Rolling rest days

Hello everyone! Uff, I was up for a good chunk of last night due to crazy thunder and lightning storms in my area. Even with my fan on jet-engine high, and my black curtains, I could still hear and see it. I’m a little zombie-ish today!

Luckily it’s my rest day, so my body is very happy with me. One of my favourite things to do on rest days (besides eating, that’s um, recovery, right?) is foam rolling. Some of you may remember I bought a foam roller back in May to help with a hip injury.

Foam rollers are basically like your personal massage therapist. It’s a cylinder of dense foam, so quite light to pick up, but hard to the touch.

To use it, you just lay whatever muscle you want to massage on it and roll back and forth. Sometimes, it feels really good, sometimes it can be quite painful!

The foam roller is most commonly used for your back, calves, hamstrings, quads and IT band. All types of athletes and non-athletes use foam rollers to massage their muscles at home. For more info, check out reviews on Runner’s World and Bicycling Magazine (my two bibles).

There’s also the question of when to foam roll. A lot of people like to do it right after activity to loosen up their stressed muscles. Personally, doing this usually leads to muscle cramps for me. So I like to wait until before I go to bed and just spend 5-10 minutes rolling out my muscles.

I especially like doing this on rest days, when my muscles are usually the most tense. I do a combo of rolling and stretching, especially my finicky IT band. It also helps loosen up my muscles for my upcoming days of planned activity.

Foam rollers are also relatively inexpensive and easy to transport and store. So it’s definitely something worth looking into if you suffer from a lot of muscle soreness and stiffness! I bought mine at a local running store.

I don’t credit my hip recovery to the foam roller, but I think it definitely helped. Hopefully regularly rolling out my leg muscles will help keep my hip from seizing up on me again :)

Question: What’s your favourite way to soothe sore muscles?

I also ice like a maniac. The slightest pain after exercise immediately gets the iced pea treatment! :P

 

Eats!

Just a few eats for today. I started off with a glorious batch of blueberry protein pancakes. It’s how I cheer myself up after a bad night, or when I have a rough day ahead.

• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup cottage cheese
• 1/2 cup egg whites
• cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp ground flax

All blended up! I’ve been making super fluffy batches lately. I think it’s a combo of the extra baking powder and fat from the flax.

My grocery store also started stocking one of my favourite Luna flavours again.

Munchmunchmunch.

This used to be my favourite flavour, but S’mores has taken over in its absence. My store only stocks three other flavours – Toasted Nut n’ Cranberry, Lemon Zest, and Caramel Nut Brownie. Decent flavours, but probably the lamest ones!

You’re going to be shocked by my dinner…

Tempeh burger with butternut squash and almond butter. I got lazy, and the squash and fresh jar of AB were calling my name. If you haven’t tried this combo yet, I highly suggest that you do! Since I don’t cook with oils (cooking oils hurt my tummy) this is a great way to sneak in a little fat with my dinner :)

I’ve also progressed to 90% chocolate without the peanut butter.

Straaaaaight up. This is so rich, all I need is a little piece after dinner to satisfy my after-meal sweet tooth (yes, I have something sweet after every meal, usually a hard candy). Now my 70% stuff just doesn’t taste right. It’s kind of like when I switched to drinking black coffee. Bitter at first, but now that I’m used to it, I can’t go back! I’ll be at 100% a la HEAB soon ;)

That’s all for me folks! I’m thinking of switching to doing two posts a day. I used to do it back before exams and term papers forced me to one update a day. But now that I’m only working 40 hours a week (it’s such a luxury now!) I’m thinking of going back. For me, it actually takes less time to do a couple shorter posts than one big long one. It’ll take you less time to read too ;)

See ya tomorrow! Maybe in the a.m.!! Until then, I’ll be twittering away ;)