Fitness – Shelley&Michelle

Walking on an incline benefits

14th Jul 202514th Jul 2025by shelleyandmichelleLeave a Comment

We have introduced so many fitness workouts into our routine over the years, and are currently hooked on walking on an incline at a steady pace. Try walking on a level 12 incline at a 3-mile per hour speed for 30 minutes… If you don’t break a sweat doing this we can’t help you! lol. When you walk on a treadmill with an incline, posterior muscles like your glutes, hamstrings, calves, and back are getting to work. It’s a form of resistance training, and you’re building strength in your glutes, hamstrings, back, and core muscles.

On top of that, the speed adds more difficulty. Three mph might not sound that fast, but combined with the incline, you will definitely feel the burn. Your heart rate will also rise since you’re working harder walking uphill at a quicker pace, and although the workout may feel super tough at first but if you’re consistent, over time your body will adjust as your body adapts to its “new normal” working capacity.

Beneficial for your bones: Incline walking is a weight-bearing exercise, so with the resistance the body creates, you naturally strengthen your bone density.

May help with weight loss—if you’re consistent: It’s important to note that weight loss is determined by many factors from calorie intake to moving your body regularly, any potential weight loss from doing this workout will vary from person to person. If you’re trying the workout specifically to lose weight, the key is to stay consistent.

Helps your heart: This workout could be a helpful addition to build endurance and boost cardiovascular health. Moderate-intensity walking, three to five times per week for three months is said to lower blood pressure.

Calorie Burn! This workout sesh can burn anywhere from over 180 calories to over 300 calories, depending on factors like incline, speed, and the individual’s weight and fitness level.

If you enjoyed this post feel free to like, follow, share and comment!

Shelley & Michelle xx

Fitness, Lifestyle

Reasons why you should add skipping to your workout routine

31st Mar 202531st Mar 2025by shelleyandmichelleLeave a Comment

As kids, most of us spent our time skipping rope in the garden with our siblings and family members, or at the school playground with friends. It was so much fun we didn’t even realise it’s such a good way to get in some exercise, and of course we had loads more energy back then! A skipping rope workout is one of the most effective and underrated exercises for full-body fitness. Whether your goal is fat loss, endurance, strength, or agility, skipping is one of the best ways of training. It’s easy to start, highly effective, and requires minimal space making it the perfect workout for busy lifestyles and the best part is, you can incorporate skipping into your routine at anytime.

Can improve coordination and balance: Adding skipping to your workout routine can be a great way to improve your balance and coordination. Learning to skip rope involves the coordination of your arms, legs, and torso while also keeping a constant rhythm. You decide how fast you’re jumping and rotating the rope, which means you can slowly build your coordination and balance based on your needs.

Improves cardio fitness: Skipping is great for improving your cardio fitness. Jumping continuously for a period of time increases your heart and respiratory rate. Over time, this can strengthen your heart and improve your lung capacity, allowing you to exercise for longer.

Strengthens muscles: Skipping rope relies on your lower body muscles such as your calves, thighs, and bottom. And upper body including your shoulders, biceps and abdominal muscles. This not only helps improve muscle strength but also muscular endurance, which allows your muscles to exercise for longer.

Apart from helping improve your coordination, getting your heart rate going and burning calories. Another benefit is that it’s an easy and affordable way to get some cardio in. So buy a skipping rope and get skipping! It can be done almost anywhere – just try to avoid knocking over your furniture.

Shelley & Michelle xx

Fitness, Lifestyle

5 Hot Yoga Benefits For A Healthier Mind And Body

19th Feb 2025by shelleyandmichelleLeave a Comment

Hot yoga is a type of yoga practiced in a heated room, usually between 32–40°C. The heat and humidity can cause those taking part to sweat a lot. The heat is designed to promote deeper stretches and sweating by raising your core body temperature. Some hot yoga practices seek to replicate the heat and humidity of India where yoga originated.

