Wave World: health & beauty news & reviews
Zara Baker on health & wellbeing this July…
We’re doing…
Kettlebells personal training.
Lucy Howlett from LIFT Personal Training Ltd is a relatively new face to Brighton but she’s already putting many of us through our paces. I met Lucy on Hove Lawns for a one-to-one Kettlebells training session. One-to-one training means a focus on posture and correct form. Whatever your goal: increased fitness, toning or losing weight, personal training is the best place to start.
Working with the Kettlebells weights, Lucy had me complete a range of exercises including squats and lunges, all the while utilising the weights to work the arm muscles. No stranger to cardio exercise with a strong leg workout, the weights were the new addition for me, and I quickly found it exhausting but exhilarating. Bye bye bingo wings! Creating a figure of eight around the head with the Kettlebell weight was great for the arms, while another fun workout involved passing the weight around the body, moving the waist hula-hoop style – great for toning! It wasn’t all fun and games though. Weight training was interspersed with short runs, the plank and my pet hate: push-ups. But with Lucy there to push me harder, I have never found a workout more beneficial. No pain, no gain, right? The best bit? You burn fat for up to 48 hours after the workout. The next day my arms and legs ached, as I’d fired up muscles that had been asleep for a long time! Now the goal is to keep going, as it will be great to see how far I can push myself.
Lucy specialises in Pre- and Post-Natal Exercise, but also teaches Boxing Fitness (which I can’t wait to try), Dance Tuition, and offers Nutrition Advice. She has also teamed up with Christian Vila – fellow Kettlebells pro – to teach some of the bootcamp classes. I may not be ready for that just yet, but thanks to Lucy I’m heading towards my next goal.
Lucy Howlett, LIFT Personal Training, 07879 490 373.
We’re reading…
Superfood Smoothies by Julie Morris.
Los Angeles-based natural food chef Julie Morris has devised 100 nutrient-rich smoothie recipes that would have Jennifer Aniston salivating. Forty-four-year-old Aniston is a huge fan of smoothies for health and wellbeing and she looks amazing, so Superfood Smoothies is our summer must-read! An easy-to-read introduction offers tips on serving sizes and buying ingredients, plus ‘how to build your smoothie’. Match your mood with creamy concoctions including coconut and banana, or get a huge vitamin kick out of frozen vegetables. A key alongside each recipe depicts whether it’s good for protein, cleanse/detox, bone strength and immunity, among others. The hardest part is choosing which one to do first! Now we just need Jennifer Aniston’s LA tan
and yoga instructor too…
Superfood Smoothies, out July, published by Sterling, £10.99
We’re drinking…
Smoothies aside, we can’t get enough of Pukka Herbs’ award-winning tea range – Perfect Day!
This new Fairtrade and organic black tea brings together Pukka’s delicious whole leaf Nam Lanh tea, wild-harvested from the Vietnamese rainforests, with full-bodied and sweet ginseng, licorice and maca, to produce a deliciously smooth and sweet tea. Reduce stress and slowly release energy with the special blend of ginseng and maca.
Available from Tesco stores and www.pukkaherbs.com, £2.29 for 20 sachets.