I love you three sets of twenty

A lot of the rhetoric around exercise is about suffering and compulsion.  No pain, no gain.  Trainers are drill sergeants, torturers, dominatrixes, punishers.  Gym time is penance for the sins of the table.

Nope.

At base, exercise is about love.  It is about life and wanting to be around for it.  It’s about growth and victory and power.  We exercise because we matter.  That special thing that we are, that crazy, wonderful human who wants to climb trees or solve world hunger or balance the checkbook just once is worth preserving and cherishing.  That is why we run and lift and sweat and stretch.

Love yourself today and maybe take a walk.

Just Right

News flash:  we are all different.  What this means is that it is difficult to say how much exercise we each need.  Our government suggests we get at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise most days a week.  That is not a bad place to start, but most of us could use more.

This does not mean that we should spend more time at the gym than, say, sleeping.  People who are not into endurance sports, who are not professional athletes, who hold actual jobs don’t need to spend hours and hours a day working out.  Do some cardio.  Lift some weights.  Stretch.  Find the amount of exercise (more than zero!) that makes you feel best.

Friday Exercise: Femur Arcs

The Amazing Stickie works her lower abdominals by doing femur arcs.  The movement is simple, but a few form details make all the difference.

She begins lying in tabletop position, which is on her back with her thighs pointing toward the ceiling and her shins parallel to the floor.  For those of us who remember geometry, we recognize that the two segments of her legs make a 90 degree angle.  This angle is important because she needs to maintain it throughout the exercise.

Stickie inhales as she lowers one leg toward the ground using ONLY her hip.  It is extremely tempting to touch the foot to the ground by bending the knee, but that is much, much easier and does not give the abdominals the challenge they need and want.  As she exhales, she brings the leg back up to meet the other leg.  As she moves, she works to keep her abdominals flat; they will want to poof up, but that just trains them to stick out, which is not our goal.  She alternates legs until she has completed a set of ten.  After a rest, she does a couple more sets.

Thursday Book Report: Maniac Magee

Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli is the inaugural selection for kids from Andrew Luck’s book club.  If all his selections are this good, we all need to join his club.

While there are sports in the book, they are not the focus.  Maniac has incredible athletic talent.  It does not even come close to his talent for living under extremely difficult circumstances.  One way he copes with those circumstances is by running. 

Fitness is not an end in itself.  This book acknowledges the importance of sports for character development while pointing out that we develop character to do things with our lives.

The writing is spectacular, funny and touching.  What is not to like about a book with an incidental mention of a tricycle gang of little kids called Heck’s Angels?

Read it, share it, give it to a kid or grown-up you know who needs to be inspired.

It's simple, except when it isn't

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig, but for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity, I would give my life."

This quote was mentioned in something I was reading recently.  I have always liked it because it neatly sums up a very messy process:  change.  So many times, as we think about changing, we decide all we need to do is simple: do it.  Then reality sets in and we have to deal with obstacles ranging from uncomfortable shoes to unwilling family members to poor nights’ sleep.  If we persevere, we eventually find that new habit becomes simple again.

Embrace the mess and we can make it to the simplicity beyond.

Not even a new toothbrush adds much to the experience

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that very few people probably find brushing their teeth all that exciting.  We all, I hope, do it, but it is most likely not the high point of the day.  Sometimes exercise falls into that tooth-brushing spot:  boring, habitual, and useful.

I love what is habitual and useful.  If our fitness routines are both of those things, great!

It’s the boring that gets me.  Unfortunately, boring also tends to undermine the habitual and useful part.  When we always do the same exercise, we don’t have to think about it.  Our bodies go through the motions and our brains check out rather than connect with what we are doing.  We work the same muscles in the same way over and over.

Let’s shake it up a bit.  If we’ve been doing all circuits, let’s throw in a heavy lifting day.  If it has been treadmill for months, let’s go outside.  The new muscle movements will wake up body and mind and reinvigorate the practice.

The video has no picnic baskets, but it is smarter than average...

By happy accident, I ended up with a yoga personal training session.  Which is to say, the other people who normally show up for the yoga class I take didn’t make it and I was the only student.  It has happened to me once before, but I forgot how different it is.

For background, I am not a particularly gifted yogi.  I’m more like Yogi (“hand over the picnic basket!).  I take yoga not because I’m good at it, but because I am bad at it.  I need to spend conscious time on flexibility and I need to unplug the whirring fan of my brain.  I tend to be a back-of-the-class student so I can see what to do and mostly not be seen as I try to figure out exactly how I’m supposed to get my foot over there with all those other body parts in the way.

When I am the only student, there is no incognito.

What that meant, in the moment, was that I got to learn things that were directly relevant to me.  When class is large, a teacher’s recommendation to lengthen one side of the body or lower shoulders or level hips may or may not apply to me.  That day, it was my movement compensations that were on view and under scrutiny.

It made me realize, again, why personal training is both important and scary.  I learned a lot about how to move my body, my particular, history-laden body that struggles more to do things on the left, that probably shouldn’t interlace fingers anymore, that needs to keep an eye on knee alignment.  I learned about what I was doing wrong.  I also learned about what I was doing right.  The instructor encouraged as she corrected, gave me a feeling of safety by recognizing where I was and gently moving me toward where I should go.

I am grateful for the good example of that teacher.  May I do likewise!