My Resolutions

My resolutions?  Sure, I’ll share:

 

1.     Eat healthy food.  For me, this means that I need to wave goodbye (again) (for good, I hope) to sugar and dairy.  Those two things make my body unhappy.  I’ll be drinking water, eating veggies, and indulging in sushi.

2.     Move.  I feel best when I work out enough, but not too much.  I need to do cardio and yoga pretty much every day.  I feel best when I lift weights once or twice a week and do a few Pilates sessions.  I get bonus points when my cardio is outside (hiking, biking, swimming).

3.     Relax.  When I relax, I don’t eat as much.  I don’t hurt as much.  I am nicer.

4.     Play.  Sure, I’m a grownup.  That doesn’t mean I can’t have fun.  I learn best through playing around, so bring on the experiments, the silly jokes, and the goofy ideas.

 

What are yours? 

Resolution Radio

We are coming up on Resolution season.  There is probably a rule somewhere that says I should love resolutions.  The Personal Training Police may come find me and haul me away if I don’t or something.

 

I do love resolutions, just not so much the kind that we automatically make for the new year.  I believe we can start fresh every single day.  There is nothing magic about January 1, or Monday, or a birthday that ends with a zero.

 

However, if we are going to make some resolutions, I have some suggestions.

 

First, be realistic.  Sure, we’re dreaming about how fabulous we are all going to be in 2021, but nothing is as discouraging as finding out that we really are not going to manage to fly, jump start our modeling career, make a gazillion bucks in two weeks, and lose 582 pounds by January 2.  A realistic weight loss goal for most people works out to a pound or two a week.  A realistic cardio goal, starting from the couch, is to work up to 30 minutes five days a week.  A realistic weight training goal is to do one session a week for a few months and then work up to two or three.

 

Second, be consistent.  We can’t do our entire fitness goal on the first day.  (This is unfortunate, but complaining about it does not help—I’ve tried.)  My examples of realistic goals above are all about consistency—doing something every week, every day.

 

Third, get help.  We are not going to lose weight if our dear partner bakes us delicious cookies every day, no matter how much we love both our partner and the cookies.  We need to enlist our family and friends to help us with our goals.  Some of them may not want to find another way to show their love other than cookies, which is educational, sad, frustrating, and, eventually, empowering.  We are, in fact, more powerful than cookies, but we might need to recruit some non-cookie members for our team.  Our families and friends can help us make good choices, can work out with us, can hold us accountable.  Note:  it is absolutely not fair to get mad at your accountability buddy for asking, very nicely, if you are sure that you really want to eat that third chocolate bar.  Our teams can be larger than our circle of friends and family.  We can get help from trainers, doctors, dieticians, nutritionists, and other health professionals.

 

Fourth, be kind.  Change is hard.  We are sometimes going to blow it.  When that happens, we do not need to be scolded.  We need to be encouraged and helped.

 

We can make 2021 awesome.

Getting Used to It

As I often do, I have two opposing thoughts in my mind at once.  And, as usual, I like them both.  We live in a nuanced, paradoxical world, so maybe we should get used to it?

 

Thought one:  it doesn’t matter how we’re feeling; we need to do the work.  This is the being a grownup part, where maybe we would rather lie in bed all day and figure out what that shape in the plaster really reminds us of, but instead we get up and work out because it is the right thing to do, it’s in line with our goals, and it will actually make us feel better.  The spin bike does not care if we are grumpy.  The weights do not get offended if we snarl at them.  When we work out in spite of our own resistance, we build grit and character as well as muscle.

 

Thought two:  it matters a lot how we approach what we do and how we feel about it.  I know and love a lot of folks who are in a bit of a freak-out about their pandemic bodies.  Freaking out does not burn calories.  It doesn’t help.  It leads us into a shame and self-hatred cycle.  If that kind of negativity worked, we would all be extra double thin.  We need to treat ourselves with love, approach our workouts in a spirit of calm, and allow ourselves to grow patiently, as if we were our own beloved child.

 

How do I resolve this?  I don’t.  I do both.  There are plenty of days when I do let the weights or the spin bike absorb my anger and bad moods.  I do, however, even in my worst moods, remember that I’m working out because it is good for me, because I will feel happier and be stronger for it, because I would encourage my bestie to do the same.

 

We don’t work out just to work out; we do it to feel good in the largest possible sense.  So take a deep breath and go play.

Monday Workout: Round!

We’re rounding out the year with a well-rounded workout!  It has cardio stuff, upper body stuff, lower body stuff, core stuff!   We do compound exercises!  We get sweaty!  Do three rounds, modifying as needed for YOUR body.

