Monday Workout: Pursued by a Bear

This week we have more compound exercises!  The lunge to curl to overhead press is exactly what it sounds like; those of us with knee issues may just want to do a curl to overhead press.  The bear crawl starts with us on the floor on our hands and feet; we move our right arm and left leg forward to crawl and then the left arm and right leg.  Ball wall squats can be done several ways, but two that I might suggest this week are the usual up-and-down or an endurance squat held for as long as possible.  As always, adapt as needed!  Three rounds.

 

1 arm clean and press	30
flies	20
ball wall squat	10
suitcase swing	30
(lunge) to curl to overhead press	20
bear crawl or pushups	10
mountain climbers	30
deadlifts	20
brains	10

Friday Book Report: Yoga and the Quest for the True Self

Stephen Cope’s book Yoga and the Quest for the True Self is not the one to pick up for how to do poses.  It’s more about why to do poses, and I don’t mean to achieve yoga butt.

 

Cope is both a psychotherapist and a yogi from Kripalu.  His book has a lot of the characteristics of the usual self-help and pop psychology books (stories about people with various problems and their victories through yoga).  It’s also a history of the Kripalu ashram, which provides some cautionary ballast to the happy joy love story.  Cope’s writing style is conversational and clear.  He doesn’t throw out a whole bunch of Sanskrit and leave the reader to sort it out.

 

While at times he strays a little far along the woo-woo spectrum, he remains grounded and practical.  He does not look at yoga as a cure for everything and does, from time to time, note that he did refer various people in his stories to therapy.  He seems to believe that yoga, by freeing the body, helps us get to what we need to free our minds, which is where therapy is a useful adjunct.

 

For me, the price of the book was worth it for these five words:  “breathe, relax, feel, watch, allow” (p. 210).  This is his recipe for integrating physical, emotional, and energy experience.

 

Definitely an interesting read; may not be for everyone.

In a Car Jam

Anybody stuck in a car or behind a desk for a long time can attest to the toll it takes on the body.  Here is a list of survival tools to help us through.

 

1.     Duck.  Also called a point-pressing stick at the local Daiso store.  Best $1.50 investment ever.  We hook it over a shoulder and pull down and that spot between neck and shoulder that holds all the tension feels the relief.  May even keep us from swearing in traffic.

2.     Yoga Tune Up Balls or lacrosse balls.  The former are better for desk and the latter for cars because lacrosse balls are firmer to compensate for squishy car seats.  A ball under one side of the behind can bring all kinds of relief to aching hips.  A pair of them on either side of the spine can help keep the back from making us want to stab people.

3.     Microwavable neck pillow.  This one requires planning ahead, which can be a problem, but in the morning cold the pillow can bring much needed relaxation to the neck and shoulders.

4.     Water.  Dehydrated people are grumpy people.  We should get whatever kind of travel cup makes us actually drink more water and add bubbles or mint leaves or lemon slices or whatever makes it feel more fun.

5.     OTC pain relievers.  Different ones work better for different folks and some of them interact poorly with various prescription medications, so we need to do a little checking, but keeping some in the car to deal with that post-work or in-traffic headache can get us where we are going slightly more sane.

 

Go play.

X Marks the Variable

If changing our approach to our workouts (see yesterday’s post) doesn’t work to break up the boredom, we can address other elements of the experience.  Basically, if there is a variable, we can adjust it.

 

Consider, for example, pace.  Some of us are the kind of people who do everything deliberately.  We lift and lower slowly.  We like endurance cardio.  When that gets dull, we can mix it up with some sprints in cardio and some power moves in weightlifting.  The speed demons among us can do the opposite and exercise patience along with our muscles.

 

Then there is time.  Sometimes throwing in a longer workout is exactly what we need to wake up our body and brain.  Conversely, maybe we want to work harder for a shorter time and call it a day.  Or we can get crazy and break up our workout into smaller segments at different times of day.

