Check!

Time for a mid-year check-in!  Remember those goals from back in January?  Here are five things to consider as we go into the second half of the year:

 

1.     Sleep.  Are we getting 8 hours?  7? 4 ½?  Enough sleep is essential to our health and fitness goals. 

2.     Food.  Are we choosing nutrient-dense foods that satisfy our bodies and feed our souls?  Are we getting enough veggies?  Enough water?

3.     Cardio.  When was the last time we got breathless?  Are we doing it consistently?

4.     Strength.  We want strong bones, enthusiastic metabolisms, and lean bodies, so we need to do our lifting.

5.     Fun.  If we’ve been doing the same things every week since January, we’re probably really bored.  It might be time to mix things up a bit.

 

Go play.

How to get less cross by doing more cross...

I think, by now, we’ve all heard about the benefits of cross-training.  We hear about synergies and improved performance and yada yada.  Here’s an underreported one:  it lets us rest stuff that hurts.

 

I love biking, but if I do too much of it, hip pain will keep me from sleeping.  If I mix in some yoga or swimming or pickleball (my new obsession!), I use my body differently, I still get to work out, and I don’t suffer so much.  (Maybe everyone is tired about hearing about what I do, but I am the most convenient example, and I experiment on myself!)

 

In a pain workshop I attended recently, I learned some of the underlying reasons why cross-training helps.  The short version is that movement reduces pain.  We don’t necessarily need or want to move whatever part that hurts, but moving other parts of the body reduces pain everywhere.  This is why it is a good idea to go for a walk at least on the day after that intense workout in the gym.

 

Try it out and report back!

Safety first, even if it is ugly

I bought new shoes last week and boy are they ugly.  However, they do what I need them to do:  protect my feet.  Working out is great, but we need to take some basic precautions to keep ourselves safe.  My horrible shoes are part of that because, having once ruptured my plantar fascia, I know that supportive shoes are my friends.

 

Other fashion choices also keep us safe.  Hats to keep the sun off are good.  Fabrics that breathe in hot weather are good.  They’re not exactly clothes, but wearing whatever braces our doctors or orthopedists recommend is definitely smart, as are helmets, life jackets, knee pads, and the like, depending on what we are doing.

 

Another important safety consideration is company.  We don’t want to do heavy lifting alone; we need to bring a friend and share spotting duties.  Similarly, it is probably best not to swim alone.  If we do need to bike/hike/kayak/whatever alone, we need to make sure that someone knows where we are going and that we have essentials with us.  (My essentials are:  driver’s license, credit card, $20 in cash, water, and snacks, plus car keys if I have to drive to the starting point.)

 

Fitness is supposed to make our lives better.  Getting hurt is not better.  Let’s be smart about this.

Monday Workout: Back At It

We are doing a couple of exercises this week that focus on the back of the body.  This is good because we tend to emphasize the muscles in the front.  Deadlifts work the whole back of the body, squats and lunges work our glutes, and the renegade rows work our lats, among other things.  Three rounds.

 

squat raise	30
deadlift	20
kickbacks	10
mountain climbers	30
renegade rows	20
pushups	10
clean and press	30
(lunge to) twist	20
brains	10

Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to work out.

Yesterday I talked about different reasons we might want to work out.  Here are five to consider:

 

1.     To look cute.  Yep, it’s a real reason and totally all right.

2.     To feel better.  We like that after-exercise high.

3.     To feel better, another way.  We want to lower our blood pressure, or manage diabetes, or strengthen our hearts, or just get out doctors and loved ones off our backs.

4.     To get to do more fun things.  Maybe we want to be able to play on the playground longer with our kids or grandkids, or do a walking tour in the Himalayas.  Working out helps us build up our strength and endurance to do those things.

5.     To get revenge.  In the sense of living a long and healthy life, anyway.

 

Why do you want to work out?

Existential Questions and What Is Truth (Not Really!)

When I meet with clients for the first time, I ask them why they are here.  (Not in the existential sense; that is way beyond the scope of my practice!)  People tell me about things they want to be able to do, events they have coming up, dire warnings from their doctors, all kinds of things.  This is important, because it helps me know how to program for their different goals and what motivates them.

 

The thing is, sometimes we (yes, me, too!) think that some reasons for exercising are better or more acceptable than others.  We’re willing to admit that it would be nice to get to the top of the stairs without being out of breath, but maybe less willing to say that what we really want is to buy smaller jeans, or to blow away that old flame at the 85^th reunion, or to feel more comfortable in a bathing suit.

 

Eventually, the truth comes out.  And you know what?  I don’t judge.  My job is to help my clients reach THEIR goals, not some ideal set of goals approved by the surgeon general or their moms or the latest research into longevity.  I am here for my clients, whatever their goals.

