Love Month: Love is kind, but not always nice.

Captain Obvious would like a word here.  Love isn’t always nice.  (I’m not talking about abusive relationships here.  That’s well out of the scope of my practice.  If you feel like you’re in one, PLEASE get some help because nobody deserves that.)  We always see the cozy bits of love in popular culture, the snuggles and the chocolate and the laughter.  But sometimes love has to do hard stuff, like getting a toddler to bed or wearing that ugly bridesmaid dress or, more relevantly for my purposes, moving the body for its own good.

Love takes responsibility for the maintenance stuff.  It pays the bills and does the grocery shopping.  Nothing says love like finding enough toilet paper in the bathroom.

 

In a fitness context, that means that when we love ourselves, we push ourselves the right amount.  We acknowledge the parts of ourselves that want to roll over and sleep another hour and then we get our butts out of bed and work out anyway.  We eat the veggies first.  We meet our friends for a walk rather than an ice cream.

 

That bit about the right amount is important.  Love is also smart.  There are some days when love does the math and realizes that we do, in fact, need the extra hour of sleep.  Notice I said “some days.”  Love keeps the score and gently kicks us out of bed if we’ve missed too many gym days.

 

Love is kind, in the deepest sense.  It gets us to do stuff for our own good.

 

Go play.

Love Month: Motivation

I personally am not a fan of Valentine’s Day, as I’ve said over and over for years.  (No shade on my husband, who is a wonderful human I happen to love EVERY day of the year.)  However, love is a great thing and February, for better or worse (see what I did there?) in the popular consciousness is about love, love, and more love.

 

Love can provide powerful motivation for us.  In fact, love is the very best motivation there is for positive change in our lives.  I’m spending this month discussing how we harness love to make our fabulous selves even better.

 

A whole lot of people embark on a fitness routine because of negative emotions.  We work out because we feel ashamed of how we look or because we feel inadequate.  We try to punish ourselves into what we think of as good behavior.  Spoiler alert:  it mostly doesn’t work, and when it does, it does not make for a holistically healthy human.

 

When we work out from a place of love, we are far more equipped to deal with the fact that working out is often hard and unpleasant in the moment.  The negative brain will tell us that we are having a hard time because we actually suck and we see proof that we are never going to get better and on we go from there.  Doesn’t really help with the weight lifting, right?  When we are motivated by love, we tend to talk to ourselves more like we’d talk to a kid we love:  oh, honey, yes, this is difficult, but you’re going to feel better at the end and it is so important to take care of yourself.  And then:  look at you!  You did it!  I am so proud of you for persisting!  I know which voice I’d rather work out with.

 

Go play. 

Monday Workout: Impact and Balance

We’re working on impact and balance today.  If jumping is not your thing, sub regular squats and side lunges for the jumping kind.  Three rounds.

 

(jump) squats	30
rows	20
round lunges	10
kb swings	30
kb twist	20
kb 8s	10
lateral bound	30
kickbacks	20
plank up down	10

 

Goal Month: 5

Let’s review.  Here are the kinds of goals we learned about over the month.

 

1.     SMART goals

2.     dumb goals

3.     rubrics

4.     process goals

5.     outcome goals

 

Choose your favorite or mix and match!

Goal Month: Mix It Up

All right:  we are nearly at the end of the month.  Let’s put stuff together.

We know we need to figure out why we want to do what we do to keep ourselves showing up when stuff gets real.  We know we need both strategy and tactics to reach our goals.  We’ve considered SMART goals, dumb goals, rubrics, processes, and outcomes.  What should we do?

 

Good news!  We can use ALL the tools.  We can go through the process of making a SMART goal and use that as our outcome goal.  Then we can create process goals that move us in that direction, maybe even process goals that are dumb goals so we make it easy on ourselves to make progress.  We evaluate how we’re doing with rubrics.

 

Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

As we practice with the various kinds of goals, we’ll learn which kinds work best for us.  Hint:  the right kind of goal is the one that gets us closer to where we want to be.

 

Still need help?  I’m a wellness coach, personal trainer, and Pilates instructor.  In other words, I’m an expert.  Poke me!

Goal Month: Motivational Fuel

At this point, everyone should have a fair idea about different kinds of goals.  What more do we need?  Fuel!

Motivation is the fuel for goals.  All motivations are not created equal, however.

 

The first rule of motivation is that it has to be ours.  Change is hard and we really need to plug into what motivates us to do the work.  We may have other people in our lives who want us to change—their motivation is not going to work on us.  We may be a little embarrassed about what really motivates us, but if blowing your ex’s mind at child pickup is what you want most, you do you.  When we lie to ourselves and others about what motivates us, we just set ourselves back.  We may, on some level, want to be healthy—who doesn’t?—but if we really want to be in shape because the Zombie Apocalypse is coming and we want to outrun those brain-eaters, we need to tap into THAT motivation when it’s a question of going to the gym or rolling over and pulling up the covers in the morning.

 

All that said, science says that there is a hierarchy of motivations in terms of effectiveness.  The most effective motivation is intrinsic enjoyment.  In other words, if it’s fun, we’ll do it.  This is why I spend so much time encouraging folks to find fitness activities they like.

 

The next level down, but still really useful, is doing something because it’s the right thing to do.  Working out because it is good for us gets a lot of us to the gym.

 

Below that, we get into the territory of “I have to” and “So-and-so told me to.”  These are the folks who show up at the gym because their doctor or their spouse threatened them.  As soon as the external pressure lets up, they vanish, unless they discover that they like working out in the interim.

 

Sussing out our motivation can be tricky, but it is entirely worth spending a few minutes thinking or writing or talking through what gets us ready to work out.

Monday Workout: Short

We’ve got a lot going on in a short circuit today.  Choose the step up to reverse lunge for more challenge.  Four rounds.

 

1 min cardio
step ups or step up to reverse lunge	30
pushups	10
flies	20
squat raise	30
renegade row	20
V sit press	10