 

What about location?  Being stuck in the gym forever is not a recipe for happiness, so maybe take that run outside.  Already working out outdoors?  We can try a different route, add some hills.

 

Company can help.  We can piggyback on a friend’s workout, see what they do that is different, or invite them to join us.  This works best with friends who have roughly our same level of fitness or with a friend who is a lot more fit who is willing to take a rest-ish day with us.

 

How about order?  We can try doing the workout backwards.  We may realize that we do it in the usual order for a reason, or we may discover that backwards is better; either way, we’ve done something different and we’ve learned something.

 

In short, we break up boredom by trying things, lots of things.  Some of them will be fun and some less so, but at the very least we will not be staying the same.

Two approaches

Sometimes we get stuck in fitness ruts.  We don’t want to do our workouts.  We’re bored.  We’re tired.  I have two suggestions that go in totally opposite directions.

 

One:  phone it in.  This is for those days when we really are tired, but not so tired that what we ought to do is take a rest day.  It is all right, once in a while, to give significantly less than 100% to our workout.  Choose a lower incline on the treadmill.  Do two sets instead of three on the weights.  This works because what we are showing ourselves is that we can keep showing up even when it is hard and boring and we don’t want to be there.  Sometimes we take the C and move along.  NOTE:  it is not all right to do this all the time.  If we find that we want to phone it in all week, we need to try something else, like maybe getting some real rest.

 

Two:  kick it up to 11.  Yes, this is the exact opposite of what I just said.  This technique works if what is tired is our brain, not our body.  It is hard to stay bored when we are breathless from doing some high intensity intervals or from choosing weights that push our boundaries.  When we focus in on doing the most we possibly can do, we wake ourselves up a little.  We may discover that we can do more than we thought.  NOTE, AGAIN:  it is not a good idea to do this all the time, either.  Intense workouts require more rest afterward.  Making one workout a week more difficult is about right.

 

Tomorrow:  more boredom busters.

Monday Workout: Compound

I am getting more excited about compound exercises lately.  More joints moving means more calories burned in less time!  Hooray!  Today’s workout takes our usual bent-over rows and adds a tricep kickback at the end of the movement; use the weight for the kickback, which will feel light-ish for the row.  The squat press is exactly what it sounds like:  we squat down with some weights held at our shoulders and as we stand up, we press those weights overhead.  The spiderman pushup works like this:  we lower our body as for a normal pushup and then pull one knee toward the same side’s elbow.  Then we return to start and do the other side.  This is a shorter circuit, so do four rounds.

 

step ups	30
row & kickback	20
squat press	20
woodchoppers	20
(spiderman) pushup	10
pretty princesses	10

 

Four Things to Do

So I wrote about two different kinds of exercise earlier this week.  Just to round out the picture, here is a more complete list of categories we want to cover in our workouts:

 

1.     Cardio.  Get breathless for about 30 minutes on most days of the week.

2.     Weights.  One to three weight workouts per week (start with one!) will help with body composition, weight loss, and metabolism-building.

3.     Stretching.  Strong muscles that don’t move aren’t very useful.  Stretching and flexibility practices (Pilates, yoga) help us maintain or improve our range of motion, reduce our chances of injury, and feel good.

4.     Balance and core.  This is another place where Pilates and yoga can help us.  Working our abdominals is certainly part of core and balance work, but coordination is important, too.  Developing good posture and increasing our proprioception helps us to respond appropriately to unstable environments (like pretty much all of life!).

 

Go do stuff!

Gotta get breathless

Yesterday I wrote about why we want to lift weights.  Today I’m going to dive into why we want to do cardio, too.

 

As a fitness professional, I’m supposed to say we need to do cardio because it’s good for us.  It is.  It keeps our hearts and lungs healthy.  Without those, we’re kind of dead, so yeah, that’s important.

