youtube – Personal Euphoria: Pilates & Fitness Classes in CT

Grip Strength

Multiple research shows a correlation between overall health markers and grip strength. There seems to be a particular correlation with cardiovascular health (based on a study of 140,000 people over 4 years). Some researchers think testing grip strength might be a cheap, easy way to assess general heart health.

This matters because grip strength often starts to diminish between the age of 50-55 (I don’t know about you, but that sounds young to me). And Millennials have lost grip strength compared to their adult counterparts from the 1980s. This loss is more pronounced in men than women, but both have lost their grip. (Note: the research on this did not indicate they are concerned this is causing heart issues in adults today, more just that as a population we do less manual labor.)

The real issue is that grip strength has such practical applications in life, so if and when you lose it, you notice it daily. If your grip strength is still good you might take for granted using a fork, pumping gas, vacuuming, lifting a water jug, or opening a jar of pickles, but all these tasks require grip strength.

Grip strength is interconnected with wrist health and forearm strength. So […]

The Christmas Tree Goes Up

Every year at my mom’s we get an unusually huge tree. It’s a challenge getting the tree inside the house and up, but a spectacle once in and decorated. This year we got the largest tree we have ever had (12-feet tall by 13-feet wide). It almost didn’t make it in the house.

Normally, the tree we pick looks small outside and huge inside. This year the tree looked enormous before we cut it down. But in thirty years I have never been the voice of reason on Tree Day, so I excitedly supported cutting down the tree.

Once down, all of us pulling together couldn’t budge the tree. We tied a rope to the tree and a rope to the van and used the van to drag the tree on a trailer behind the van. Once home we lined the tree up with the door. Tied a rope to the tree again, ran the rope through the house, ran the rope out a window on the opposite side, tied the rope to the van […]