 

plyo/reg/mod jacks	30
bench press	20
reverse flies	10
woodchoppers	30
lunge to curl	20
lateral raise	10
suitcase swings	30
squats	20
pretty princesses	10

Basics to go with minimums

When we want to set minimums for ourselves (like I’ve been writing about this week), we can consider setting them in these basic areas:

 

1.     Cardio.  This is anything that gets the heart moving and the breathing heavy.  Walk, ski, skate, swim, run, dance, bike, whatever blows your metaphorical skirt up.

2.     Strength.  This is the stuff that builds muscle.  Typically, it involves lifting weights, but we can get a perfectly good workout using just our bodies—looking at you, squats and pushups!

3.     Core and balance.  This work helps keep us safe.  A strong core leads to good posture.  Good balance helps us avoid falls.  Both together contribute to our coordination.

4.     Flexibility.  Stretching, yoga, and Pilates help us maintain and extend our range of motion.  We decrease our likelihood of injury when we work on our flexibility.  And it feels good!

 

Go play.

Not even muscular Christianity

I’m pretty sure that St. Paul was not a personal trainer or even a fitness enthusiast, but he sums up the problem of all of us who want to be more fit and struggle in his letter to the Romans (chapter 7, verse 19, for those who want to look it up):  “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”

 

I do not at all even a little bit endorse the idea of working out as virtue and not working out as sin.  Food is not a vice, but rather a necessity for life.  But we all know that there are times when we really should work out, not just to be healthier, but to feel better.  And we know we should choose foods that are better for us.  And somehow we don’t.

 

What to do?

 

One thing we can do is make it easy on ourselves.  We just do the minimum.  So, for example, I know that I get grumpy if I don’t do my cardio.  I tell myself that the goal is 30 minutes on the spin bike.  I don’t have to pedal fast.  I don’t have to pedal hard.  I just have to put my butt on the bike and move.  Almost always I do end up pedaling fast and hard.  I get to the end of my half hour and I’m sweaty and breathless and I feel so much happier.   But if I tell myself I need to go fast and hard, I won’t do it.  It sounds too difficult, when I’m tired and comfy and I’d really rather read some more or look at dog videos on Facebook.  I have to make it easy.

 

Minimums work for all kinds of things.  We can say that we have to eat at least one vegetable at some point during the day.  We can promise ourselves one set of squats, or one stretch.  We can commit to balancing on one foot while we brush our teeth to work on our core and balance.  We can even say that we have to go outside once a day.

 

If we just do our minimum, great!  Gold stars for us!  And if our problem was just getting started, we might find that we do more than the minimum, which is extra bonus points.  Beware, however, the fake minimum.  We have to mean it when we say that our minimum is enough.  We can’t say we’re cool with one stretch and then beat ourselves up for not doing a whole yoga session.

 

Count the small victories.  They add up.

Pandemic Bare Minimum

We are all really tired, I think, of living in pandemic times.  It’s boring.  It’s frustrating.  It’s stressful in so many ways.

 

Under the circumstances, it is tempting to give up.  Sure, ice cream is a breakfast food.  Why should I even try to work out?  I don’t really have the right stuff and no one sees me anyway and besides, I’m tired from watching that new streaming show about great lawns of the world until three in the morning.  What the heck, I’ll get together with my friends—I see so many people’s posts about it and none of them are sick, so what can it hurt?  And I’ve really had it with my glasses fogging up—I’m just not doing the mask thing any more.

 

Let’s resist the temptation.

 

The only way through these terrible times is by consistent good decisions.

 

And yes, this is about fitness.  We can’t be fit if we are dead.  We use the same kind of science-based thinking to deal with the pandemic that we do when we decide what kind of workouts to do.  We have to use the same motivational techniques to get us through the not-always-pleasant process to reach our happy future.

 

Our bare minimum fitness right now is:  stay home as much as possible, wear a mask whenever we have to go out, and do not gather with our friends and loved ones who do not live with us.  If we manage to do this minimum, we’ll all live to the next workout.

 

And if we don’t want to do it for ourselves, we need to do it for others.  We want our parents, our kids, our neighbor with cancer, our immunocompromised coworker, everyone to make it out of this.  Exercising our empathy is always a good workout.

Monday Workout: Four!

While I love my usual workout format, I like to shake it up from time to time.  This week we have a shorter list of exercises, but we are going to do four rounds.  What I am not going to shake up is this piece of important advice:  change the workout to meet your needs and equipment!!!  If you don’t have an exercise ball, substitute any other ab exercise for the roll out abs.  If your knees hate lunges, do deadlifts instead.  This is YOUR workout and it needs to work for YOU.