 

But personally, the more immediately obvious benefits of cardio are more compelling when it’s a question of sleeping in versus getting up and getting to it.  Of course I’m glad that cardio burns calories and keeps my arteries from clogging and increases my sensitivity to insulin, but that doesn’t get me on the bike.  Here’s what does:

 

Cardio boosts mood.  Studies have shown that cardio can be as or more effective than antidepressants for mild depression.  Even without the scientific evidence, I think most of us know that a brisk walk or a bike ride or a swim can make us much more cheerful.

 

Cardio makes our brains work better.  Those of us with desk jobs or who are students should take note.  That morning run or afternoon recess helps cognitive function.  Bonus points for doing it outside.

 

Cardio increases our energy.  Not at first.  At first, we may feel more tired because we’re working out.  Eventually, as we acclimate to the increased activity, we find that we have more resources to draw on in other areas of our lives.  Some of this comes from the fact that cardio helps us sleep better at night, but even independent of that, we get energy (paradoxically) from spending some getting breathless.

 

My reasons for doing cardio may not apply.  We all have to find our own motivations.  But we can do this.

Lift

My focus with my personal training clients is on weight training (and yes, I sneak a little Pilates in there, just like I sneak a few weight exercises in with my Pilates clients).  It’s not that I don’t love cardio; it’s just that cardio is something most of us can and often will do on our own.

 

Weight training can seem mysterious to those of us who are just now thinking about getting off the couch.  There are so many weird contraptions and sometimes the lifters make grunting noises and it’s not like we want to compete in some Mx. Universe thing, so why would we even bother?

 

I’ll grant that some of the gym rats are a little odd and possibly unwelcoming to the new lifter.  But gyms are really for everyone and anyone who gets their nose out of joint about sharing the space and equipment needs a quick review of the kindergarten curriculum.  We all deserve to be healthy and we are allowed to take up room and use resources.

 

Now, on to the bizarre-looking gizmos.  I have a simple solution to dealing with most gym machines:  skip them.  The machines are designed to work muscles in isolation.  That can be great if we are, for example, rehabbing from a hamstring injury.  Most of the time, however, we do better using free weights because our muscles, in real life, work together.  When we use free weights, we have to recruit our stabilizing muscles more, which improves our balance.  We also get to experience the differences in strength between the sides of our bodies; the machine is not there to smooth out the discrepancy between the left and right sides.

 

As to why we even want to bother with lifting at all, I will limit myself to three reasons, even though there are lots.

 

First, lifting weights is an efficient way to lose weight while changing body composition.  It burns calories and builds muscle.  The greater the proportion of muscle tissue to fatty tissue, the smaller and tighter our bodies look.

 

Second, lifting weights keeps our bones strong.  Not one of us is getting younger.  Weight training helps us build and maintain strong bones, which in turn prevents us from having fractures in our old age.  Fractures are a major contributing factor to losing the ability to live independently and also to general mortality in older people.

 

Third, it’s empowering.  (My dad was convinced I was going to starve to death when I moved out because how would I open jars?)  Not only can we do more, we get metaphorically stronger as well as we tackle the challenges of lifting heavy objects.

 

Go play. 

Monday Workout: New Stuff!

I’m into finding new exercises or rediscovering old ones I’ve forgotten right now, so there are three in today’s workout.  The first one is the Hindu pushup, which works like this:  begin in plank position with feet wider than hips’ distance apart.  Walk your hands back toward your feet a bit so that your body is shaped like a V (downward dog, for you yogis and yoginis).  From there, lead with your chest and bend your elbows.  Your body will curve down toward the ground and then the back will arch (like an upward dog in yoga).  Return to the V position to complete the rep.

 

The second one is the donkey kick.  This one targets the glutes.  You start on your hands and knees.  One leg kicks up toward the ceiling with the knee still bent at 90 degrees (like you are poking the ceiling with your heel) and then returns to start.  Alternate legs until the set is complete.

 

Finally, we are doing the seated knee tuck.  We begin in what Pilates calls the teaser position, but other folks might know it as a V-sit.  You sit just behind the sitting bones, torso long and leaned back, legs lifted, so that the body is shaped like a V (a theme!).  You can stabilize with your hands behind you if necessary, or hold them out in front of you for more challenge.  From this starting position, bend your knees in toward your chest and then straighten them out again.

