The Amazing Stickie and Cossack Lunge

The Amazing Stickie has amazing hips and legs, natch.  Today she is working on them by doing Cossack lunge.  She begins standing up straight with her hands clasped in front of her chest.  She takes a giant step out to one side, externally rotating both legs and bending the knee toward which she is stepping.  (Most people should probably not go past the point where the thigh on the stepping leg is parallel to the floor, at first.) The foot on the the non-bent leg should be pointing up toward the ceiling (i.e., heel on the floor, toes up!).

 

If you have knee problems, this exercise is one to approach with caution.  Don’t do it if it hurts.

Stickie does twenty or thirty for a set. 

More About Couches and Cake

Yesterday, joking around, I said that my best advice was to lie on the couch and eat cake.  There are, however, times when that might actually be the best advice.

As a fitness professional, it is my job to get people to move and to make general suggestions about healthy diet (specific suggestions and menu planning are the province of dieticians and nutritionists, who have a whole bunch more education than I do on the topic and a different scope of practice).  While I admit that I have The Very Best Clients Ever, who may not be a representative sample of folks in general, I have to say that sometimes they could use a bit of a break.  I love exercise, but, like everything else, too much is too much.

 

This is a bit of a digression, but only a bit:  if I had been consulted about the fitness app for the Apple Watch, I would have explained about rest days.  We do not need to work out seven days a week.  That seventh day is for resting.  As we get more fit, resting might mean a gentle walk or a couple of stretches rather than straight-on couch time, but the point remains:  we all need to rest.

 

Similarly, I don’t see the point of life without cake.  OK:  slight exaggeration.  Life is better with cake and other festive foods.  We need celebration as well as rigor in our lives.  I’m not advocating for diving face first into the chocolate cake on a daily basis, but maybe we can step away from the danger of orthorexia (yes that’s a real thing, an eating disorder in which people get obsessed with eating only healthy foods).

 

Work hard.  Eat right.  And sometimes take a break.

Best Advice

Today I’m going to share some of my very best advice on exercise and diet.  Here we go:  lie on the couch all day and eat cake.

 

April Fools!

 

(Seriously:  move a little and eat a vegetable.) 

Monday Workout: Prize?

We made it to the end of another month.  Sadly, our prize is burpees.  This is a short circuit, so try four rounds.

 

1 min cardio
skier jumps	30
bench press	20
pushup renegade row	10
flies	20
burpees	10
pretty princesses	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Alternating Crossbody Front Raise

Stickie loves exercise variations.  Today she is trying Alternating Crossbody Front Raise.  She begins standing up tall holding some relatively light dumbbells.  She lifts one of the dumbbells toward her opposite shoulder by bending her elbow.  She lowers it back to start and then repeats on the other side.

A set of ten is good.

Setting Goals: 2 of 2

Yesterday I wrote about SMART goals.  They work great for some people.  Other people, not so much.  Here are some other ways to set goals.

I love process goals.  If SMART goals focus on the destination, process goals focus on the journey.  So rather than setting a goal of losing x pounds, I set a goal of doing three weight workouts a week and five cardio workouts.  Or maybe I set a goal to eat only one dessert a week, or to drink only water, or some other more healthful food choice.

 

I’m also a big fan of minimum goals.  They take a bit of experimentation to get right, but then they’re awesome.  We figure out the very least we can do to feel good and we set that as the minimum.  That might be as simple as 30 minutes of moving every day.  We might set a minimum goal for sleep, or for weight workouts, or for workouts outside.  Once we have done the minimum, we know we’ve taken care of business.  We may find that we want to do more, but we also know we don’t have to.  It’s a great way to unplug from the zeitgeist that we always have to be doing more faster better longer.

 

Finally, I am in favor of setting goals for good things.  We don’t just have to set goals for things that we know we should do but don’t really want to get done.  How about a goal for more massages?  More tasty ways to eat fruit?  More laughter?

 

Go get happy, y’all.

Setting Goals: 1 of 2

Now that we are motivated to strength train (I hope) and we have some idea about what kind of strength training we’re interested in, it’s time to set some goals.  I’m going to talk about the classic goal model today and some other goal ideas tomorrow.

In general, a lot of experts advocate for SMART goals:  that is, goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.  Let’s unpack that a bit.

 

Specific goals are not “I want to get in shape.”  They are more like “I want to fit into my old jeans” or “I want to lose x pounds.”  Getting in shape is amorphous.  We can’t tell if we have achieved it if we don’t get specific about what getting in shape means to us.  One person may define it as playing with their kid all day without feeling dead at the end.  Another might define it as being able to run a marathon.  Yet another will have a specific clothing size in mind.

 

Which brings us to measurable.  When we formulate our goal with a measurable target, seeing our progress is easier.  If my goal is to lose x pounds and I only lose x-5, I know I need to work a little harder.  This is why so many goals involve things like amounts of weight (lost or lifted) or distance (5K?  Century ride?) or size (inches lost, clothing size) or other markers (body fat percentage anyone?).

 

Achievable is exactly what it sounds like, but it’s sometimes complicated to make an achievable goal.  We may not know what is achievable, particularly in regards to the other two criteria.

 

Realistic is a lot like achievable.  This is where we face some facts.  I know that I, for example, would be extremely unrealistic if I were to make a goal of running a marathon this year (or, you know, ever) because I hate running, my body hates running, and it’s just not going to happen.  Similarly, if a person has a goal of losing 50 pounds by their wedding next month, the truth is that that is not going to happen short of amputating a limb or something equally unpleasant and unlikely.

 

Timely means, in this context, that we set ourselves a deadline.  We may not know what an appropriate amount of time is to achieve our goals.  This is why professional help is useful.  That said, for weight loss goals, a good rubric for achieving goals in a healthy way is to assume that a person can lose 1 to 2 pounds per week.

 

Go be smart!