We tried hot yoga recently and it is intense due to the added heat, which increases your heart rate and makes it more challenging to hold poses, compared to regular yoga practiced at room temperature, but you feel amazing afterwards. We always like to dig a little deeper into the new hobbies we take on. Below we’ve listed the incredible benefits from a hot yoga workout.

Flexibility: The heat can help muscles warm up, allowing for deeper poses, improves flexibility, balance and strengthens the muscles.

Mental health: The heat helps with mental clarity and concentration, and can help relieve stress. Yoga, in general, can help reduce stress levels and reduces anxiety.

Cardio health: The heat can increase heart rate, which may help improve cardiovascular health and endurance. The high temperature in hot yoga can make it more intense than a traditional yoga class. It makes the heart, muscles, and lungs work harder and boosts metabolism.

Improves skin: Sweating can improve blood flow which helps deliver nutrients to the skin cells. The heat can increase circulation and help the skin glow.

Burns more calories: The heat and the time a person holds challenging poses can help you burn more calories in hot yoga than in traditional yoga.

Always remember to keep a bottle of water nearby. Due to the high heat, it’s crucial to stay hydrated before, during, and after a hot yoga class.

Shelley & Michelle xx

Fitness

5 Benefits Of The StairMaster

8th Sep 2024by shelleyandmichelleLeave a Comment

The StairMaster is a cardio machine that mimics stair climbing. It provides a low-impact, high-intensity workout that targets the lower body and several muscle groups. A session on the StairMaster is a great way to burn calories and build strength. It’s a great choice for people of all fitness levels. Like treadmills, a StairMaster has a variety of settings to mix up your workouts. You can adjust the speed and select the duration by programming the number of minutes you want to exercise. If you’re just starting out, you can set the machine to go for 5 or 10 minutes and work up from there. Stair-climbing on a StairMaster helps your body release endorphins. So although you may feel exhausted at the end of your stair-climbing sesh, mentally, you’ll feel ready to take on anything!

Burns calories: Depending on your weight and how hard you go, you can easily burn hundreds of calories in just one session! The faster you climb and the more stair-climbing sessions you fit into your weekly exercise routine, the more calories you’ll burn. Most machines have a built-in calorie calculator, which will tell you how many calories you’ve burned in each session.

Improves cardio: Climbing those stairs will boost heart health and will get your blood pumping around your body. When stair climbing, your body works harder than when walking on flat ground because it has to push against gravity as it goes up each step.

Kinder to your body: Running staircases and hills can be tough on your joints, muscles, and tendons. The StairMaster is more gentle on your body since you are only stepping up and up. Try not to miss your step though, being face down on The StairMaster isn’t the best look!

Strengthens calves and glutes: Each time you lift your legs to climb a stair, you engage your glutes and calves. The glutes is a muscle that help move and support your hips. They’re essential for stair-climbing, as they power each step you take on the stair machine. Your calf muscles are two muscles at the back of your lower legs and stair-climbing helps strengthen them.

Improves overall fitness: Regular stair-climbing helps to improve your overall fitness levels. You’ll burn calories, build strength and power in your legs, increase stamina and speed, and gain better coordination. And you can mix it up with various settings to keep it interesting.

Plus, stair-climbing can provide an escape from day-to-day stressors and help you to relax, especially if your session involves listening to your favourite workout tracks.

Shelley & Michelle xx

Fitness

Benefits Of Kettlebell Training

22nd Aug 2024by shelleyandmichelleLeave a Comment

Kettlebells have been used for centuries, originating in Russia. Kettlebells (called girya in Russian) are associated with great power and strength. They were originally used as counterweights to measure the weight of goods, but were eventually used in strength competitions. Today the weights are featured in gyms and exercise classes. Kettlebells work several muscle groups at a time. Holding a lot of weight by a handle engages your arm, leg, shoulder, back, and abdominal muscles. The pull on your muscles helps to strengthen them. Kettlebells are also said to help strengthen back muscles and improve posture.

Low impact exercise: Kettlebells keep your feet planted on the ground, which reduces force and pressure on your knees. For some people, this may be a better option for getting the heart pumping than higher impact exercises such as jump training.

