Monday Workout: More New Stuff!

We have some more new compound exercises this week!  The squat raise begins with feet hip-distance apart, arms out to the sides at shoulder level with light weights in them; as we bend our knees, our arms move to the front of our body out over our knees; then we return to the start position.  The plié bend-extend begins with our arms out to the side at shoulder level holding light weights and our legs wide and turned out; as we bend our knees and lift our heels, we also bend our elbows to bring the weights in toward our shoulders; then we return to start.  The single leg deadlift row works like this:  we stand on one foot with our torso and other leg parallel to the floor (drinking bird position) while holding light weights in our arms; then we row the weights up to our armpits and lower them back down; do half the set on one leg and the other half on the other.  Plank quadruped works like regular quadruped except that it starts from plank position; we lift our right arm and left leg off the floor and then reverse it.

 

Everything else should be familiar!  Three rounds.

 

jacks	30
squat raise	20
reverse fly	10
overhead high knees	30
plié bend-extend	20
Arnold press	10
step ups	30
1 leg dead lift row	20
quadruped or plank quadruped	10

 

KISS, baby!

 Let’s keep things simple today.  Here are five things to do to feel good and stay healthy:

 

1.     Sleep.  Fight the cultural glorification of overwork and under-sleep.  Nap against The Man.  Seriously, prioritizing enough rest is good for the body, the mind, the metabolism, and people who have to deal with us.  Aim for about eight hours, give or take.

2.     Move.  It doesn’t have to be big or complicated.  A half hour walk on most days is enough to maintain a healthy body.

3.     Eat.  We need food to live.  When we pay attention to the foods that make us feel more energetic and happy and calm, we do better.  Spoiler alert:  it’s not going to turn out to be Jack-in-the-Box all day, every day.  Bonus spoiler alert:  it’s also not going to be a single leaf of kale per day and nothing else.

4.     Drink.  Water.  Plenty of water.  Dehydrated people are grumpy and mistake-prone.  Drinking other things is all right, but water is best.

5.     Play.  Not everything has to be hard.  Taking the time to find the joyful bits is entirely useful.

Pelvis, no Elvis

Recently I went to a workshop on Pilates for pelvic floor health.  Nearly all of us will have some pelvic floor issues at some point in our lives, so it was a practical decision.  I learned tons and my clients will be seeing little sneaky things creeping into their workouts to keep everything functioning smoothly (and drily!) as we go forward.  However, there are two things we all can do to improve our function that have nothing to do with kegels.

 

The first thing we can do is, surprisingly, to breathe deeply.  Deep inhales and exhales into the abdomen allow the pelvic floor to contract completely and then relax completely.  Muscles that are held too tightly or too loosely are weak muscles.  Teaching muscles to contract and relax allows us to create the optimal amount of tension for whatever we happen to be doing.  So what do I mean by deep breathing?  We need to inhale so that the breath fills our torsos from the bottom up and then empties the same way.  That’s it.  We may not be able to concentrate on breathing that way all the time, but even a few minutes of attention to the breath a couple of times a day will help.  (Bonus:  we get mindfulness points for this!)

 

The second thing we can do is to strengthen our deep abdominal muscles.  Most of us spend a lot of time focusing on the surface ones (the rectus abdominis) because those are the ones that make the six-pack look.  However, looks aren’t everything.  Below the rectus, we have the transversus abdominis, which runs across the body from side to side.  That’s the one we need to befriend in order to improve our function (not only for pelvic floor, but for all kinds of daily activities!).  When we hear (or use) cues like drawing our belly buttons to our spines, we are recruiting our rectus abdominis.  Instead, to wake up our transversus, we can think about all the stuff in our abdomens and imagine that we are shrink-wrapping it.  That feeling of pulling all those squishy bits together is our transversus working.  We can, of course, do this during our workouts, but we can also take a moment every once in a while during the day to do it all by itself (or maybe we can do it when we do our breathing?  Too organized?  Probably not.).

