Not one, not two, but three MINT indoor cycling instructors are featured in this week’s Active Life DC poll:
Piper Hendricks
Nicolette Mueller
Dru Ryan
Vote for your favorite playlist using the link above! Good luck to all. And thanks for the great music suggestions!
This is it – THIS is the ultimate dreary day comfort food. The warming spices of curry complement sweet, creamy coconut milk and savory vegetable broth to form the base for this curry, while sweet potatoes and peas lend texture, flavor, and nutrition. A sprinkling of peanuts and sesame seeds adds delightful crunch that ties this curry together.
Sweet Potato and Pea Curry
To make this curry, you will need:
– 1 T curry powder
– 1 t salt
– 1/2 t pepper
– 1/2 cumin
– 1/4 turmeric
– 1/2 t ginger
– 1 medium sweet onion, diced
– 12 oz peas, either fresh or heated from frozen
– 2 medium sweet potatoes, cubed
– 1 cup vegetable broth (STILL OBSESSED with this powder from Giant!)
– 14 oz light coconut milk
– Peanuts, cilantro, sesame seeds, etc for garnish
To start out, heat a large pot on the stove over medium. Add your spices and let toast for about 30 seconds, stirring constantly. Add your onion and half of the vegetable broth and let cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Once the onion pieces are translucent, add the cubed sweet potato, coconut milk, and remaining vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, reduce to a fast simmer, and cover your pot. Let simmer for 15-20 minutes (until the sweet potatoes are fork-tender), stirring every 5 minutes. Add the peas in with 5 minutes of cook time remaining.
That’s it! That’s literally it! I told you it was easy! Serve it up over some brown rice (or basmati… or white… or quinoa! Quinoa is always good), garnish however you please, and relish in the cozy warmth of your homemade curry.
XOXO,
Jess
Part IV: Weight Lifting and Breathing
Before we jump into this edition in the series, allow me to clarify that this post is not just for guys. Amigas, if you aren’t lifting some weights (or doing resistance training), here are 10 reasons why you should be (regardless of age, IMHO). If that’s not enough, here are 12 more for all ages. So, everybody, breathing isn’t just something you do during cardio workouts. Good breathing form will help your resistance training as well by stabilizing your core and keeping oxygen moving to your muscles while you pump you up.
How to: Exhale on the exertion (the effort phase). Your exhale contracts your respiratory muscles and helps brace your core for better form. Inhale as you return to your original position. (You’ll be a bit more relaxed, but that’s no reason to let your core go mushy.) It’s that easy. The hard part is deciding how much weight to use to challenge your muscles without causing injury! Be sure not to hold your breath too long as doing so increases pressure inside your chest, which can interfere with the flow of blood to your heart. In other words, holding your breath while lifting can raise your blood pressure, which is not one of those benefits in the list above. If we take the bench press as an example, you’d exhale – nice and slow – as you press the weights up. Start to inhale once you reach the top and as you return the weights their original position. Keep your core engaged throughout the entire movement to protect your spine.
Mouth or nose? Up to you, though many recommend breathing in your nose and out your mouth. Grunting so loudly that people can hear you over their headphones is optional.
Check out previous posts in this series:
Free Community Power Playground is invading Marvin on Wednesday, March 29th at 6 pm with MINT Personal Trainer Liz Harvey.
Part III: Cycling and Breathing
Unlike running, which I covered in the first post of this series, if you are cycling with proper form, the relaxation of your diaphragm during your exhale shouldn’t translate into potential injury in your legs. On the bike, your body should stay steady as you keep your core engaged (even on a stationary bike!) and use equal power around the course of your full pedal stroke with both legs working in parallel. As such, your primary focus when it comes to breathing on a bike ensuring that you are using your lungs to maximum potential. Your goal: deep breaths.
Deeper breaths mean that you’re using more of the capacity in your lungs, which moves more oxygen to your muscles. (For those of you who care about VO2 Max, don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that the deeper breathing actually increases oxygen uptake. I just mean there’s more in there to be “uptaken.” “Uptook?” Eh, you get the point.) Those deeper breaths mean that we’re still focused on the diaphragm: when that little wad of muscle below your lungs contracts down, your lungs open up and out. Just like you told your last ex, the diaphragm “needs some space” and can’t be boxed in if your lungs are going to reach their full potential. What does that mean for biking? Well, first of all, don’t squish your diaphragm! Posture impacts your breathing, both on and off the bike. Assuming you’re set up on your bike properly (check with your friendly MINT instructor to make sure you are in the spin room), you shouldn’t have any trouble during your warm up. But when the going gets tough, it’s common to inadvertently change your form in a way that just makes the ride tougher. Take a page from the history books (1836 in San Antonio, Texas to be precise) and “REMEMBER THE DIAPHRAGM!” to avoid hunching over the handlebars and mistakenly rolling in your tummy like a carnitas taco.
How to: When you’re on a road bike, you’ll need to balance your desire for being fast because you’re aerodynamic and being fast because you can still breathe. But as I tell my students, there’s no need to be aerodynamic in the spin room; as fast as your legs go, you still aren’t going anywhere, so feel free to give your diaphragm (and lower back!) a bit of a break by staying a wee bit more upright. With good form that allows the diaphragm to move, your next focus is, naturally, getting it to move. Focus on breathing into the bottom of your lungs. It may help to focus on feeling the breath in your back as well. Your lungs are 3D, after all, and your breathing should be, too!
I’ll talk more about deep breathing in the “breathing and yoga” post, but for cycling, it’s sufficient to check your breathing by putting one hand near your heart and one below your stomach. (Preferably while at a stop if you’re not on a spin bike!) You should feel the hand near your stomach move with or before the hand near your heart. Check in with your shoulders as well; if they are still moving up and down with each breath, odds are high that your breathing is too shallow and you aren’t engaging your full lung capacity. What’s the right pace? The pace that works for you. You may find it helpful to sync your breathing with the rate of revolutions in your pedal stroke, ideally with a longer exhale than inhale – or you may find that that’s just too complicated. So long as you are breathing fully and using the full power of your legs, you’re golden. Don’t overthink it beyond that; you want to still have headspace to enjoy the ride.
Mouth or nose? For most people, it doesn’t matter. But if you want to mimic the elite cyclists in a way other than wearing ridiculous (but hilarious) jerseys, you can try breathing through your nose as you exhale in order to slow your rate of exhale, giving your lungs a longer time to extract oxygen. (My thoughts in the first post about the red coffee stirrer still apply.)