Full-body workout: Kettlebell swings use your upper body, core, and lower body for a great full-body workout.

(Photo credit: Ambitious-Studio-Rick-Barrett)

Calorie burn: The workouts are high intensity and can burn a lot of calories in a short time. And you may burn more calories after the workout due to post-exercise oxygen consumption, which is a temporary increase in metabolism to support recovery.

Quick exercise: Most kettlebell workouts can be completed in as little as 10–15 minutes and require only a kettlebell to get started.

Better cardiorespiratory fitness: Kettlebell swings involve your whole body, which requires your heart to beat faster and pump blood throughout your body.

Shelley & Michelle xx

Fitness

5 Benefits of Cardio Training

2nd Jun 2024by shelleyandmichelleLeave a Comment

We love to get a sweat on, and we get just that during a cardio workout. Aerobic exercise is also known as cardiovascular fitness. Cardio helps improve heart health, tone muscle, and support weight loss. It is said that regular aerobic activity such as walking, cycling or swimming, can help you live longer and healthier. Cardio is great in getting the blood pumping around your body, and also gets your large muscle groups working.

If you are just starting to get into fitness, or have been inactive for a long time. Always remember to start with small steps and begin exercising slowly. For example take a brisk walk on the treadmill for five minutes, and the next time add another few minutes and pick up the pace a bit. If you do this frequently you will see and feel the benefits.

Increases your stamina, fitness and strength: You may feel tired when you first start regular cardio exercise. But if you keep at it you will enjoy increased stamina and reduced fatigue. Cardio combined with a healthy diet also helps you lose weight and also keep it off.

Helps with sleep: If you’re having trouble sleeping at night, it is said that regular cardio is an effective treatment for insomnia. Certain studies suggest that moderate-intensity cardio is better than more intense exercise for sleep. Exercising too close to bedtime may make it more difficult to sleep so try to finish your workout at least two hours before bedtime.

Get the kids moving! Cardio is great for most groups of people (when done in a safe way). The exercise is recommended for those who are older and it’s great to get the kids involved in regular exercise that they enjoy, including swimming, running, cycling, skipping and dancing. Aim to get them moving for at least 60 minutes or more each day, three days each week. It will tire them out and give you more of an evening to yourself!

Affordable and accessible workouts: You really don’t need any fancy equipment or a gym membership to work out. Getting daily exercise can be as easy as taking a walk or going for a run. One of our fave workouts to do at home is browsing Youtube for a 10-20 minute Hiit workout, and if you have the energy push yourself for a longer workout.

Slows aging: Research shows that regular exercise can help slow the body’s aging process. Moderate to intense exercise may even slow aging by 10 years!

Whatever you choose, it’s important to do it consistently. To stay motivated, choose an activity you enjoy or that you can do with a friend. And make exercise a priority by setting aside time for it in your day to day.

Shelley & Michelle xx

Fitness

The importance of warming up and cooling down

30th Apr 2024by shelleyandmichelleLeave a Comment

Warming up and cooling down plays such an important role in your fitness routine, and may offer help in reducing the risk of injury and improving your athletic performance. Before you jump on the treadmill or lift those weights, do a short warm up first. And try following your workout with a quick cool down session. A warm up and cool down may add a few minutes to your exercise routine. But might also lower stress on the heart and other muscles.

Why you should warm up and cool down: Warm ups and cool downs generally mean doing your activity at a slower pace and lowered intensity. It helps get the body ready for aerobic activity. A warm up literally does what it says on the tin! It’s intended to prepare the body for the physical activity you are about to complete. This might be a gym session, cardio exercise, a sports training session or a competitive match. A warm up should always include some low-intensity aerobic exercise and stretching. To prepare your body for exercise a warm up should last from 5-10 minutes.

The cool down after your workout is all about lowering the body temperature and heart rate back to normal. A cool down will normally include very light aerobic activity and stretching. It will help the muscles to further relax and return back to their normal range of movement.

