Bikram Yoga Manayunk is offering free classes during its grand opening week.
 Manayunk’s first Bikram studio, aptly named Bikram Yoga Manayunk, is opening this Wednesday, August 1st, just off of Main Street on Levering Street in the heart of Manayunk.
The owners, Schuyler and Ammie Ferguson, told NewsWorks it was Manayuk’s vibrant scene that drew them to the area, and that the high ceilings and hardwood floors of the old Propper Bros. furniture showroom, where the studio is located, are perfect for what they have to offer. The space will have a 1,500-square-foot yoga practice room, mirrored walls, and men’s and women’s lockers and showers.
The Bikram yoga practice is unique in that the same 90-minute yoga sequence of 26 poses is taught at every Bikram yoga studio around the world. All Bikram yoga classes take place in studios heated to above 105 degrees Fahrenheit. The new Manayunk studio will be BYO mat, (plus a towel or two) and water. There will also be equipment for sale or to rent on location.
In celebration of the opening week, Bikram Yoga Manayunk is offering free classes from August 1st through 7th. This week, classes will be held every day at 8 a.m., 10 a.m., 4 p.m., and 6 p.m., except for Friday, which will have only 4 and 6 p.m. classes.
For the full schedule and pricing information, visit the studio website.
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Robin's husband, Eric, checks in to update us on Robin's summer so far and share how she's inspired him to get back in shape (well, maybe).
 Robin's sticking with her workouts—even at summer camp. You think you have the best spouse in the world? Well, you would be wrong, because I do. After my final pre-hiatus column went up, my husband, a fabulous writer and editor, asked if he could write a guest column about how proud of me he is. I said, “You want to gush about me for all of my hundreds of thousands of adoring fans to read? Well, alrighty then!” So, without further ado, some words on my fabulousness from my darling husband, Eric Raskin:
You know those early days of dating someone, when you’re still inclined to pretend to be interested in the things your boyfriend or girlfriend is interested in that actually don’t interest you at all? It was during that period that I first saw my wife run. She joined me on a jog about two weeks after we started dating. That remained, for the next 8½ years, the only time I saw her run.
The concept of Robin Raskin as a person who now jogs is jarring to me. It’s like Andy Reid committing to the ground attack or Snooki offering insightful commentary on foreign policy. For as long as I knew her, my wife was steadfast in her refusal to run; she made it about three-quarters of a mile with me back in those brand-new-relationship days in the summer of 2003, and that was the full extent of her experience breaking 4 mph on foot for the balance of the decade.
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A run-and-bike weekend to fight cancer
 The same LIVESTRONG of yesteryear’s yellow bracelets (I still have mine) is hosting an epic fitness-filled running and cycling event on August 18th and 19th out in Blue Bell to honor cancer fighters and survivors alike.
The LIVESTRONG Challenge kicks off with 5K and 10K runs on Saturday morning at 8 a.m. The course starts at Montgomery County Community College and runs through the surrounding neighborhoods. A post run party with a food line, kids zone, and beer tent follows the race.
The ride begins the next morning at 7:30 a.m. There are three distance options: 20, 45, and 100 miles. The 20-mile route, with only a few moderate hills, is a good one for beginners, families and intermediate riders. The 45-mile course is hilly, and the 100-miler is basically a tour of the rolling countryside of Montgomery and Berks counties. There will be ‘Power Stops’ stocked with food, drinks, medical support, and restroom facilities along the way. The rides also begin and end at MCCC, where there will be an epic post-event party with free massages starting at 9 a.m.
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This fun database tells you which Olympic athlete you're built like.
The savvy web developers at BBC News are at it again. If you recall earlier this month, they released a global BMI comparison tool, comparing your BMI to BMI averages around the world. (I’m most like a Somalian, for the record.) Now they’ve unveiled a new database to help you find your Olympic Body Match. All you have to do is enter your height and weight (be sure to change the fields to “feet” and “pounds,” respectively) and you can find out which Olympic athlete is built most like you—or, well, vice-versa.
Me? I’m most like British triathlete Vicky Holland. I’ll take it.
>> Who’s your Olympic Body Match? Share in the comments!
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You are who you eat with, a new study says.
• The next time your scale ticks up a notch, you might want to take a good, hard look at … your friends. A new study found that your friends’ weight could influence your own. Researchers looked at students from two high schools and found that those who were overweight and had thin friends had a 40 percent chance of dropping weight within the next year, and only a 27 percent chance of gaining weight. Overweight students who had obese friends were faced a 56 percent chance of weight gain, and only a 15 percent chance of weight loss. Clearly, who you hang out with matters—these are the same people you’ll go to happy hour with, after all—but I have to wonder: Is it fair to draw the same conclusions about adults and their friends as high schoolers and their friends? I like to think I’ve grown up quite a bit since my days of study halls and vocab quizzes and after-school sports. And I like to think that we, as adults, have outgrown at least some of the peer pressure we faced in high school, that obnoxious feeling that we had to do exactly what our BFFs were doing—you know, like eating salad when someone else was eating salad, or scarfing pizza because the cool kids were doing it (does that happen?). What I’m saying is, I’m sure social relationships factor in to our weight, but maybe not as prominently as they did in high school. And that, I think, is a good thing.