 

As always, if these exercises are not appropriate for your body, modify them or substitute others.  Three rounds.

 

1 arm clean and press	30
rows	20
pushup or Hindu pushup	10
squat to leg lift	30
flies	20
donkey kick	10
(lunge) punches	30
Arnold press	20
seated knee tuck	10

I'll do it for a...

Bribery is a good thing, sometimes.  When we’re trying to get ourselves to do the workout we’ve planned, offering ourselves a bribe can get us to that starting place.  Here are five non-food bribes (yes, I know that many of us will do all kinds of things for tacos, but we’re focusing on fitness right now):

 

1.     Hot bath/shower.  Maybe the kind with fancy bubbles or candles or a scrubby thing.  Bonus:  it will help sore muscles relax.

2.     Outing.  (Keeping in mind safe protocols for the pandemic.)  We can go to that museum we’ve wanted to visit or catch a movie or stroll through the park with a friend.

3.     Music.  This one is great because when we get new, upbeat music, not only do we get to enjoy it, we can use it to make our future workouts more fun.

4.     Friends.  We can give ourselves a moment to chat with the people who make life fun.

5.     That (small) thingie we’ve been coveting.  Maybe it’s a pair of earrings or a new pen or some cool socks.  We can give ourselves a reward for a week’s worth of workouts.  (Gotta be careful with this one because it can get expensive!)

 

Go play!

Obstacles

About this point in our shiny new goal journey, we realize that change is hard.  There are a surprising number of obstacles and we think about giving up.  (Note:  resting is not the same as giving up.  It is always all right to take a rest and then get back to work.)  Here are a few kinds of obstacles we might face in our fitness journey and some strategies for fighting those suckers.

 

We’re sore.  Yup.  That one happens a lot.  The first thing we need to do is decide if we are the good kind of sore or the bad kind.  The good kind means that we’ve given ourselves a challenge, but one we can handle.  We know it is the good kind because it goes away after a day or two.  If we’re still sore on the third or fourth day after a workout, we might want to dial the workout down a little.  If we’re dealing with the good kind of sore, we want to check in with our friends Ibuprofen (or whatever OTC pain reliever is appropriate), ice (if there is swelling), and heat (if we’re just feeling stressed and sore with no swelling).  Then we need to do something counterintuitive:  we need to keep moving.  Gentle movement (think yoga, stretching, maybe a stroll) will help keep our bodies from clenching up and feeling even more sore and stiff.  If we are the bad kind of sore, we need to adjust our workout, get some rest, and then start again.

 

We’re tired.  Maybe we’re not actually all that sore from the workouts, but we are really tired.  Change is hard on the mind as well as the body, so this is a good time to cut ourselves some slack.  Prioritizing getting enough sleep can be hard, but so worth it!  Even if we can’t get more sleep, we can focus on things that give us more energy (no, not you, caffeine and sugar!) like positive interactions with friends or meditation or flowers or even an episode of a favorite show.

 

Our family/friends don’t like what we’re doing.  This is a hard one.  Our spouses or kids or significant others or whoever may resent that we are spending time taking care of ourselves.  We have to work on our self-care muscles as well as the physical ones.  This is where we tell ourselves about putting on our own oxygen mask first.  If we are not healthy, we can’t be there for others.  And, if our loved ones don’t get that we deserve to be healthy, we may have to do some reevaluating about the health of our relationships.  That’s never easy, but it is useful.

 

We actually hate working out.  Very few people hate every single possible workout that exists.  We just might have to experiment for a while to find the right workout for us, whether it’s Zumba or swimming or kayaking or heavy lifting or just a date with our favorite show and the treadmill.

 

Still struggling?  Poke me for advice!