 

Try it out and let me know what you think!

Squat!

I have made no secret of the fact that squats are my favorite exercise.  However, I may have not been as obvious about WHY they are my favorite.

 

The very first reason they are my favorite is that I want to live an independent life all the way to the end.  As long as I can get up and down off the toilet by myself, I won’t necessarily have to go to assisted living or nursing home care (except, of course, if my tiny mind loses touch with reality, but that’s another problem).  In other words, I do squats to avoid a boring and sad existence in a small room.

 

A more cheerful reason to do squats is that squats work pretty much everything in our bodies.  The more muscles that work during an exercise, the more the exercise impacts our metabolism, burns calories, recruits stabilizers, improves our strength, and prepares us for the challenges of the world outside the gym.

 

Speaking of those challenges outside the gym, squats are particularly important as we get older.  By the time we get to 70, nearly all of us will have some bone loss (a.k.a. osteoporosis).  We can minimize that bone loss by doing weight-bearing activity (like squats!), but it will still happen.  With bone loss, we have to be careful about flexing our spines to avoid fractures.  In practical terms, this means that when we need to pick up things like packages or dogs or small children from the floor, we need to use our knees to get low rather than our backs.  Squatting regularly helps us do that.

 

Squats can be modified to suit nearly everyone.  People with troublesome knees may prefer to do squats with a stability ball against a wall or with the support of a TRX.  People with bionic/replacement knees will need to ensure that they don’t go too deep into the squat, as do folks with hip replacements.  Obviously, if a doctor or physical therapist tells us not to do them or if we experience the harmful kind of pain when we try to do them, we should skip them.  Otherwise, we should go for it.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Back to Compound

This week we are working on compound exercises again.  Three rounds.

 

woodchoppers	30
squats	20
pushups	10
mountain climbers	30
flies	20
kickbacks	10
clean and press	30
rows	20
brains	10

Five Core Favorites

I’m in the mood for core exercises.  Here are five of my favorites, with links to directions that feature the Amazing Stickie.

 

1.     Pretty princesses.  Here’s how to do them.   What I like about them, besides the fact that they work everything at once, is that they keep the spine supported, making them suitable for folks who should avoid flexion (people with osteoporosis and various other spine conditions).

2.     Brains.  Here’s a how-to.  Brains have the same advantage as pretty princesses, but they focus attention on the obliques.

3.     Femur arcs.  Another how-to.  This is a Pilates exercise that I use with both Pilates and personal training clients because it is so good for learning about our lower abdominals and about how to engage our transversus abdominis (the deep abdominal muscle that helps our tummies look flat instead of poochy).

4.     Plank:  yet one more how-to.  Planks not only strengthen the abdominals, but also help us with our upper body strength.

5.     Side plank:  the last how-to.  Another exercise to target obliques and help us with shoulder stability.

 

(If you would like a booklet of exercises featuring the Amazing Stickie, drop me a note!)

What Comes Out Depends on What Goes In

A lot of people in my profession talk about results as if they are some magic thing.  Nope!  When we do things, other things happen.  It’s basic cause and effect.  Exercise will change our bodies.

 

But.  (There had to be a but, right?)

 

Results come from what happens before.  If we make a habit of skipping workouts or if we phone it in every time we do show up, we’ll see the effects in the results we get.  Similarly, if we consistently over-train, we will see results like exhaustion and injury and repetitive stress.  I didn’t learn a lot in chemistry, but I did learn the concept of titration, or, as I like to call it, approximating our way to greatness.  We look at the results and we see how we like them, adjusting as needed to get what we want.

 

As unique as we all are, we don’t have to start from absolute scratch with our cause and effect experiments.  Those of us who want to build endurance need cardio and lots of reps with relatively light weights.  Weight loss people need plenty of cardio, a good dose of weights, and an eating plan.  A trained professional can help us figure out where to start and help us tailor from there.

 

Let’s play.