How to warm up and cool down: Warm up right before you workout. Focus on large muscle groups, such as the hamstrings. Then you can do exercises more specific to your sport or activity. Start at a low, slow pace that slowly builds in speed and intensity. A warmup may cause a little sweat, but generally won’t leave you tired.

Cooling down is similar to warming up. You generally keep doing your workout session for five minutes or so. But you go at a slower pace and lower intensity. Always cool down straight after your workout

Finding time for regular aerobic workouts plus warming up and cooling down can be hard. But with a little creativity, you can probably fit it all in. For example, you can walk to and from the gym for your warm up and cool down…depending on how far your gym is of course!

Shelley & Michelle xx

Fitness

5 benefits of weight training

14th Jan 2024by shelleyandmichelleLeave a Comment

If you want to improve your health It is said that weight training is a way to achieve this. It involves using one or more muscle groups. Weight training is also known as strength training, resistance training, and muscular training. The definition of strength training is any physical movement in which you use your body weight such as, lifting weights, dumbbells, resistance bands or circuit training. This builds muscle mass, strength and endurance.

Makes you stronger: Strength training helps you become stronger. It helps improve performance in sports that require speed, power, and strength. Gaining strength allows you to perform everyday tasks much easier, such as carrying heavy shopping bags or running / walking up a flight of stairs.

Makes your bones stronger: Weight-bearing exercises put temporary stress on your bones, sending a message to bone-building cells to take action and rebuild bones stronger. Having strong bones reduces your risk of osteoporosis, fractures, and falls, especially as you age. The great news is, you can reap the bone-strengthening benefits of strength training at any age.

Improves your mood: It is said that regular weight training may boost your mood and improve your mental health such as reduce anxiety. The great thing about exercise is that it releases endorphins, which can put you in a great and positive mood.

Can help you appear leaner: When building more muscle and losing fat, you will appear leaner. Losing body fat and building stronger and larger muscles will achieve more muscle definition, creating a stronger and leaner appearance.

Boosts your self-esteem: Strength training can add a boost to your self-confidence. It helps you overcome challenges, work towards a goal, and appreciate your body’s strength. It can increase your self-efficacy, the belief that you’re able to succeed at or perform a task which can improve your confidence.

Shelley & Michelle xx

Fitness

Benefits From A Pilates Workout

21st Feb 202321st Feb 2023by shelleyandmichelleLeave a Comment

Pilates is a form of exercise which concentrates on strengthening the body with an emphasis on core strength. It helps to improve general fitness and overall well-being. Similar to Yoga, Pilates concentrates on posture, balance and flexibility. This form of exercise was developed by Joseph Pilates in Germany, who believed that physical and mental health were closely connected.

Although there are similarities between yoga and Pilates as they both focus on the mind-body connection, yoga tends to focus more on spiritual well being. It is a more relaxing form of exercise whereas Pilates is more physical and focuses on toning and strengthening.

Practicing Pilates on a regular basis provides plenty of well-rounded benefits. The great thing is that Pilates can be enjoyed by anyone and at any age. If you’re a beginner you can start with the more easier exercises and then once you’ve mastered those, you can work on the advanced moves. Always check with your health professional if you haven’t exercised for a while, are older or pregnant, or have health problems.

Good posture – Pilates will teach you to gain and maintain good posture. The exercises require that your body is always in alignment. This is especially beneficial if you suffer from lower back pain.

Clears the mind and improves your mood – Pilates focuses on providing balance between your mind and body, it gives you an overall sense of well-being. Pilates can improve your mood as physical activity causes endorphins to be released and causes a positive feeling in the body. Some scientists believe that being active can enhance wellbeing as it brings about a sense of better self-confidence and self-control.

Muscle Tone – The exercises involve the use of muscles that you may not use on a daily basis. After the initial soreness, you’ll find that your muscles will be much more toned.

Flat abdominal muscles – As Pilates focuses on strengthening your core which includes your abdominal muscles, you’ll find that one of the benefits of Pilates is that it will result in a flat stomach.

Flexibility – As we age we tend to lose the flexibility we had when we were younger. Pilates is said to restore your flexibility. After a while you’ll be amazed at how much more flexible your body has become.

