It's not always a physical challenge; sometimes the mental challenge of a strenuous workout is the hardest one to overcome.
So you’ve donned your workout gear and dragged yourself to the gym; now you’re going through the motions on the treadmill. So far so good. But 15 minutes into the run, you’re starting to sweat, your legs hurt, and a little voice inside your head tells you to press the stop button. How do you motivate yourself to finish the workout?
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that your brain plays such an important role in physical exertion: tell yourself you’re tired, and you’ll feel tired. I asked sports psychologists and local athletes to find out optimal mental strategies to get the most out of workouts and athletic performances.
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We talked with Eagles' strength and conditioning coach Barry Rubin to find out how he keeps the Birds in game shape.
 What’s a typical day of practice like?
We have different routines. Sometimes we’ll do a total-body weight workout, but I like to do all our strength movements one day and power movements the next. The strength routine usually includes things like squats and bench presses. For power, we do Olympic lifts, things like the snatch and the clean-and-jerk. We use a lot of free weights. We try to simulate as close as we can in the gym what players do on the field.
What drills do you run for conditioning?
Two times a week we do drills for speed and agility, and two times a week we do conditioning. Sprints followed by short recovery periods are good for building speed, and position-specific drills like back pedaling exercises help with agility. For conditioning, we do what’s called “tempo” runs. They can be either fifty, a hundred or two hundred yard runs with short rests in between. The length usually depends on the player’s position.
What’s the length of a typical workout?
Total, it takes an hour and a half, 45 minutes of each. Usually we do the conditioning second because after that you’re pretty beat.
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Perfect that hand stand!
 In yoga, an inversion is any time that your heart is above your head. This workshop is all about breaking down the major inversions: the hand stand, head stand, forearm stand and shoulder stand. Attendees will learn the correct alignment for these positions so they can practice them comfortably and confidently at home. All levels of experience are welcome! Register and learn more here (click on the workshops tab at the top).
$30, February 11, 1 to 3:30 p.m., Philly Power Yoga, 2016 Walnut St., Phildelphia
>> 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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Healthcare consulting firm Vynamic is aiming to be the healthiest office in the city—and it's well on its way.
 Vynamic CEO Dan Calista demonstrates his treadmill desk. Photograph by Dana Ricci Last week I got to see a treadmill desk in real life. Even better: I got to see the head of a Philly company actually use it.
Let me back up for a second. Several weeks ago, a friend of mine had dinner with an old college buddy, who works at a healthcare consulting company in Center City called Vynamic. When I asked her how the dinner went, she began telling me what her friend had said about his company. “They want to be the healthiest workplace in Philly,” she told me. So of course I had to investigate.
When I finally got over to Vynamic last Wednesday, I repeated what my friend had said to CEO Dan Calista.
“Actually,” he explained, “we want to be the healthiest workplace in the world.”
Well, okay then.
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A new study shows it's actually a pretty good workout.
 Photo from iStockphoto • I’m all about fitting in a few minutes of calorie-torching around everyday activities. After all, not everyone has hours and hours to spend at the gym each week. Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville ran a study recently to see if walking in place or around the house during television commercials could be a good workout. They recruited 23 adults for the study, who represented a range of body types, from normal to obese. They found that walking in place during the commercial breaks of hourlong TV programs added up to about 25 minutes of walking and an average of 148 calories burned; the subjects took an average of 2,111 steps in that time. By contrast, sitting and doing nothing while watching TV for an hour burned only 81 calories. So think about it: say you watch three hours of TV a night. You could get in 75 minutes of exercise and burn about 450 calories—without missing a minute of that Law & Order marathon.
• Here’s a bit of a fun fact with the 2012 Summer Olympics just a few months away: Researchers at Penn State found that sprinters have different foot structure than us regular folks. The results of the study, which looked at the bone and tendon lengths of eight sprinters and eight nonsprinters, concluded that sprinters have significantly longer big toes and metatarsals and significantly shorter Achilles tendons than nonsprinters. More details here.
• Ladies, would you love it or hate it if your man busted out in song while you’re lying in the hospital, about to have a baby, and having contractions? I can’t imagine my sense of humor would be at its best, but bravo for this new mom, who got a kick out of her husband’s impromptu baby-delivery rap. Using the beeping from the fetal heart monitor to keep the beat, dad-to-be Charles McDaniel started rapping about everything from the cervix to dilation to … trash cans. Oh, and he taped the whole thing. Watch the video here.