Throwing Shade

I am that person who talks back to surveys because multiple choice just does not allow me enough scope for my world view.  I also choose things like 5.65 on a scale of 1 to 10.  Nuance, people!  It’s important!

 

My point here is not just to expose all my various neuroses.  I was thinking about nuance because it is nuance that shades between acceptance and giving up.  I am in favor of one of those things.

 

Acceptance is a beautiful thing.  It is where we keep in touch with reality.  I accept that I am just not ever going to get any taller at this point in my life.  I accept that it is probably best if I do dance not only as if no one is watching but when no one is watching.  Acceptance is protective.  It says that it takes a while to recover from a knee injury, that the first workout back after a couple of months of sluglike existence is not going to be peak performance.  It points out that we are not as young as we used to be.

 

However, even not as young as we used to be, we are still awesome.  We don’t give up.  Maybe we can’t run, but we can walk.  We don’t decide that since a gold medal is basically out of the question that we are never going to get out of bed or move again.

 

Acceptance takes a look at what is possible, nods, and makes the most of reality.  Giving up, after the same glance, rolls over and prepares to die.  Let’s choose the good one, folks.

Monday Workout: V-DAY!

I am not much of a fan of Valentine’s Day (sorry, folks!) and I’m going to spread the love (heh).  This workout works like the (infamous) 12 Days of Christmas workout, but since it’s Valentine’s, there are 14 things.  Here’s how it works:  on the first day of Valentine’s, we do a plank.  On the second day, we do two pushups and one plank.  And so on until we finish all fourteen virtual days.  The good news is that we only go through once.

 

1 plank or star plank

2 pushup

3 renegade rows

4 1 leg squats each leg

5 1 leg deadlifts each leg

6 calf lifts

7 burpees

8 (jump) lunges

9 suitcase swings

10 clean and press

11 standing mountain climbers

12 woodchoppers

13 jacks

14 squats

High Anxiety...

Exercise anxiety is a real thing.  A lot of people in our society have been traumatized by P.E. classes or bullies or jocks or mean girls and, as a result, find it difficult to show up in the gym without a certain amount of panic.  Here are five things to do to help with that anxiety:

 

1.     Breathe.  Taking slow, deep breaths can help.  If we feel too amped up, making our exhales longer than our inhales can chill us out a bit.  Conversely, if we need a bit more energy, a longer inhale might help.  No matter what (if any) pattern of breathing we choose, we want to encourage ourselves to breathe into our bellies, slowly, rather than adding energy to the anxiety with shallow, chest breaths.

2.     Take a buddy.  Not necessarily the one who works out all the time.  We want the one who helps us laugh and/or relax.  We want the human security blanket person who understands that this situation is hard for us and does what they can to make it easier on us, whether that is staring down the mean girls or figuring out how the heck to start the treadmill.

3.     Go when the gym is less crowded.  This might be very first thing in the morning, when only the two super dedicated old people claim their own personal elliptical trainers, or early in the afternoon when the college students aren’t awake yet and the parents have left to gather their preschoolers, or well after the after-work crowd have finished.  That way, there is a chance to figure stuff out without anybody watching.

4.     Alternatively, go when the gym is busy.  When there are tons of people all around, literally no one will notice one more.

5.     Repeat:  I am a worthwhile human and I have every right to be here taking care of myself, no matter how much or how little space I take up, whether I lift every weight in this place or none at all, whether I set a speed record on the treadmill or never get out of a walk.  It may take a while, but with enough reps, we’ll get stronger at it.

 

If none of those work, talk to me.  We can figure out what the right approach might be and we can try a bunch of stuff.  We can do this.

Rock It

I made the mistake, back a long time ago, of asking who Sisyphus was, when he was referenced in whatever it was we were reading in French.  Stupid teachers who want you to learn things!  Off to the library I went (yes, this was before there was such a thing as the Internet, children), where I discovered not only Sisyphus but existentialism and other cheerful philosophies.  For those of you who have not had this life experience, I will summarize:  Sisyphus, due to his impressive ability to piss off the gods, was sentenced to roll a rock up a hill only to have it roll down again, over and over, for eternity.

