Laker Girl Savannah Graves spent summer at the beach, getting healthy amounts of vitamin from the sunshine and relaxing. The NBA dancer posted pictures of her beach staycation, including ones of her posing in the sand in a cute black bikini and brown sun hat. Another showed her laying on a beach towel with a Lakers bag in the shot. “Nonchalant😌🌤️,” she captioned the post. “Casually blessing my timeline 😍,” a friend commented. Here’s how Graves stays fit and strong enough to keep up with the Laker Girls’ training and performances.
1. Weight Training
Graves does resistance training sessions at the gym, using machines and her own body weight. “[Muscle strengthening] exercises improve glucose metabolism, enhance maintenance of healthy body weight, and help improve cardiovascular risk factors such as blood pressure,” says I-Min Lee, professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “All these factors lead to lower risks of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes, which lowers mortality risk.”
2. Dance Classes
Graves isn’t complacent about her skills, and continues to take dance classes. “Physiologic studies have demonstrated that regular activity builds muscle and bone, reduces fat, increases aerobic capacity, lowers blood pressure, and improves the ratio of ‘good’ to ‘bad" cholesterol,’ says Harvard Health. “Dance has been shown to have all the benefits of other forms of exercise.”
3. Reformer Pilates
Graves does Pilates sessions on a reformer machine, which is an excellent alternative to mat classes for those who want to kick their workouts up a notch. "Many of the reformer exercises are simply mat Pilates exercises that use the machine to either make the exercise more challenging or make it easier,” Hollie Grant, Founder of Pilates PT, tells Harper's Bazaar. “This is the beauty of the reformer – it can help intensify exercises (by increasing resistance) but it can also make exercises easier (by providing support through resistance)."
4. Pineapple Snacks
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Graves loves fresh pineapple for a healthy, delicious snack on the go. “The studies on pineapple as a weight-loss aid are only animal-based, so we need more evidence of this claim,” says Julia Zumpano, RD, LD, with the Cleveland Clinic. “But adding some of this healthy fruit to your diet certainly couldn’t hurt… Choose canned pineapple packed in its juice, not syrup. Pineapple is sweet enough on its own, so skip the added sugar when you can.”
5. She Loves the Sun
One look at Graves’ social media shows how much she loves being outdoors in the sunshine, which is extremely good for health in moderation. Sunshine is shown to affect health not just physically but on a mental level too. “Research suggests that light hitting your skin, not just your eyes, helps reverse seasonal affective disorder (SAD),” say the experts at Harvard Health. “Moreover, being outside gets us golfing, gardening, and engaging in other types of physical activity.”