Six Kinds of Feeling

Some days we wake up and don’t know what kind of workout to do.  Here’s a quick list of choices based on how we happen to feel:

 

1.     Grumpy.  Maybe that’s just me first thing in the morning?  Maybe not.  Anyway, if grumpy, choose cardio.  It really shifts mood a lot.

2.     Tired.  Another good time to choose cardio for its energy-boosting effects.

3.     Sore and tired.  This is the time to get gentle with ourselves.  Some yoga or simple Pilates or a less-intense walk would all be good choices.

4.     Bored.  This is the moment to kick things up a notch.  Choose heavy weights or more high intensity intervals.  Nothing beats boredom like lots of sweat!

5.     Fat.  This one requires a two-pronged approach.  First, we work out our minds by reminding ourselves that we are valuable humans no matter what we look like or weigh.  Then we hit the weight room to increase our lean muscle mass, burn calories, and boost our metabolisms.

6.     Stiff.  We need a little cardio to get the joints to wake up and then some yoga or other stretchy exercise.

 

What did I forget?

Lessons from Uncle Joe

One of the things I do in my personal Pilates practice is to cycle through the whole repertoire of exercises from my initial teacher training.  It helps keep the exercises present in my mind and it ensures that I don’t just do my favorite things over and over.  I’ve just finished my latest cycle through.  Here’s what I learned this time.

 

It doesn’t work to skip steps.  The things that are hard for my body in the easier exercises don’t magically transform when I get to the harder ones.  That segment of my spine that doesn’t like articulating at the beginning still doesn’t like articulating at the end, even if it does appreciate the practice.

 

Simple doesn’t mean easy or stupid.  When I return to the earliest exercises after doing the last ones, I realize that there is a lot packed in to even the most basic Pilates moves.

 

Everything works better when I breathe.  I mean, yeah.  Breathe or die, baby.  But taking the time to move with the breath, to let the rhythm of motion work with the rhythm of breath, makes both breath and motion go better.

 

Want to try Pilates?  Poke me!

Make It Count

I spend a lot of time working with numbers.  It comes with the job.  I count reps.  I choose weights.  I think about heart rate and HRV.  I track minutes and calories.  All that data is nice and crisp and manageable, but it is not the only kind of data we have available to us.  It might not even be the most important kind.

 

Of course I get excited when clients reach new milestones.  It feels great to set a new personal best.  We all like to point to that time we ran a gazillion miles in twelve seconds (I am being purposely ridiculous so no one attaches too much import to the actual distance and time).  We feel like we have an accomplishment that counts.

 

Counts for what, though?  Some of us may, at the end of our lives, want to remember that one time we lifted the equivalent of six elephants and a pony, but I doubt it.  In the large view, we probably care more about the times we played tag with the kids or grandkids or the awe-inspiring walking tour we took with our significant other.  We do all that number tracking for a reason, and the reason is not to do more number tracking, but to live a full and joyful life.

 

Please do spend good time in the gym, but please also spend good time out of it using all the strength and endurance and flexibility and balance learned.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Let's Do It!

Why yes, yes I do love compound exercises.  Of course I do!  Lots of calorie burn in a little bit of time!  Lots of built in core work!  Let’s do it!  Three rounds.

 

clean and press	30
squats	20
pushups	10
suitcase swings	30
(lunge to) curl	20
renegade rows	10
jacks	30
flies	20
brains	10

 

Seven for the Playground

Per request, this week’s list is exercises that we can do at the playground while our kids/grandkids are doing their thing.  The short version is that any body weight exercise works fine, depending on our willingness to look like we are exercising while we’re hanging out by the swings.  However, here’s the list.  Do ten of each.

 

1.     Squats.  I love squats and they can be done nearly everywhere. 

2.     Single leg squats:  All the fun of squats, plus balance!

3.     Bench dips:  the great thing about playgrounds is that they all have benches.  To do dips, we sit on the bench, put our hands on the edge of the bench by our hips, stretch our legs out long, heels on the ground.  Then we scooch our butts off the edge of the bench, bending our arms to lower our butts toward the ground and then straightening the arms to come back up.  This can be challenging, so start with a small range of motion and build up.

4.     Pushups:  these can be done on the ground, with hands on the aforementioned bench, or with hands on something taller, like a picnic table, depending on how much difficulty we want.

5.     Calf raises.  For these, we can hold on to something stable or practice our balance.  We just rise up on our toes and lower.  For extra challenge, we can do one leg at a time.  For extra extra challenge, plus a calf stretch, we can do the exercise with the balls of our feet on a curb so that when we lower, our heels drop lower than the rest of our feet.

6.     Pullups or modified pullups.  If there is a bar tall enough for hanging, we can do pullups.  If that is too challenging and there is a lower bar, we can get under the bar with our legs on the ground in a kind of upside down pushup position and then pull our bodies up toward the bar.

