Gardening and... the DOMS?

Although Lactic Acid build up is often to blame for pain post exercise, Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness (DOMS) is that tight, sore feeling in your muscles and connective tissues you get a day (or a few days!) after a hard workout. It comes when training is particularly stressful on the connective tissues and muscles and causes micro-tears in the tissue. It is these tears that can lead to pain, soreness, stiffness and a decrease in range of motion 12-48hrs after exercise. Many of us will have suffered from DOMS after a workout but recently, I found myself unable to reach my toes due to DOMS in my hamstrings after… gardening.

Gardening is a great workout on all your main muscle groups. As with any form of exercise it is possible to work at varying intensities depending on what activity you are doing. Unlike some form of exercise however, this form of activity has a use – it is ‘productive activity’. You can expend a lot of energy while working on a bed which will then provide you with beautiful flowers or yummy vegetables. Likewise, mowing the lawn is something often seen as a chore but at least it keeps you working hard. This makes the cup of tea after your gardening session even more enjoyable.

As well as being a productive way to lead an active lifestyle, I believe gardening can encourage healthy eating. Eating the produce your own hands have planted and nurtured can be so exciting. It seems it can make you suddenly a lot more enthusiastic about eating your fruit and vegetables because they’ve come out of the ground that you’ve worked and prepared and you have picked them yourself. They can’t be fresher and you can almost taste the hard work that has gone in to them. It appears that when there is fresh produce in the house it can flick a switch in you that makes you want to cook a hearty, healthy meal. Using produce grown in your garden has potential to bring a sense of enjoyment to cooking from scratch and also sitting down to eat your meal.

Using home grown food can also have an affect on the type of meals you have and might mean that you end up eating according to the seasons more. Working on your garden throughout the year can really help in feeling a little more connected to nature and the seasons. You feel you are working with the seasons and the elements they bring – not against them. I love the idea of preparing the ground in winter, getting everything ready for the time when vegetables and plants can be sowed.

Working outside across the year and being able to see the literal fruits of your labour can be so rewarding and I think it can do wonders for your mental health. You end up nurturing and working to protect your garden, you feel as though you are working on something special.

It is when you spend time looking at gardens and how they change from season to season that their beauty really comes to life. The other day I went to the Bath Botanical Gardens with my boyfriend and we were amazed at how many different species of plants they had growing there. All of them were so different; some had very delicate and dainty petals while on others you could see the thick wax that made them durable for the nasty weather. Walking through them was very calming and there was a sense of life. It made the imagination run wild, dreaming up stories and recalling books and films already read and seen.

I am a complete beginner at gardening (which is demonstrated by the pain I felt in the few days post gardening) but each time I get out there, I learn a little bit more and there are so many different areas of gardening and ways to get stuck in; whether you like to visit public gardens, get involved with community ones, work on your own garden or allotment, or enjoy herbs from your kitchen garden on your window sill. In my opinion, all types of gardening can have great potential for achieving a healthy lifestyle.

So after all this rambling here is my list of, Reasons to Garden:

·         Increases level of activity

·         It’s productive activity

·         It can encourage eating more fresh fruit and vegetables

·         It can encourage home cooking from scratch

·         Working outside can give you a healthy, youthful glow!

·         Working with nature and the seasons can be very rewarding

·         It can be great for mental health – giving you space to think or not think as the case may be while actively doing something

·         Gardens can provide a space to be still and reflect, and a place to socialise and have fun

Walking

Last Saturday I spent the day walking with my boyfriend along the coast from Exmouth. It was a warm and sunny day and at times it was so windy it nearly knocked me over. The scenery was beautiful and the sea looked especially dramatic due to the choppy waves. We didn’t really know how far we were going or where we were going but we ended up in a small seaside town where we stopped and shared a much appreciated cream tea for lunch. It was so nice to be outside, exercising and enjoying each other’s company and exploring new places.

Being out in the fresh air whatever the weather always seems to lift the spirits and provides a fresh outlook on things. It can give the chance to admire nature in all its beauty and this can provide a new perspective on life. It can provide a challenge, physically and mentally. For example, keeping on going even when you feel you have so far to go or you don’t feel all that confident you are even headed in the right direction. I really do think that you can go on a walk starting with one outlook on life and ending with a completely different one, no matter the surroundings or the distance. In my opinion, walking is good for the soul as well as for the body.

When you walk, you go on a journey. Yes that does sound like the beginning of an average poem but at the end of the day it gets you from A to B and back again. What happens on that journey is unknown, which can be quite exciting really. Perhaps your walk is extremely uneventful or perhaps you have the perfect opportunity to chat to someone walking with you about something you may not feel as comfortable chatting to them about face-face. Perhaps, you get so lost that you may never feel orientated ever again or perhaps you let the fresh air blow all the buzzing bees in your head away and leave you with a clear mind. You never know, that eureka moment maybe found on your travels! Whatever ends up happening, even if it is just that your legs feel tired at the end, you have used your body and mind to go somewhere and it appears that this is a very healing process.