 

No, this is not my new workout plan.

 

I am sharing this story because sometimes fitness feels like a punishment.  Every day, there’s that damn rock again and we are so tired of pushing it up that hill.  But, as we high school students discovered in our discussion of the story, there is one way for Sisyphus to escape his punishment:  to like rolling rocks.  Then it becomes:  every day I get to roll that rock.  The rock is the same.  What Sisyphus does all day is the same.  He just enjoys it.

 

Now, I am not saying that we need to slap a sunny attitude on a terrible thing.  Not at all.  What I am saying is that we need to figure out what kind of workout is a get to instead of a have to for us.  (Maybe some of us would like to roll rocks for a workout?  Probably not.)  If running, for example, is worse than an eternity rolling rocks, we can do something else every day, like swimming, or dancing, or, I don’t know, pogo-stick racing.

 

This might be mixing too many kinds of religious belief, but here’s a dose of Buddhist perspective:  pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.  The fitness version of that is:  sweat is essential, but the method can be fun.

 

Go play.

Fighting the Power Is Good Exercise, Too

If the Personal Trainer Police exist, they’re probably going to come get me for saying this, but whatever:  I’m just not that into weight loss.  Sure, I know about it and I know how to help clients if that’s their goal, but I just don’t think it’s that important.  Hear me out about why.

 

A number on a scale doesn’t mean anything except what we attach to it.  Two bodies with the same scale number can look radically different, and, more importantly, feel radically different.  We have bought, as a society, the Kool-Aid that the lower the number the better.  This is not true.

 

Here is what I am excited about instead of weight loss.  I am excited when people get stronger.  I am excited when they change their body composition and shape by lifting weights and building lean body mass.  I am prone to celebrate when I hear that my clients were able to do something they never could before or weren’t able to do for a long time because of the hard work they’ve put in during their workouts.  I love it when my clients fall in love with what their bodies are capable of and how they look and feel as powerful humans.

 

I do care about health, but it turns out that exercise (cardio, weight lifting, and mindbody practices) impacts health even if weight loss doesn’t occur.  Another thing that has massive health impact?  Stress.  So stressing out about weight loss or lack of weight loss is not helpful.  I want my clients to find exercise that they enjoy (or at least don’t hate), to love themselves for being miraculous this very moment, and to live full, rich lives.

 

So, yeah, I can help people lower the number on the scale, but I’d rather amp up the joy in their lives by building strong, confident, and comfortable humans.

Monday Workout: One More New One!

 

This week we have yet another new exercise, but it’s a combination of two we already do often:  pushups and renegade rows.  Here’s how it works:  from pushup position, do a pushup, then row one arm up.  Do another pushup and row the other arm up.  Ta-da!  Everything else should be familiar.  Three rounds!

 

step ups	30
deadlifts	20
pushup renegade row	10
jacks	30
bench press	20
reverse fly	10
squat to leg lift	30
curls	20
Russian twist	10

 

Friday Book Report: What Fresh Hell Is This?

I was given What Fresh Hell Is This:  Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and You by Heather Corinna by my kids.  It was a highly appropriate gift from several perspectives.  Captain Obvious here:  I’m somewhere in the menopause process (hard to tell exactly where, since I had my uterus removed a few years back, but my ovaries are still in there doing things or maybe not).  But also, my dear daughter in law Sam is a social worker with Scarleteen, which Corinna founded and runs.

 

I have been making a point of talking about menopause things out loud often because I felt like I came into this process totally unprepared.  I mean, I’d heard about hot flashes, but cold flashes?  Who knew?  Not me.  I think it’s time for whatever cultural reticence or taboo (or, you know, men thinking women’s processes are icky) to get out of the way so we can know what the heck is going on.

