Hey Chicks,

First of all, I am so sorry for being MIA the last 2 weeks!  Between moving, working, prepping for our 100km Oxfam Trailwalker hike  on July 22 – 24th and teaching my Danforth bootcamp, I have barely had time to think.

With everything out of order in my life I have been feeling quite overwhelmed and stressed so I did one of my favourite things this weekend to balance – Bikram Yoga! And I forgot what a killer workout it is too.  This summer my workout regime has been strongly focused around running, interval training and bootcamp and to be honest have been a little delinquent on my stretching.  Well  I paid the price this weekend in Bikram yoga for my poor stretching habits and stress levels …my hamstrings and hips felt like they had never seen a forward bend in their life!  But even though I could barely move the next day, I already could feel the my body letting go of the tightness and tension.

Always balance out tough workouts with lots of stretching!

Moral of the story :  STRETCH, STRETCH, STRETCH! Managing stress, preventing injury and maximizing your workouts can all be easily attained by a kick butt stretch session. Always make sure you are warming up properly with dynamic stretching and finishing your workouts with a great static stretch (recent studies show to hold each stretch for approx 90 sec per muscle to allow full relaxation. Also, I always recommend to my chicks to add at least one yoga class per week (my new personal goal is doing twice a week!).

So Chicks, what is your favorite way to get your stretching in?

Crossing the finish line last year at the OXFAM Trailwalker - we can't wait to do it again!

PS.  If you haven’t heard, I am super pumped to be running my first charity bootcamp class of the summer on Wed July 20th with all proceeds going to Oxfam Canada! Come and sweat up a storm with me and help out a fabulous cause 🙂

Laura