 

1 arm clean and press	20
squats	20
kickbacks	20
db swings	20
lunge with twist	20
roll out abs	10

 

Cardio, fancy!

Once we have a cardio habit and our 30 minutes per day is easy-peasy, we can get fancy.  There are lots of ways to do that.

 

One is to go faster.  Maybe we’ve been walking and we can progress to jogging or running.  Maybe we’ve been biking and we get to go farther in the same amount of time.  If we’re on a treadmill, we set the pace higher.

 

Another way is to go harder.  We bike uphill.  We set the resistance on the elliptical trainer higher.

 

Alternatively, we can go longer.  Sure, we can do half an hour, but maybe an hour is not so much of a snap.  That 5K turns into a half marathon turns into a marathon…

 

My favorite way is to add intervals.  Intervals are kind of like sprinkles of harder/faster in our regular workout.  Once we’ve warmed up, we spend a minute going as hard and fast as possible to get our heart rate up toward the top of our cardio range.  Then we spend a minute or two at an easier level to bring the heart rate down to the bottom end of our cardio range (but still at or above 65% of our maximum).  A half-hour cardio workout might have five or six intervals in it (five minutes warm up, five minutes cool down, twenty minutes doing intervals).  Those sprinkles actually improve our cardio fitness faster because our bodies learn to recover from the hard work faster.  We burn more calories and boost our metabolism without spending all day at the gym.

 

It's also a good antidote to the boredom that can set in during long cardio sessions.  Yay!

How to Cardio, with math!

When I work with clients, we focus on weight training because that is the best use of our time.  That does not mean that weight training is more important than cardio, just that it more conducive to having someone stand there and help with directions and form and motivation and counting.  However, we need to do our cardio, too.  In fact, for anyone just getting started with exercise, it is where we want to start.

 

At the most basic level, cardio exercise is whatever we do that makes us breathe heavily and gets our hearts to beat faster.  We want to aim for about thirty minutes of whatever that is at least five days a week.  The easiest way to know if we are working hard enough but not too hard is to see if we can hold a conversation.  If that’s too much to ask while we are dancing/walking/running/biking/rollerblading, we’re working too hard.  If we find that we can belt out “Eye of the Tiger,” we’re not working hard enough to channel our inner Rocky—we have enough lung power left to sing, so we need to devote that power to the work at hand instead.

 

In quantitative terms, we want to work out at 65 to 85% of our maximum heart rate.  Here’s the math:  subtract your age from 220 to get your maximum heart rate in beats per minute.  Multiply that number by .65 to get the bottom end of the cardio range and by .85 to get the top end.  Take your pulse for a minute during the workout to see how you are doing.  (Those of us who have fitness trackers can let the gizmos do the work.  Those of us without will quickly get a feel for when we are working hard enough and when we’re working too hard.)

 

(If you are just getting off the couch for the first time in months, you may need to work up to 65% of your maximum heart rate.  This is totally all right.  Go slow and steady and safe.  Start with five minutes of work and go up from there.)

 

That’s the whole deal.  Get the heart rate up, keep it there for 30 minutes, cool down.  Makes sense now why clients do this on their own time and not with me hanging out watching—my conversation is not that entertaining.

 

Well, that’s almost the whole deal.  Tomorrow I’ll add a bit more, but this is enough to get going.

 

Go play.

Two things to do...

I don’t know about you, but I am getting pretty worn down lately.  We’ve all been dealing with the pandemic for what feels like forever.  We’re in the midst of a really weird holiday season in which we love our dearest ones by staying away from them.  And there are moments when no amount of lights or tinsel, no fancy packaging or special foods can make things seem better.

 

What to do?  Two things, and one will probably make the other easier.

 

The first thing to do is to take care of the folks around us.  Even if we live alone and we are staying by ourselves to protect everyone from the spread of this stupid disease, we can still do some things to take care of other people.  Maybe Zoom isn’t as fabulous as actually seeing our friends face to face, but we can still offer a word of encouragement or a smile.  We can drop a note in the mail, make a phone call, send an email with a funny picture or nice sentiment.  Heck, we can do good things for people we don’t even know—make a donation or two or three.  If we live with other people, it’s even easier.  Give some hugs.  Take an extra turn doing the dishes.  Watch that movie that is the other person’s favorite.

 

Doing nice things for others makes us feel good.  Science says so.  (So if you are looking for a fitness connection, here it is:  fitness is what helps us feel good.)