Get started

Let’s talk about yoga and Newtonian physics (I leave the quantum physics to experts).  Both yoga and physics apply to all our workouts, surprisingly enough.  They agree:  the hardest part is getting started.

 

In yoga, this is phrased like this:  To begin is the victory.

 

Physics, in the form of Newton’s first law of motion, says it a little differently:  A body at rest tends to remain at rest and a body in motion tends to remain in motion.

 

In our daily lives, then, what we need to focus on is that first step.  Once we get going, once we get to the gym or get on the bike or look at the weights or roll out the mat, we can keep on going more easily.  We win by showing up.

Monday Workout: New Stuff!

Every once in a while, we need to change things up to keep our bodies from getting too bored.  I love my usual workout format, but this week, we’re doing a shorter circuit and doing four rounds, just to keep things fresh.  (Obviously, do more or fewer circuits and adapt exercises as usual for appropriateness!)

 

There are also two new exercises in this workout.  The 1 leg balance with arm wave works like this:  stand on one foot with the other knee lifted so the thigh is parallel to the ground, arms at sides.  Then lift the arms out to the side and overhead.  Lower back to the side.  That’s one rep.

 

The db (dumbbell) pullover works like this.  Begin lying on your back (yay!).  Hold a dumbbell in both hands over your breastbone with arms just slightly bent (as if your arms were parentheses) (I like parentheses.).  Lower your arms toward the floor over your head, stopping just before the weight touches the ground.  Return to start.  That’s one rep.

 

jacks or plank jacks	20
1 leg balance with arm wave	10
curl to overhead press	20
curtsy	20
db pullover	20
Russian twist	10

Ways to Measure

In keeping with the goal theme of the week, here are some ways to measure things to help us meet our goals:

 

1.     Pencil and paper.  Spreadsheet also works.  Measurements only work if we have a way to track them, so write or type it down.

2.     Scale.  Yep, our good friend on the bathroom floor.  It’s best if we weigh ourselves on the same scale in the same clothing (or lack of clothing) at the same time of day to keep things consistent.

3.     Tape measure.  The sewing kind that flexes, not the construction metal kind that crinkles when it bends.  We can use it to measure our upper arm, chest, waist, hips, thigh, and calf.  Measure the same spot every time for best results.

4.     Tracker.  I have a Wristy Overlord (aka Apple Watch), but many fitness trackers exist and work just fine to track things like our exercise minutes, steps, heart rate, and the like.  They’re not necessary, but they’re nice and they keep us honest.

5.     Scale.  The one-to-ten kind.  This is useful when we want to track goals that are a little fuzzier, like having more energy.  We give each day a rating on a scale from one to ten and see how our ratings change over time.

6.     Other tech stuff.  This can be things like a bioelectric impedance gizmo to measure body fat percentage, or a blood pressure cuff.  Again, not necessary, but useful if we have very specific goals.

7.     Calculator.  Unless we love math, a calculator can really help us when we look at our averages.  Weekly averages help us see trends in things like weight, sleep hours, or HRV.

 

Remember that different people thrive under different systems.  What seems ridiculously elaborate to one person will delight someone else.  Some of us need things to be simple and others love to have thirty-seven color coded folders.  Do what works.

Goals, Part Two: DUMB

Today I’m going to write about DUMB goals, a system I just made up myself to articulate some things that I have seen and experienced.  Some of us feel (OK, I feel) pressured by SMART goals and constrained by systems that keep demanding more and more.  I offer DUMB goals for those of us who want something different.

 

DUMB goals are Doable, Understandable, Measurable, and Basic.  Yes, two of those things are the same as SMART goals, but with different letters.  I kept those two because they were the most useful.

 

Let’s get the repeats out of the way first:  Doable and Measurable, which map to Attainable and Measurable in the SMART system.  We want goals that we can meet, so choosing a doable goal is important, even if we need some help figuring out what exactly is doable.

