attack (if the NSA wants to get on your PC, they are probably going to do so) but you can protect yourself from virtually all of the attacks you’re likely to face online.
I owe thanks for most of these tips to Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson, hosts of the TWiT netcast Security Now. If you’re interested in computer security at a very deep level, this weekly show is your ticket, and I heartily recommend it!
1. Use a router.
The very nature of the way routers works acts as an effective hardware firewall, preventing access to computers on your home network from outside the network. Put simply, when you request something from the Internet – say, you click a link, check your email, or enter a URL – the router notes which computer on its network the request came from so it can send the reply to the proper recipient. If a would be intruder attempts to enter your network, the router checks its list of outgoing requests and, if none is found correlating to the attackers’ IP address, it ignores it. It basically doesn’t know which computer to send it to, so it throws it out.
If you simply cannot use a hardware router, make sure your operating system’s firewall is turned on. This is almost, but not entirely, as good.
2. Do not open email attachments.
I know, who doesn’t want to see pictures of Anna Kournikova naked, right? Email attachments are a major vector for infecting computers, because it’s so easy to fake the sender so the email looks like it came from someone you know, and everybody loves opening attachments from people they know. It could be a funny picture of penguins, after all. But bottom line, don’t open attachments. If your email client automatically opens or previews them, turn that feature off. Even if it’s from your mom, and even if your mom says she opened it and it’s fine, still don’t open it. (By the way, next time you’re at mom’s, reinstall Windows. She’s got tons of viruses now.)
Now, I know that sometimes you have to open attachments, so here’s a simple test to know when it is most likely safe to open an attachment:
- You know that the email is from the person it says it’s from. That usually means that either they said they were sending it, or they’ve written a note that only they could have written.
- You are expecting an attachment from that person.
- You know the person who created the file.
- There is a compelling reason to open the attachment. I’m sorry, ma, but a good laugh isn’t enough to get me to risk my computer’s security.
If you can’t be absolutely, 100% sure on all these counts, trash it.
3. Do not download bittorrent files.
That sucks, I know, but since you’re never absolutely sure where the file comes from, where it’s been, or who might have altered it, bittorrent is risky. Downloading a Linux distribution from Ubuntu is probably ok; downloading it from Pirate’s Bay is a bit dodgy. Downloading Oscar screeners of movies that haven’t been released yet is super-duper dodgy. It’s a real shame to have to forego sticking it to The Man because of practical concerns, but you’re taking a big risk downloading an unknown file from an unknown person about whom the only thing you know is that they don’t feel any compunctions about breaking the law.
4. Do not download warez, porn, or other dubious files.
First they came for my bittorrents, then they came for my porn! It just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it. But really, think about it – people who distribute illegal copies of illegally hacked software a) are demonstrated lawbreakers, b) are familiar with programming code, and c) had access to the code you’re expecting to install on your computer. As for porn, while I’m sure there are plenty of Good Samaritans out there who distribute free pornography simply out of a desire for greater happiness in the world, some small number of them do it for financial gain. If they’re giving you free porn, they must be making money off you another way, and one of the easiest is to install a bunch of malware on your computer, run whatever code they want on it, and then sell the use of your computer to spammers, phishers, and other unsavory sorts. You want to know how bad these guys are? They don’t even care if they give pornography a bad name!
5. Do not download *anything* from sites you’re unfamiliar with.
Again, if you’re intending to install something you’ve downloaded onto your computer, you have to know that only people you trust have had access to it. Adobe, Microsoft, and other software manufacturers are generally trustworthy, as are sites like C|net’s Download.com. “Bob’s Free Software I Like a Whole Bunch” might not be quite as safe a bet.
6. Turn off Flash, Javascript, and other browser plugins.
Flash ads have been used to install viruses. So has Javascript code. You don’t have to do anything to get infected this way; you just visit a site with the malicious code on it and *bam*, you’re infected. Because of that, hardcore security folks turn off Javascript and either block or never install Flash. Personally, I think it limits the usefulness of the Internet too much; I’ve decided to risk running Javascript, and use the FlashBlock plugin in Firefox so I can select which Flash objects on a page I want to run (allowing me, for instance, to watch YouTube videos while preventing Flash ads on the same page from loading).
7. Do not click links in email.
It’s very easy to hide the real destination of links sent in email by using HTML where the text reads “www.perfectlysafesiteyouknowandtrust.com” but the actual URL is “www.reallybadsiterunbymeanpeoplewithnofriends.net”. This is how phishing scams work – you think you’re going to PayPal or your bank, but really you’re going to a page designed to look just like your bank’s login page but hosted on the mean people’s server. Also, bad guys often put unique tracking IDs into links, so that they know exactly who clicked on a link – which means that they know which email addresses out of the millions they sent spam to are valid, which makes them worth more money to other spammers. Um, yay?