 

The second thing to do is to take care of ourselves.  I have a deep-seated irritation with self-care lists.  They often involve rampant consumerism, symptom-treating, or both.  The kind of self-care I’m talking about here is the kind you would do for someone you love, which is why doing the first thing might make this one easier.  It’s practice.

 

For example, when we take care of our kids, we don’t always decide that what they need is a bunch of candy and a trip to the toy store (the child-friendly equivalent of a glass of wine and some retail therapy).  Sometimes we know that they really need to unplug from the screens and run around outside, or to eat a real meal that isn’t shaped like dinosaurs or bugs or goldfish.  Maybe they need to talk about their frustration with doing school remotely, or they need a good night of sleep, or a hug.  It can be hard to step outside of ourselves enough to figure out what it is we actually need to take care of ourselves; noticing what the people around us need might make it easier.

 

And it may seem obvious, but self-care doesn’t always feel great.  That kid who really needs a nap may kick and scream about taking it.  Getting the fractious kid outside for some quality time with the bike or scooter or soccer ball might feel like moving the Himalayas, complete with peeved yetis.  We might prefer to zone out over a drink and some impulse shopping, but we can eat our veggies and drink our water and get a little exercise instead.

 

So:  go do something real and nice for somebody and then for your own dear self.

Monday Workout: 12 days

It’s time.  We need to do the infamous 12 days of Christmas workout.  Here’s how it works.  On “day one” we do one push press.  We rest if needed (ha!) and then proceed to “day two, “ on which we do two goblet squats and one push press.  We continue on, trying to take our rests between “days.”  Eventually, we reach the twelfth day and we do twelve plyojacks, eleven kettlebell swings, ten jump lunges, nine mountain climbers, eight renegade rows, seven pushups, six burpees, five deadlifts, four one-leg squats on each leg, three overhead presses, two goblet squats, and one push press.  At the end, we may decide it is time to get a new true love.  The good news is that we only go through the twelve days one time.  As always, feel free to substitute exercises that better suit your body’s needs—plain lunges are fine if you don’t want to jump, woodchoppers make a good swap for plyojacks, etc.  And yes, I do know that at the end of the workout we will have done 42 burpees.  Merry Christmas.

 

1 push press

2 goblet squats

3 Overhead press

4 1 leg squats each leg

5 deadlifts

6 burpees

7 pushups

8 renegade rows

9 mountain climbers

10 jump lunges

11 kb swings

12 plyojacks

Best

IF and ONLY IF someone on your list of people to shop for ASKS for a fitness gift (see Tuesday’s post for why we should never give unsolicited fitness gifts), here are my suggestions for the best ones:

 

1.     TRX.  I love TRX because it doesn’t take up a lot of space and it can be used in so many ways to build strength and stability.  Everything we do with TRX uses our core musculature.  It can be supportive (say for people with knee issues) and challenging.

2.     Stability balls.  Again, stability balls are versatile.  They add an element of instability to our usual exercises.  We can use them as an alternative to our standard desk chairs for variety.  And we can use them as Jedi mind tricks to convince ourselves that what we are doing must be fun because it involves a great big bouncy ball.

3.     Resistance bands.  I like the ones with handles.  They don’t take up a lot of space, they travel well (remember travel?), and they can be used to work out pretty much every body part.

4.     A workout buddy.  Seriously.  One of the biggest fitness gifts we can give is our support in the form of somebody to go with (safely and in a socially distant manner, if you are not already in the same household).  Commit to a daily or weekly walk/run/bike/swim/weight session.  This one is even free!!!!

Both!

Sometimes it seems like I say things that contradict each other.  It might even be true sometimes!  I do try to follow the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Silly!), but that can lead to oversimplifying.  So, now that I’ve blathered on a bit, I will provide some clarity, or nuance.  Hmm… I think I just demonstrated my problem.  Maybe an example will help.

 

I often write about the power of routine.  When we get in the habit of working out, we don’t have to waste a lot of energy getting ourselves started.  We do it like we brush our teeth, same thing daily.

 

And I also often write about the power of doing something different.  New experiences challenge our bodies and brains.

 

Which is true?  Both!  Life is full of nuance.  We want to have a routine for working out, but we also want to change up what we do from time to time.  It’s like getting a new toothbrush or a different flavor of paste, or remembering that flossing is good for us, too.  We want to use the influence of our good habits and apply that to doing bigger and better things.  And it is never bad to practice holding two different ideas in our heads at the same time.

 

Go play.