 

This book is extremely helpful.  It’s full of useful information presented in plain and inclusive language.  Ageism, sexism, racism, and ableism are called out repeatedly.  Those who are uncomfortable with swear words, LGBTQ+ issues, varieties of sexual practice, and less conventional relationship choices will have some adjusting to do and/or might prefer a different messenger for this particular message, but again, the data is sound and the aim is uplifting, encouraging, and hopeful without being bright-siding (in other words, when stuff sucks, Corinna says it sucks).

 

I highly recommend it for people in the process, or who are with people in the process, or for people who will sooner or later be in the process.

Step away from the spoons...

I am a stress eater.  I am always looking for ways to deal with stress that don’t involve diving head first into the Häagen Dazs.  Here are five:

 

1.     Take a nap.  Sometimes we just need a rest to reset our stress-meter.

2.     Go for a walk.  And not with the local café with those delicious pastries as a destination.  Fresh air, sunlight, and motion are all good stress-busters.

3.     Call a friend.  Connection reduces stress.  Even a short break to catch up can do wonders.

4.     Breathe.  Deep breaths get us back in touch with our body rhythms.

5.     Do something that needs both hands.  Read a book, knit, play drums, fold the laundry.  If both hands are working, they can’t be shoving pretzels into our faces.

 

Got any more?

Finding the best buddy

A lot of us need help with accountability.  We are more than happy to flake on ourselves when we don’t feel like getting up in the morning to work out or when we’re tired on the way home from work and we skip the gym to go to the couch instead.  One way to short-circuit that tendency is to buddy up.  We don’t like to flake on our friends.  However, it is important to choose the right friend to be a workout buddy.  Here are some things to consider:

 

Is my friend a morning person or an evening person?  Both kinds of friends are great, but planning a morning workout with an evening person is not likely to be successful.  (Note:  we need to check what time works best for US, too!)

 

Is my friend overbooked?  Often late?  Prone to emergencies?  If so, this friend might not be the best workout partner.  We want someone as committed or slightly more committed to showing up as we are to make this work.

 

Is my friend at about the same fitness level I am?  Working out with a friend who is a lot less fit than we are can be fun and social, but maybe not the most effective workout unless, say, we are on neighboring treadmills going at our own appropriate paces.  Similarly, trying to keep up with a friend who is a lot more fit than we are can be discouraging and in extreme cases dangerous.

 

Is my friend interested in my success (and am I interested in theirs?)?  We probably don’t want to work out with that friend who always has to one-up us or who puts us down.  We may want a bit of (friendly) competition, but only a bit; when it gets to be about winning, we may lose sight of our real goals.  We want to choose the friend who is encouraging and who appreciates our encouragement.

 

Is my friend too chatty?  Of course we want to chat while we work out with our friend, but we need to make sure we’re still doing the workout.

 

Go play.

Gotta Make the Morning Last...

One of the things I love about Pilates is that it helps me slow down.  I am not the world’s most patient person, so I tend to go as close to warp speed as possible most of the time.  This is not entirely sustainable, so I am grateful, again, to Uncle Joe for his help.

 

Two particular aspects of Pilates make it conducive to a more sensible tempo for me, and maybe I’m not alone in this.  Pilates moves with the breath.  While it is possible to breathe fast enough to do a set of chest lifts or femur arcs or Russian splits at the pace I often want to get them done, it’s not very pleasant.  Allowing the breath to facilitate the motions almost automatically slows things to a more manageable level.  It also keeps me from hyperventilating!

 

The other part of Pilates that helps me tune in to a more leisurely, enjoyable experience is the integration it demands between body and mind.  My body, left to itself, will flail around at its top speed.  When I have to be more precise and more thoughtful about the quality of the motion, everything takes longer.  Pilates is not about getting it done; it’s about getting it done right.

 

We all, I think, need a little more space in our lives.  Pilates, by helping us unplug from the high-velocity activities of the day, makes that space possible.