7.     Running around.  Chasing the kids is great exercise in and of itself.  Tag gives us the opportunity to practice changing direction while simultaneously becoming a Fun Grownup.  Keep in mind that intervals of about a minute are great for our cardio fitness and also let us rest in between.

Weight, what?

It took a while for me to learn to like lifting weights.  I think this might be true for a lot of people, so it might be worth looking into why.

 

For one thing, I had a lot of cultural bias to unpack.  Girls aren’t supposed to be sweaty and strong!  (Spoiler alert:  yes, yes they are, too!)  The cultural bias meant that I learned about weightlifting in a practical way later than people my age who identified as male.

 

This led to the second reason it was hard to learn to like weightlifting:  I was really bad at it.  I wasn’t bad at it because I lacked talent.  I lacked experience and practice.  I, like nearly everyone, like to do things I am good at more than things that I’m not good at.  Now that I have been lifting for a long time, it’s a lot more fun.

 

The experience/practice thing also played out as anxiety when I was first starting to lift weight.  The machines are big and scary and complicated.  There are people in the gym lifting monstrously large things.  What if I do it wrong?  What if people laugh at me?  Weightlifting, I am happy to say, is not rocket science.  A little common sense can keep any mistakes we make from being damaging.  And really, nobody in the gym is looking at us—they’re busy.

 

There are lots of ways to lift weights.  It took me some time to find the ways I preferred (for me, if I want to go light-ish, I like interval workouts, or I like to go heavy on two or three exercises and get out of there!).  I needed to figure out what to wear, how to deal with my hair, and what music was motivational.  Not every experiment is fun, but I learned.

 

The last piece, for me, was learning how weightlifting made me feel.  I like how my body works when I lift weight.  I like being able to schlepp my own stuff and open my own jars.  I’m never going to be a fast biker, but lifting has helped me be faster than I was.  (I’m glad that lifting is good for my bones and changes my body fat percentage and increases my metabolism, but none of those things makes it more fun for me—they’re just bonus points.)

 

So:  what makes weightlifting fun for YOU?

Woowoo is the technical term...

I lived in Berkeley for twenty years, so I have a high tolerance for woowoo ideas and maybe even have a few of my own.  The ones I keep are the ones that can live happily next to my belief in science, which is tempered by my understanding that not everything that can be known can be quantified.  Meditation practice hardly even qualifies as woowoo anymore, given all the research into the good things it does for us. 

 

My inner contrarian would like to point out that one thing about meditation, taken too far, can be detrimental to our fitness.  Please note the disclaimers in that sentence; I am NOT saying that meditation is bad for us.  So here’s the thing I want to highlight:  being in the present moment.

 

Staying in the present moment is a great practice and it reminds us about what we can control and what we can’t.  It helps quiet our monkey minds and encourages us to let go of difficult emotions.  However, if we focus too much on the present moment, we lose sight of our marshmallow goals.

 

(What are marshmallow goals?  I am glad you asked!  Some researchers ran an experiment with kids.  The kids could have one marshmallow right away, or they could wait for a period of time and get two.  The kids who could delay gratification by keeping their eyes on that second marshmallow had a bunch of better outcomes later in life.  An update to this study done more recently suggests that in some cases this is not true.  Kids who live in environments where the adults are not to be trusted, for example, have learned to take their marshmallow right away or else they might get no marshmallows at all.  Anyway:  now that we are technically adults, marshmallow goals are things we do to get a benefit later.)

 

Being present in this moment might allow us to skip our workout because, right now, we don’t feel like doing it.  We need a little bit of future thinking to do what is good for us.  We can go back to the present moment when we’re done.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Burpees are back

I know everybody hates doing burpees, but they don’t get any easier if we never do them.  So yeah, they’re in this week’s workout.  Three rounds.

 

step ups	30
flies	20
burpees	10
(jump) squats	30
rows	20
kickbacks	10
overhead curtsy	30
bench press	20
Russian twist	10

Five that don't and one that does

Excuses that don’t work (sorry!):

 

1.     But I exercised yesterday!  That was then.  This is now.  Gotta do it again.

2.     It’s too (pick one) hot, cold, rainy, windy, dry.  This is why clothes and heat and air conditioning were invented.

3.     I’m too tired and grumpy.  It will be better afterward.  Really.

4.     Can’t somebody do it for me?  No.

5.     But I paid for my session/gym membership/ equipment!  Yep.  And none of it works without showing up to do it.

 

One that does:  I am sick and/or injured.  Rest.

Team Sports

I have some pretty standard disclaimers that I say, a lot.  As a personal trainer and Pilates instructor, I am not a doctor or physical therapist.  I am not a chiropractor.  I am not a dietician or nutritionist.  I do not diagnose or treat illness or injury.

 

This does not mean that I am not able to give an opinion, based on my experience and education.  (Spoiler alert:  if you are sick or injured, you should see a doctor or other health professional.   If you want a detailed diet plan, you should consult a nutritionist.)  I consistently tell people that consulting health professionals is just smart.

