Moving counts as moving...

My parents are moving.  My father is turning 79 shortly and had one of two needed knee replacements last year; my mother just turned 75 and had back surgery last summer.  My weekend workout was packing and lugging boxes.

We all know the rule for moving boxes:  no packing anything heavier than you can lift.  The problem is that sometimes the definition of “heavier than you can lift” for the packer is not the same as it will be for the unpacker or the person who has to shift the box from one side of the garage to the other.  It takes a lot more boxes to pack appropriately for two septuagenarians than for a couple of college students.

The general rules for real-life workouts like packing to move are similar to regular workouts.  Work hard; take breaks; make sure you hydrate.  These rules can be applied to other real life workouts like landscaping, visits with active children or teens, and escaping from zombies (except I don’t recommend taking breaks while running from zombies unless you have reached a safe location).

Keep in mind that fitness happens everywhere.  The more we prepare, the easier it is.  Also:  please throw out all the lidless plastic containers now.

Holiday? What holiday? Oh, you mean we have time to work out today...

This week we are going to work on some transverse plane movements.  In non-trainer-speak, that means stuff that twists.  Twisting movements engage the oblique abdominals, which assist us with balance and help define our waists.  We also have a couple of moves that work overhead, so if you have shoulder issues, feel free to modify as needed to remain in your comfortable range of motion.  Modify, in this context, may mean not raising your arms as high, or it may mean substituting a different exercise that works the same muscle groups (e.g., kickbacks for skullcrushers), or it may mean choosing a different exercise altogether (e.g., anything that gets the heart rate up for the suitcase swings or lateral raises for Arnold presses).  We only want the good kind of discomfort that leads to growth, not the painful kind that means injury.  Three rounds.

ball overhead curtsies	30
bench press	20
Arnold press	10
suitcase swings	30
squats	20
skullcrushers	10
woodchoppers	30
bench rows	20
Russian twist	10

Friday Book Report: 30 Essential Yoga Poses

Judith Lasater is a major figure in American yoga.  Her book, 30 Essential Yoga Poses for Beginning Students and Their Teachers is mostly a book about yoga movement, but other aspects of yoga weave throughout the text.  The thirty poses and their variations provide lots of choices for practitioners.  There are a bunch of sequences laid out at the end of the book as well if a person does not want to figure out how to fit the poses together into a full practice.

Lasater very much approves of props for the access they can provide to challenging poses.  In her sequences, she often begins with a propped version of a pose to allow the body to accustom itself to what’s going on before moving into the full version.  Her directions are clear and the photographs do a great job of depicting the goals of the poses.

Her text provides plenty of context for the poses, both in terms of how the body moves and how the mind copes with the various challenges.  I ended up in a fascinating discussion with a colleague about the way shoulders work as a result, which is certainly nerdy, but useful.

Perhaps the best aspect of the book is the tone.  Lasater manages to encourage and soothe at the same time.  Poses that seem daunting at first become approachable because of her guidance.  She also emphasizes rest and relaxation as essential parts of yoga practice.

Definitely worth reading carefully and referring to often!