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Sweat for a good cause at Parx Casino
The Philadelphia/Delaware Valley Chapter of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) is hosting a Zumba fundraiser on Saturday, February 4th. Two certified Zumba instructors will lead the program, allowing attendees to boogey down while raising valuable research dollars. All of the money raised at the event will benefit the Bucks County Take Steps walk, the largest walk in the country that is dedicated to finding cures for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Get ready to have a blast and leave with that warm tingly feeling in your muscles and in your heart. Learn more and sign up here.
$25, February 4, Parx Casino, 2999 Street Road, Bensalem.
>> Have an event you’d like to share with Be Well Philly readers? Email eleaman@phillymag.com with details.
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Seriously, could there be a better combination?
 If you’re searching for the perfect recipe for satisfaction, search no more: Philly Power Yoga is offering a Yoga and Chocolate workshop on January 28th. The class will begin with an hour-and-a-half of power yoga, putting everyone in the right mood for the subsequent chocolate tasting. The tasting will be accompanied by a discussion about the history and varieties of chocolate, as well as how the sweet specimen of perfection is crafted. The workshop will be lead by Philly Power Yoga’s Teagan, who is a yoga instructor with a Ph.D in food anthropology. Learn more and sign up here.
$30, January 28, Philly Power Yoga, 2016 Walnut St. 2nd Floor, Philadelphia
>> Have a health or fitness event to share with Be Well Philly readers? Email eleaman@phillymag.com with details.
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Try a little bit of everything Philly Dance Fitness is offering in 2012.
 If you’re looking to have so much fun that you (almost) forget you’re getting a hardcore workout, this is certainly your ticket. The Taste of Philly Dance Fitness Party on Sunday is serving a fitness-class cocktail of ballet, Piloxing, hip-hop, jazz, Pilates and more. Philly Dance Fitness will also include a few favorites from its popular workshops, “King of Pop Hip-Hop,” “Frisky Fridays,” “Gleekercise,” and “Just Dance: Lady Gaga Hip-Hop.” The challenge: not becoming too out-of-breath to sing along. Learn more and register here.
$15 in advance, $20 at the door (includes refreshments); January 22nd, 2 to 4 p.m., Performance Garage, 1515 Brandywine St.
>> Have a health or fitness event to share with Be Well Philly readers? Email eleaman@phillymag.com with details.
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Expert tips for maximizing exercise convenience
Sometimes hectic schedules and nasty weather make the journey to the gym seem like a real hindrance. So why not delete the travel time and bring the gym to you? I asked trainers and designers for advice on how to turn your apartment into a do-everything workout space—without making your living room feel like a training zone.
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Divorced people have a higher risk of early death than their married peers.
 • How about this for a new PSA: “Divorce: It kills.” Dramatic, yes, but not entirely untrue. The findings of a new study aptly titled “Divorce and Death” found that divorcées face a 23 percent greater risk of early death than married people—a death rate on par with smokers, heavy drinkers and the obese. What’s more, divorced men are at a higher risk for an untimely demise than their ex-wives. “Why?,” asks MSN. “Because wives help keep their husbands alive.” They’re completely serious! (I mean, of course they are. Why shouldn’t the be? Every wife knows it’s true.)
• Thinking about those two runners who died of heart attacks at last year’s Philly Marathon still makes me super sad. But this is heartening: a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the risk for cardiac arrest from distance races is pretty low—lower, in fact, than the risk for heart attacks among college athletes, and comparable to heart attack risks for recreational joggers. In other words, long-distance running is no more or less dangerous for your heart than other forms of vigorous physical activity. Runner’s World has more details.
• Well, geez. Women’s Health ranked Philly among the least-healthy cities for women. On the annual list of the country’s 100 healthiest cities—determined by things like obesity and breast cancer rates, commuting times and hours spent workout out—we’re waaaay down there near the bottom, at #97, beating out only Detroit, Memphis and Birmingham. Topping the list is Raleigh, North Carolina, followed by San Jose, California, and Madison, Wisconsin (even with all that cheese!). You can get the whole list here, but you have to enter an email address to access it.
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