Sometimes art is a workout...

Workouts come in many shapes.  We are familiar with the kind that involve running or hefting handily-shaped barbells and dumbbells.  Sometimes workouts involve lifting seemingly innumerable boxes of heavy things, like when we move, or running up and down stairs all day, like when we speed-clean the house.  Both the familiar and the unusual workouts count, assuming we meet certain criteria.

It has to involve sweat.  If we aren’t getting sweaty, as I mentioned last week, we aren’t working hard enough.

We have to get breathless.  We want our hearts to work.  That’s where the endurance benefits come from, as well as the mood-enhancers.  We want to use our work to train our bodies to recover quickly from stresses, and that means providing our bodies with controlled and appropriate stress.

We need to be (a little) sore later.  Soreness means we worked hard enough.  Please note:  we are not talking about major pain or injury.  If we feel a bit stiff and sore the next day, we know we have done the right amount of work to challenge our muscles.  We can stretch them and then give them some time to recover and get stronger.

So, hit the gym or clean out the basement, whatever works for today.