7a. Do not click shortened URLs.
I don’t like this one, because I like Twitter and you lose a lot of functionality if you don’t use a service like bit.ly or is.gd to shorten URLs, but these links are scary. When you hover your mouse over a link, the URL appears in the email or browser’s status bar, meaning you can verify that the link heads to where it says it does. When you do the same with a shortened URL, it just says the shortened URL. There are Firefox extensions like UnTiny that will reveal the true destination of shortened URLs, and some Twitter clients do as well, but until a universal solution is standardized, these URLs remain a bit scary, security-wise.
8. Install all security updates.
Unless you’re a multi-national mega-corporation running oodles of mission-critical custom-designed software, you need to install security updates as quickly as possible upon release. If remembering to do this isn’t something you think you’d be likely to do, set your computer to automatically download and install updates. Increasingly, we’re seeing “0-day” exploits – viruses and trojans written to make use of security flaws before those flaws are corrected by – or, in some cases, even known to – manufacturers. Keeping up-to-date is essential to keep even marginally safe.
I know that, the world being what it is, someone will be thinking right about now, “Hey, why don’t you just switch to Mac OS X or Linux?” It’s true, those operating systems get far fewer viruses and other problems than Windows PCs, but most experts seem to agree that this is at least in part because there are so many Windows PCs and so few Mac and Linux PCs. (There are plenty of Linux servers, but those are under professional supervision, which goes a long way towards making up for any security weaknesses Linux has.) Bad guys program for the system that allows the greatest spread of their malware, and right now, that’s Windows.
But if you’re still not convinced, I’ve got an even better idea for you. Both Mac OS X and Linux have demonstrated security vulnerabilities, and as they become more common are likely to become targets for hackers. So they’re not really safe bets. Instead, try BeOS! It may be riddled with security holes and only run on Pentium 4 and earlier PCs, but I can guarantee you, nobody is writing viruses for it!
For everyone else, whether you use Windows, Mac, or Linux, make sure to follow the rules above and, chances are, you’ll be just fine.
Dustin M. Wax is the project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He is also the creator of The Writer’s Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he’s not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of Don’t Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.
Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.
Acceptance Vs Acknowledgement
Jun/090
Recently the topic of dealing with “unexpected happenstances” in our lives came up for discussion. Reference was made to how “good meaning” people will tell others what would work best for someone having a similiar experience. We all have the most honorable intentions for helping others however our recommendations can be based soley on the life experiences we previously have had.
In the stressful times we are going through presently, we can be bombarded with several situatons all at once or at real close intervals of time. What we all are not aware of is the next calamity which will come without warning. Each of us has a different method of coping with stress and traumatic events which when presented, take us to a new emotional high. When it happens to others, hopefully what we verbally share with them will be nurturing, effective, positive, helpful and supportive.
Currently being part of a grief support for the last 22 years I can only say that these interactions between people are not always warm and fuzzy. There is a phrase called, “untintentional ignorance” which best fits situations when we say things to people and they react negatively to it. They didn’t mean to say that particular thing, however that is what they have learned over time. We will not realize it is the wrong thing until we get the necessary feedback to help educate us. Example: a young adult living with a brain tumor has a stroke and suddenly dies. Someone talking with the family may say something like,” he is better off now so as to not have to struggle with his condition anymore or this is God’s will”. The person on the receiving end of these comments will get mad at both you and God however, will take it out directly on you for being the one present. Reason being that any time they have to still spend with their loved one is better than their dying. If we say, ” we just have to accept this and move forward or go on”, that might sound good to the sender but not to the receiver. Acknowledging the loss, yes, that is important however being accepting of the death might just take a little time to do that.
Unless you have experienced death, sudden death or some type of a traumatic loss, divorce etc, all of the ways we experience grief will be as different as our fingerprints for everyone. We usually can be real safe by giving hugs, saying, “there are no words, I am just really sorry to hear this” and then just ask for their guidance to help them through it. If we are mindful of these platitudes, as we so unconsciously express them, we will definitely have a better chance to not alienate the very people we are looking to help suppport. I know you might be saying, “gee Bob I would never hurt someone at a time like that”. I do realize that and it would never be an outright intention. What the history of our grief group’s contribution to this topic has been, says that there is an absolute need to educate the public about how to handle these situations with more awareness and consciousness.
Generally, we will never have had any formal training in expressing grief, just sharing with others what we have heard people say. I hope this might help in some small way the next time you encounter someone’s grief with their loss.