Bad Gift: No cookie

This holiday season I am repeating a very important piece of advice because sometimes we need reminding.  DO NOT give anyone unsolicited fitness stuff for whatever holidays you celebrate.  It will not go well.

 

Here’s why.  There’s this whole scale of readiness for change.  It ranges from not even thinking about it yet to taking action.  We can’t get ready for change for someone else.  We may think they should be ready to change.  We may love them and want what is best for them.  We may think we are being helpful.  We are wrong.

 

Our dear ones will not thank us, at least not sincerely.  They may feel guilty or resentful or inadequate or pressured, but they will not feel supported and loved.

 

None of us can change anybody else.  This is actually good news because it frees us up to work on what we CAN change, which is our own behavior.  If we want to buy fitness stuff, we can buy it for ourselves.  If our loved ones get interested, maybe we can share with them.

Monday Workout: Challenge

We’re continuing to work on stability with a side of upper body strength.  All these asymmetrical exercises give us extra core challenge!  Three rounds.

 

suitcase swings	30
renegade rows	20
1 leg bridge	10
squat or jump squat	30
flies or 1 arm flies	20
YTA	10
overhead march	30
twist	20
plank/side plank

Only Two

Today’s list is short, but not sweet.  Here in the holiday season, I would like to remind everyone of my two favorite nutritional guidelines:

 

1.     Eat vegetables.  Lots of them.  Lots of different kinds.  Lots of different colors.  They add vitamins, minerals, micronutrients, and fiber to our diets.  They taste good.

2.     Drink water.  A lot of us go around slightly dehydrated all the time.  This makes us cranky, sore, headachy, and inefficient.  Water helps a lot of our bodily processes work.  Some of us find that it helps us control our appetites.  We know if we are drinking enough water if we have to go to the bathroom every hour or so.

Instructive Fictional Story

There are many reasons to look askance at Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  What is up with a little girl barging into people’s houses?  And what kind of parents don’t comfort their little one when disaster strikes?  And what laws of physics govern the temperature of porridge anyway?  These issues aside, Goldilocks has one useful thing to demonstrate to us in our fitness journey:  the just right.

 

I’m sure we all know the feeling we get when we overdo the workout.  We curse whoever invented stairs.  We count the seconds until we can have another dose of ibuprofen.  We vow never to move again, ever.  That would be the Papa Bear Too Hot Porridge problem.

 

But we also know the feeling when we’ve been stuck at our desks too long.  Our backs whine at us.  Our hips freeze in an uncomfortable bent position.  We know exactly what our shoulders sound like because they are glued up by our ears.  This is the Mama Bear Too Cold Porridge problem.

 

We want to aim for Baby Bear.  Goldilocks likes Baby Bear’s choices.  Baby Bear works out enough that he is not too sore but enough that he’s not too stiff either.  He is tired enough at the end of the day to sleep well in his just right bed.  Of all the people in the story, it is Baby Bear who is most likely to live happily ever after, once he gets some breakfast and fixes his chair.

 

Be like Baby Bear. 

Cautionary True Story

Last week, my dad fell.  What does that have to do with fitness?  It’s a cautionary tale.

 

See, my dad is in his eighties.  When he was young, he played pretty much every sport there was.  He also smoked for more than 40 years.  One of those things resulted in worn out knees and the other in lung surgery.  He has a variety of other typical health issues in a person of his age and lifestyle, controlled by various medications.

 

Aging happens to all of us whether we like it or not.  However, we have some choices to make.

 

See, when my dad had a knee replacement, he didn’t like doing his physical therapy exercises.  They hurt.  They were hard.  He shirked them as much as possible.  And now his replacement knee does not work as well as it should and he chose not to get the other knee replaced because he was unhappy with the results on the first one.  In other words, he still has two bad knees.

 

The bad knees mean it is hard for him to move from sitting to standing and it is challenging to walk.  So most of the time, he doesn’t do it.  What that means is that he has very little cardio endurance, which makes it harder to go for a walk, which means he is even less likely to do it.  See where I’m going here?

 

But last week, he and my mom took their little dog for a short walk to the end of their block.  On the way back, my dad lagged behind.  He wanted to stop at the end of their walkway by the car to catch his breath.  My mom took the dog inside.  And then my dad fell.

 

End result:  a visit from the paramedics, bruises to elbows, knees, and pride.  He is going to be all right, but he would be better if he had done some preventive work.

 

The take-aways:

• put up with a little discomfort now in keeping up the cardio

• our privilege level does not translate into speedier or better healing; we still have to work.

• consistent, small actions make big differences

• always listen to your physical therapist, even if you do not like what they say

 

Go play.