 

I’ll come clean:  I really hate measuring stuff.  I resent it every single morning when I step on the scale.  I dread my monthly dates with the tape measure.  I often swear at my Wristy Overlord (aka Apple Watch) when it reminds me that I have not hit a particular measured milestone on a given day.  Problem is, measuring stuff works.  I like stuff that works even more than I hate measuring things.  The key is finding the measurements that combine effectiveness in gauging our progress with something we can tolerate doing.  Using myself as an example, again, my fitness level does not have a high correlation with my daily step count, at least partly because my favorite exercises are biking and swimming, which do not add steps.  Cardio minutes, however, really do impact my fitness level, so I pay attention to getting my 30 minutes every day.

 

Now on to the letters I added:  Understandable and Basic.  Understandable, in terms of goals, means that we choose something that means something to us.  Waist-to-hip ratio, BMI, body fat percentage may all be useful metrics, but if they don’t mean anything to us, they are not useful as goal-markers.  We may do better with something like a clothing size or a scale weight or a round-the-block time.

 

My favorite letter in the DUMB goal is the B for Basic.  I believe that we learn to meet goals by meeting goals, so starting with very basic goals is the way to success.  I think that our first goals should be stupidly easy—do five minutes of cardio once a day, do one squat, one pushup, drink one glass of water.  We learn efficacy this way.  Then, once we know we CAN do things, we make it just a little harder, say, six minutes of cardio.  One step at a time is how we get to our goals.

 

Try it and tell me what you think!

Goals, Part One: SMART

Now that we’re in 2022, we might be making some goals for the year.  I’m going to be writing about goals all week, beginning with today’s topic:  SMART goals.

 

There are lots of ways to make goals, some more effective than others.  A fair amount of research suggests that SMART goals are useful.  So what the heck are they?

 

SMART goals are Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely, thus the acronym.  Explaining further is best done with an example.

 

Let’s say we, like nearly everyone else after the holidays, want to lose weight.  We could say, “I want to lose weight,” and call our goal-writing done, but how will we know when we’ve met our goal?

 

We begin by making it specific:  I want to lose 10 pounds.  We’ll know, assuming we weigh ourselves, when we’ve reached the goal.

 

For a lot of fitness goals, specific and measurable go together.  We get specific by choosing a measurable thing.  Pounds are a measurement, so by making our goal in terms of pounds, we have automatically made it measurable.  (Reaching a milestone lifting weight or beating a best mile time would be other examples of measurable fitness goals.)

 

I’m going to be a little wacky and go out of order here, but that’s because it makes more sense to talk about the time thing next.  A lot of us do better with goals that have an end date and/or a deadline.  So instead of just generally wanting to lose ten pounds sometime between now and when we die, we can say we want to lose ten pounds by March 31.  Now we can do some math and realize that we need to lose a little more than 3 pounds a month, or about a pound a week—we’ve just made ourselves some mini-goals to go with our big goal.

 

The attainable bit comes into play right around the part where we start making time goals.  I’m sure all of us would love it if we could lose ten pounds by tomorrow, but that’s not an attainable goal (at least by any method I would suggest as healthy and sane).  It is totally all right to get help with figuring out what an attainable goal is.  A fitness professional can guide us so that we don’t set ourselves up for disaster.  (Pro tip for weight loss goals:  healthy weight loss is between one and two pounds per week, so 26 to 52 pounds per year.)  This is also the part where we consider how our goals fit with our real life, not the fantasy life we wish we had.  We get realistic and say that our birthday week, for example, is probably not going to be a week in which we lose two pounds and we might want to pencil in staying the same as a goal for that week.

 

Finally, let’s talk about the relevant part.  We need to choose our own goals.  We all get lots of messages from our loved ones, our acquaintances, and our society at large about what we are “supposed” to be.  Making changes is hard, so it really helps to want those changes deep in our hearts.  Maybe somebody else wants us to lose weight, but we are happy the way we are—those somebody elses can go pound sand.  Healthy bodies come in many shapes and sizes.  We need to choose what gives US joy.

 

Tomorrow:  another way to look at goals.