Improves your balance – Through the mind-body connection, you will become much more aware of how your body moves and performs. Pilates not only improves your physical balance through correct posture but will also restore your mind-body balance.

Reduces stress – When doing the exercises, you’ll be in the moment and won’t be able to think about all those responsibilities that weigh you down on a day to day basis. You’ll be more focused on your breathing and on the moves that you are making with your body. This is one of the best ways to relieve stress.

Shelley & Michelle xx

Lifestyle

5 WAYS TO TACKLE STRESS AND AXIETY DURING LOCKDOWN

17th Mar 202117th Sep 2022by shelleyandmichelle1 Comment

The Coronavirus Pandemic has had an impact on all of our lives one way or another. Making our anxiety and stress levels reach that all time high. Some of us, feeling worried as we are not sure what tomorrow’s news may bring, bored by staring at the same walls day in and day out. You may live alone and feel lonely, which can then turn into frustration as all you want to do is see and hug your loved ones. For most of us, these feelings will pass and we have for you a few easy little steps you can do in the comfort of your home and to help point you in the right direction.

Meditation: Finding time for you is always beneficial and meditation is a way where you can do this. Meditation can be practiced at any time of the day, we’re not saying to spend hours meditating but, ten minutes a day will keep those cobwebs at bay. A good time to practice is first thing in the morning or just before bedtime. Even If you need a few minutes to yourself during the day, doing a short meditation on your lunch break will give you that time out you need. There are great meditation apps for mindfulness such as Calm and Headspace. YouTube is a great way to find short meditation videos too.

Stay connected with friends and family: We have all been using Zoom more than ever this past year. Whether that being holding evening quizzes, meetings, celebrating birthdays and baby showers. We all need to feel connected, so keep in touch with friends and family and try reconnecting with old friends. Doing this more times than not should make you feel a little better as you can catch up and have a good laugh, which is so needed.

Physical health: Our physical fitness has a major impact on how we feel, so looking after our bodies the best way we can is important. It’s so easy to fall into unhealthy patterns in lockdown but you have to just have the mindset to keep your physical fitness going. Try to exercise regularly, this can be as easy as an online ten-minute Yoga and Pilates class, a high intensity half hour cardio session, hitting the pavement for a jog, a daily walk or bike ride helps with fitness and also clears your mind. Eating healthily and preparing a well-balanced, nutritious meal always makes you feel great. As well as drinking lots of water.

Make time for yourself: This can include anything, think of things that you really enjoy and that relaxes you. Listening and dancing around to your favourite music always helps, as well as releasing those feel good endorphins. Doing this for as long as you want whilst dancing around like no one is watching is the best thing ever! Reading books can make your mind wonder to a different place. A great book is a good feel factor and whilst doing this why not run a hot bath and enjoy your book whilst soaking your body at the same time. Pamper yourself. This can be facials, giving yourself a manicure and pedicure, masks and hair masks. Looking after you is the way forward. Lastly try out that new recipe you have seen. Cooking a great meal or even baking for yourself and for those you live with is a good way to get those culinary skills on point as well as having a full stomach too!

Organising your space: They say an organised space is an organised mind, the more clutter you can see around you, the more easily you’ll find yourself distracted. Start by getting rid of the things you don’t need. There is a variety of different online ecommerce websites where you can sell clothes, electrical goods and many more. You may fancy a little revamp, why not give a room in your home a whole new makeover. Doing this will make you feel as though you have got something done, whilst feeling great about yourself at the same time.

Shelley & Michelle xx

Tag: Fitness

Walking on an incline benefits

Reasons why you should add skipping to your workout routine

5 Hot Yoga Benefits For A Healthier Mind And Body

5 Benefits Of The StairMaster

Benefits Of Kettlebell Training

5 Benefits of Cardio Training

The importance of warming up and cooling down

5 benefits of weight training

Benefits From A Pilates Workout

5 WAYS TO TACKLE STRESS AND AXIETY DURING LOCKDOWN

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