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Keep your Olympics tweets to yourself.
 Photograph by flickr user Craig Deakin Dear Internet,
Today is the first official day of the Olympics During Business Hours, and you’ve already managed to annoy me. Why, you ask? Because I’m sitting here at work, busying myself with health-and-fitness-editor-type things and imagining all of the catching up I’ll do on DVR’d Olympics programming when I get home. Swimming. Gymnastics. The works. Then suddenly, while perusing Twitter (hey, it’s technically part of my job to do so), BAM—I’m hit with an Olympic-size Olympics Spoiler. (One that I won’t repeat here, in case you’re wondering, so please keep on reading worry-free.)
Now I’m in a bad mood, Internet, and it’s all your fault. As such, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that some of us are busy working and can’t catch every waking moment of the Olympics in real time. And some of us are looking forward to kicking back with a beer after work and taking in some serious Olympics action. Please don’t take that away from us.
If you must tweet or Facebook about the Olympics, please do so with headlines and statuses that don’t reveal anything, and with plenty of SPOILER ALERT warnings so that those of us who are saving it for later can choose not to click. K? I’d be ever so obliged.
Always, in the spirit of the Olympics,
Emily
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Music, food and fun at the Jenkintown Whole Foods Market.
 As an addendum to our recent beet talk, I wanted to point you to this: the Fresh Beets Music and Food Festival at the Jenkintown Whole Foods. On Sunday, August 5th, join Whole Foods in celebrating everything local—from musicians to chefs and food—for free. The festival will be happening in the grocery store’s parking lot, where the mobile stage will be buzzing with local artists like the Jeffhouse Band, New Kings of Rhythm, Peter Moses, David Joel Quartet and David and Melissa.
And to accompany the entertainment, the lot will be filled with farmers’ market vendors, locally made food, live farm animals and tons of children’s activities to keep the tots occupied as you peruse. Christina Pirello, an authority on health foods, will then steal the show with a live cooking demo, where she’ll be dishing out a generous dose of how-to-eat-healthy cooking tips. For a full list of vendors, check out the event page.
FREE, Sunday, August 5th from 2 to 6 p.m., Whole Foods Jenkintown, 1575 The Fairway, Jenkintown.
>> Have a health or fitness event you’d like to share with Be Well Philly readers? Email eleaman@phillymag.com with details.
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Coming to a yoga studio near you: the Phils, Flyers and Sixers. Take a cue from pro athletes and cross-train your way to super-fitness.
 I’m soaking wet and panting in the pool at Sweat Fitness on Arch Street—not exactly a place I’d envisioned meeting the Philly Roller Girls, our city’s roller derby team. The pool is a far cry from their usual venue, a track at Temple University’s Liacouras Center where they compete in a sport with enough pushing, pulling and full-body checking to give the Flyers a run for their money. But they’re here tonight to cross-train, as they do for an hour each week, swapping their skates for some lower-impact strength and cardio.
“Our sport is really hard on our joints, and many of us have injuries,” says Beth Mast, an eight-year derby veteran who’s separated her shoulders twice. “Cross-training means we can train with intensity without being so hard on our bodies.”
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Some practical weight-loss advice from a new study.
• Eat at home, don’t skip meals, keep track of what you eat—those are the big takeaways from a new study, which looked at how certain self-monitoring behaviors can affect weight loss. The 123 women in the study, ages 50 to 75, were divided into either a just-diet group, or a diet-and-exercise group, which was tasked with working out five times a week for 45 minutes a pop. Then both groups took part in certain activities, like meeting with a dietician, taking part in group meetings (a la Weight Watchers), and keeping a food journal. Overall, the women in the exercise group lost slightly more weight than those in the diet-only group. But food journaling, researchers found, was the best behavior for promoting weight-loss across the board: “Those who turned them in more regularly lost an average of 12.8 percent of their weight, as opposed to below-average journal-keepers, who lost an average of 8.2 percent,” the Los Angeles Times reports. Other behaviors that contributed to greater weight loss: eschewing meals out and eating at home, and avoiding skipping meals. Which makes me wonder: Did you eat breakfast today?
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The team took a crack at Carly Rae Jepsen's summer anthem.
I’m preeeeetty sick of all the “Call Me Maybe” poseurs at this point, but this video by the U.S. Olympic swim team was too good to pass up, for two reasons. 1) There are a couple underwater shots showing one of the male team members getting dooooown in the pool; and 2) The one-take shot of the female team members singing and strutting up an airplane aisle is pretty close to cinematic gold. I mean, I can imagine Spielberg calling director Kathleen Hersey for tips … maybe?
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