Healthy Thursdays: To Kegel or Not To Kegel?

That is the prenatal and post-partum question, apparently.  Although before this article, it wasn't a question at all.  Doing Kegels for pregnant women is like eating vegetables for the general public: You know you should but you keep forgetting.  Now, Katy Bowman is telling us that not only is it not necessary, it can actually be harmful!

In a nutshell, continually contracting or tightening a muscle doesn't actually make it stronger and in fact, it can make it weaker.  What helps strengthen is working on opposing muscles to balance things out and give support to the pelvic area overall (I hope that's right!).  Enter in squats: Harder to do, not as fun and not as inconspicuous.

The results, however, are much more rewarding.  Squats help build your core as well which assist in keeping balance (something every pregnant woman needs more of!).  I found it also helped my breathing (branch benefit from working out the core) and mindfulness of my body.  Thanks to my working at Starbucks, especially to working the "lobby" position, I had ample opportunity to do squats as I always squatted to grab things below my waist, intentionally pushing up with my glutes and my quads.  Carrying around a toddler will help do that too!

Okay, so enough of my squawking, read the article and judge for yourself.  =)

http://breakingmuscle.com/womens-fitness/stop-doing-kegels-real-pelvic-floor-advice-women-and-men

How about you? Did/do you do Kegels regularly?  Did/have you found them useful?  Can you compare their effectiveness to squats?

Reminders of Aging...

Looking at yesterday's post, it wasn't really that short of a post, haha.  Today's will be.  Just finished watching a bit of Avengers on Blu-Ray and I'm feeling pretty off,  like slightly motion-sickness off.  I felt this when watching Life of Pi but I think it's my eyes straining to keep up with the detail in HD that's causing me to feel a bit sick afterwards, especially if there's a lot of action.

With that, I'll just leave you with my reflection that I'm accepting my body's adjustment to another year added to my life.  I may have to keep action movies to SD and "waste" HD on slower-paced movies!  =P

Oh, and today was for "Healthy Thursday", in case anyone's actually keeping track.  It is healthy for my emotional health to accept aging gracefully!  And on that note, off to bed I go.

How about you?  What have you noticed about your body adjusting to growing older?  What have you been able to accept gracefully?  What are you still working on?