 

I can talk about macronutrients (protein, carbs, fats) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) and the general outline of healthy eating—whole foods, minimally processed, nutritionally dense.  I can tell people that ice is a friend to swollen parts, that Ibuprofen can be wonderful for those who can take it, and that resting a hurting part is a good idea.  If things are still hurting enough to keep us from doing our normal activities after a couple of days, it is time to see the doc.

 

Healthy living is a team sport.  I do my best work in conjunction with all the other professionals who want people to live long and good lives.

 

Go play.

And cake. There will be cake.

So today is my birthday.  (Fine.  I wrote this ahead, but I’m posting it on my birthday.)  Time is passing.  I am now 54.

 

The best part about birthdays, obviously, is the presents.  Here are the presents I am giving myself this year in hopes of eventually giving myself many more good years.

 

First, I am giving myself the gift of cardio.  Getting breathless does so many good things for me:  keeps my mood positive, helps my brain work, gives me the endurance to have the adventures I want, burns calories, and, not coincidentally, I think it’s fun (most of the time).

 

Second, I am giving myself some outside.  It’s really easy for me to spend a whole day without going out in the fresh air, but I’m making it a priority.  Some of it is for the novelty of a new environment.  Some of it is about spending time with plants and flowers.  All of it is good for me.

 

Third, I am giving myself a break.  I could make this list of good-for-me gifts long and complicated.  Sometimes we can have too much of even good things (like cupcakes).  The stress of trying to do All The Things and do them perfectly (natch) gets large and tends to undo the benefits.

 

What would you give yourself?

Monday Workout: Kettle!

I love kettle bells because they are so flexible as a tool.  Also, they make us work hard.  Three rounds.

 

jacks	30
bench press	20
YTA	10
kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s	10
woodchoppers	30
flies	20
pretty princesses	10

 

Affirmations for the Challenged

I confess that I hate affirmations.  The Wellness Police are probably coming for me right now.  However, here are a few for people who hate them.

 

1.     My body is amazing.  Really.  It keeps breathing all by itself.  It moves me around.  It turns food into energy, light into images, and waves into music.

2.     I can do things.  I got up this morning and brushed my teeth. 

3.     The world is beautiful.  There is a sky.  There are leaves.  And flowers!

4.     I can make connections.  There are other humans!  We can talk!  We can laugh at stupid jokes and know that dogs and babies are adorable. 

Anxiety Training

I write a fair amount about the connection between exercise and depression (short version:  get cardio to reduce symptoms), but I sometimes forget to write about how exercise helps with anxiety.  (Note:  exercise anxiety is a thing, but I’m talking about the garden-variety kind here.)

 

People who deal with anxiety are familiar with the raised heart rate, shortness of breath, and panicky feelings it can produce.  They know about the hamster wheel of worry.

 

Here’s what exercise does to help.  That hamster?  It gets tired out when we do our cardio.  Our brains literally calm down.  When we go outside, it works even better.

 

Cardio also raises our heart rate and makes us breathe faster and harder.  In effect, we practice for panic attacks by doing cardio.  We get familiar with the feelings and we know how to recover from them because we’ve done it so many times before.

 

None of these things are a substitute for actual medical and/or psychological help.  If we need medication, we should take it.  If we need to talk to an expert, we should do it.  What I am suggesting is that exercise can be a helpful addition to the coping toolkit.

 

Be well.

Sick Workout, Dude

Sometimes we get sick.  When we’re sick it can be hard to tell whether we are well enough to work out or not.  Here are some thoughts to help the decision process.

 

First and foremost:  rest is devalued in our culture.  Most of us run around on not enough sleep.  We are constantly stressed out.  Getting sick is one of the only acceptable reasons we have to get some sleep.  It is not only all right to rest when we are sick, it is almost always a really good idea.

 

Also important:  we do not bring our germs to the gym.  Nobody wants them.  We need to stay away from others until we are sure that we are not sharing.

 

Now that we’ve dealt with those important bits, what if we still want to work out?  If we are having any GI issues, it is probably best to wait until they’re fully done.  We want our insides to stay inside while we are working out.

 

If we are congested, we may want to go easy on the cardio.  It’s already a challenge to breathe; we don’t want to make it worse.

 

In fact, going easy is the magic concept here.  A gentle walk, a bit of yoga or stretching, maybe some light weights:  these are the kinds of workouts we do when we are getting better.  We want enough work to remind ourselves that we know how, but not so much that we tax systems that are already trying to deal with our viral or bacterial invaders.

 

Again, resting is a perfectly valid option.

Monday Workout: Gotta Do It

I will always love compound exercises because they do so much so efficiently!  Three rounds.

 

1 arm clean and press	30
kickbacks	20
pushups	10
squat to leg lift	30
deadlifts	20
YTA	10
mountain climbers	30
renegade rows	20
plank	10