The benefits of walking on your body are plentiful: improved cardiovascular fitness, muscle tone, mobility of the joints, endurance, the list goes on. I think it is a really great way to get fit, you can nearly always find time for a walk and because it doesn’t have to be high impact it has less stress on your joints than some other forms of exercise. It is also very sociable as it is easy to talk and walk and you can really get to know someone on your way. You can walk anywhere, to and from work, round the roads where you live, around a beautiful lake in the Lake District on a walking holiday, up a mountain, up and down the high street in town… anywhere. Yet the potential for them remains the same.

Where will your next walk take you?

Hot Toddy - A Hug in a Mug

Hot Toddy – A Hug in a Mug

It seems that nearly everyone is suffering with colds and flu at the moment. A Hot Toddy is a perfect beverage to relieve those unwanted symptoms and help you get off to sleep in the evening.

It is usually made with whisky, rum or brandy, mixed with honey and hot water (tea is sometimes used too). Other spices such as cinnamon may be added and people often add a slice of lemon.

The other night my brother made me a lovely mug which helped enormously with my sore throat. Its warming, sweet nature with a little kick made for a lovely comforting and soothing experience in the midst of a nasty cold.

To make it he used a small measure of scotch, a few teaspoons of honey, a dash of lemon juice, a pre-prepared bag of spices including cloves and usually he would use equal measures of water to whisky, although I had a more diluted one.

And there you have it, one of the best drinks to have to take those bunged up blues away!

Picture found on Pinterest

Why I Dance

Why I Dance J

Recently, I’ve been asking myself this question. An opportunity to audition for a dance apprenticeship came up a few weeks ago and I was really struggling to decide whether to go for it. Usually, I go for things like this, thinking that going to the audition will help me to decide anyway, but this time the whole process of applying was particularly unsettling.

I started to question why I wanted to do it, whether I would cope with it, whether I was good enough and then eventually, why do I dance anyway? It was almost that I felt I ought to apply because dance is what I do, it’s what I’ve always done, it’s what I want to do in the future, I love doing it… don’t I?

Every week I go to a dance group where we have a technique class followed by a performance project/rehearsal time. I joined in September and having had a break of dance I loved getting back to moving my body and meeting people there. However, recently, it has felt like more of a chore. A lot of the people my age have left and while the atmosphere is lovely, most of the people are now a fair bit younger than me. Coming home from my last session feeling tired and down hearted, thinking about all this left me with this question: Why do I dance?

It occurred to me that I had almost fallen into the thinking that dance made me who I am and that it was dance that defined me while this is simply not true. It was almost that I felt that I had to be doing some sort of dance because, well, that’s what I do. It was like I had something to prove.

But I don’t. More and more I’m realising the need to accept myself for who I am as I am, right now, warts and all. Over the years dance has helped me to make friends, feel accepted and feel free to express myself. However, it has also trapped me, turned my focus inwards on to myself and my faults, making me self-absorbed and insecure, it has at times lured me into a web of lies I tell myself  resulting in the feeling of inadequacy. Before, I tried to use dance to find a sense of belonging and in some ways it did help me to do that - I have great memories of dancing with my friends and working with them. Now I realise, that dance doesn’t give me my identity. I don’t have to dance.

So with that revelation, I sent an email to the dance company with the audition coming up telling them that I was sorry I could not apply. I did this very much on a whim and it scared me – in a way I was letting go of a mask I have used over the years to hide myself in some way.

After I sent that email I felt a peace that I couldn’t explain. I really did feel liberated from a pressure I have placed on myself for so long and it felt good to have it lifted off my shoulders.

Now I don’t feel the need to dance. I don’t have to dance. I don’t have anything to prove or cover up or achieve through dancing. Now I can dance because I like dancing. I can go out with my friends on the weekend and dance the night away because dancing with friends is the best way to dance. It is dance. Throughout the history of dance we can see that in whatever period, dance is a social thing.

There are so many reasons why I love dancing. Even sitting here writing this while listening to the radio, I had to take a moment to have a seated boogie to ‘You’re the One That I Want’ from Grease when it came on. While earlier, I said that it lured me into an inward way of thinking it can also do the opposite, I love dancing with others and the friendship it can bring. So after all this rambling I thought I’d compose a little list of Why I Dance:

•  Its fun
• There are so many different styles each with different history and stories
•  Its sociable
• It’s a great way to keep fit – it focuses on all aspects of fitnes
• Like laughter, I think that dancing to music is a great healer
•  It can help to build confidence
• It can help to build team work
•  Discipline
•  It can be great to push yourself
• There’s something liberating about moving the body
• It facilitates creativity