Plane Speaking

When we describe how we move in fitness, we divide the body into three planes.  One imaginary plane splits us into right and left halves, one splits us into front and back halves, and one splits us into top and bottom halves, as if we were the hapless assistant in a magician’s show.  The three planes are called, respectively, the sagittal, the frontal, and the transverse.

 

When we swing a leg back and forth in the hip socket or raise an arm in front of us in a “Halt!” kind of way, we are moving parallel to the sagittal plane.  This is the plane that most of us feel most comfortable in because that’s how we walk and run and so on.

 

The frontal plane, confusingly, is the plane we are moving parallel to when we shuffle side to side or do jumping jacks.  Practicing this kind of movement helps with sports like basketball and tennis and with everyday actions like getting in and out of cars.  Work in the frontal plane can also help us practice motions that keep us from spraining our ankles as we strengthen the muscles on the inside and outside of our legs.

 

The transverse plane is for twisting.  Think about golf swings and racquet sports, salsa dancing, and getting out of bed in the morning.  We sometimes don’t like working with transverse plane exercises because they tend to require a little more balance control and thus more core work.

 

Working in all three planes, separately or together, is what helps us prepare for whatever life throws at us.

Monday Workout: Compounding It

This week I’m focusing, again, on compound exercises for the very good reason that the things we do in our regular life are usually complex movements involving multiple muscle groups.  Also, we get more calorie burn in the moment and we boost our metabolisms.  Three rounds.

 

kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s or overyets	10
squat to leg lift	30
lunge to curl to overhead press	20
lateral raise	10
woodchoppers	30
row to kickback	20
pretty princesses	10

  

Five Ways to ZZZZZs

We may have come to terms with the idea that we need to get some sleep, but how?  Here are five suggestions:

 

1.     Ditch the caffeine.  Before y’all get out your pitchforks, let me suggest that at least reducing the intake can help.  Please note that for some of us the process of weaning ourselves off of caffeine can be long and challenging and even painful, but it can definitely be worth it.

2.     About that alcohol… If the pitchforks are out, might as well use them.  Alcohol affects different people differently, but in general it tends to make it easy to go to sleep and hard to stay there.  At least observe the effects and see.

3.     Get some exercise.  Cardio during the day seems to help folks sleep at night.  Some people like evening exercise because there is a natural energy dip a few hours after a workout and that can coincide with bedtime.

4.     Keep it cool.  Most of us sleep better in a cool room.

5.     Keep it dark.  Our inner beasts are programmed to wake in the light, so we need to give them plenty of dark time.

 

What are your favorite sleep aids?

Snoozing IS the Job

Sleep is one of the most overlooked parts of fitness.  Culturally, we frown on sleep.  Sleep is for lazy people, or children, or boring people who don’t have anything better to do.  Sure it is, but the rest of us should be getting more sleep, too.

 

Sleep gives our bodies a chance to repair the wear and tear of our days.  It helps our brains reset.  It solidifies learning.

 

If that’s not enough motivation for those of us who want to maximize our workout time, let me offer this:  people with adequate sleep make more progress than people without it.  We work out better and harder and stronger on a good night of sleep and we are a lot less likely to get injured when we are not sleep-deprived.

 

Work then rest.

Raw or refined?

One of the shared challenges for people new to exercise and people who have been exercising for a long time is that when we try something different we feel it.  It can be hard to tell if that discomfort we are feeling is just our bodies adapting to a novel experience or if we are doing something wrong.

 

The short version is that our muscles are a bunch of whiners who don’t like having their routines changed, even for their own good.  When we first start swimming after a lifetime on land, different muscles have to work and our usual favorite muscles have to work differently.  So they complain.  They feel sore.  They ache.  This is normal.  This is why we have ice and ibuprofen.

 

However, sometimes the muscles have a point.  When we are just learning something, we may not understand how the form works.  We may not be giving our muscles the best chance for a peaceful existence.  If our pain persists for more than a day or two, we probably want to stop and reflect.  We may want to do some reading or talk to an expert about what’s going on to see if we can refine the movements and avoid the suffering.  Most of the time, when we manage to move with good mechanics, our soreness decreases.

 

Bottom line:  a little soreness is okay; a lot requires some work to resolve.

Monday Workout: Core

This week we’re focusing on core exercises.  The Russian twist is obviously a core exercise, but so are the YTAs, the mountain climbers, the renegade rows, and the pushups because we need our core muscles to stabilize us while we do them.  If we do our bench press and flies on a stability ball, we’re doing some good core recruitment there, too.  Not that our cores don’t work while we do our step ups and jacks—they just don’t work quite as noticeably.  Three rounds.

 

step ups	30
bench press	20
YTA	10
mountain climbers	30
renegade rows	20
pushups	10
jacks	30
flies	20
Russian twist	10

Five

We get bored with our same old workouts.  Here are five ways to modify what we’re doing to make it less boring.

 

1.     Go faster.  In fact, if we go as fast as we safely can, we add some significant challenge.  This can take the form of intervals of max effort, or just a general increase in speed, whether in cardio or weight training.

2.     Go slower.  This one is for weight training specifically.  If we deliberately raise and lower the weights at a very slow pace, we increase the time our muscles are under tension.  It can be super challenging and useful for building up our strength and endurance.

3.     Go a different direction.  We tend to do everything going forward, but life isn’t always that way.  We can try walking backward (safely!) on the treadmill, or we can trade our regular lunges for side lunges, or we can throw in some twists.

4.     Change the order.  If we always do our cardio first and then our lifting, we can switch it up.  One note:  no matter what order we are doing our workouts in, we need to ensure we get in a warm-up.

5.     Change the time.  We can try working out in the morning if we are usually after-work workout people, or vice versa.  We can try a short, intense workout instead of a longer one, or we can see what happens if we do something more endurance-based and long for different.

 

These are my ideas.  What are yours?

Sweat It

I am a person with depression.  It is under control, most of the time, but there are times when it gets worse.  When that happens, I try to remember to get some exercise.

 

Please note:  I am not a doctor or therapist or counselor or psychiatrist.  I am a personal trainer.  What I am saying here is not a substitute for professional psychological help.  I encourage any and all depressed people to seek out whatever therapies they need, including medications, which can save lives.

 

Now that I’ve got the really important disclaimers out of the way, here’s why I exercise when I feel an upsurge in my depression.

 

Cardio exercise releases endorphins in our bodies.  Endorphins are the neurochemicals that make us feel better.  So it works like this:  we exercise, we get happy brains.

 

Another thing that exercise does for us is make us breathe.  This can be the heavy breathing of cardio or weight training, or the focused breathing of yoga or Pilates.  In either case, we have to pay attention to bringing air in and out of our bodies, which helps to ground and center us.

 

One more thing:  exercise is something we can actually do.  When we feel overwhelmed and useless and hopeless, we may feel like we can’t do anything.  Going for a walk, doing five minutes of yoga, lifting one weight is a completed task.  We are now people with agency in the world.  If we manage a whole workout, we are not only people with agency, but we are also stronger.

 

Go play.

Uncle Joe Loves Us

I love Pilates for a lot of reasons, but today I’m going to talk about how it makes other things we do better.

 

One of the gifts that Pilates gives us, or, more accurately, one of the rewards we earn when we do Pilates, is core strength.  Core strength is not just doing eight million crunches in fifteen seconds.  The best core strength is the kind that does what it is intended to do while we are in motion:  stabilize our bodies.  The core musculature is not limited to the “six-pack.”  In fact, the rectus abdominis is a superficial part of the core.  Pilates gets to the deep stuff.  Also, we have core muscles in our backs as well as on our fronts.  Pilates strengthens them all.

 

Core strength leads directly into balance.  The ability to balance helps us deal with all the uneven, uncertain, wobbly terrain that we encounter in our active pursuits and in the course of our daily lives.  In sports, this skill contributes to our agility and quickness in changing direction.  As we age, balance practice becomes an important tool in preventing falls.

 

Proprioception is one of my favorite five-dollar words.  The five-cent definition is where our bodies are in space.  The Pilates repertoire, with its insistence on precision, helps us learn where we think our bodies are, where our bodies are really, and how to bring the two into agreement.  As we learn to perceive our bodies, we learn to align them, which makes our movements more efficient and helps us avoid injury no matter what we are doing.

 

Finally, Pilates helps us chill out.  Movement, in Pilates, is tied to the breath.  Tuning in to our breathing centers us in our bodies and helps us become mindful, which is something we can bring with us out of the studio and into the world.

 

Spend some time with Uncle Joe.  It’s worth it.

Monday Workout: With Burpees

Burpees are not fun.  Almost nobody likes them.  The thing is, they are a really good whole-body exercise and a good way to gauge how we’re doing on our cardio fitness.  I promise:  no burpees next week.  This week?  Three rounds.

 

woodchoppers	30
flies	20
burpees	10
kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s	10
(jump) lunges	30
rows	20
pretty princesses	10

 

What to bring

Folks planning on playing outside need to plan ahead a little.  Here are things to bring:

 

1.     Water.  Always.  Hydration is our friend.

2.     Snacks.  These might be optional if we are not going to be out long, but anything over an hour it is good to be prepared.  I prefer non-squishable snacks like nuts or dried fruit or granola bars (or gel packets for endurance events), but careful people may manage to snack on bananas.

3.     Hat.  The sun is only sort of our friend.  Too much is too much.

4.     Sunscreen.  See above.

5.     Bug spray.  This may not be necessary if you are staying in town, but really, life is better without mosquito bites.

6.     ID.  Just in case.  I take my driver’s license, a credit card, and $20 when I hike, bike, or paddle.

 

Depending on what we’re doing, we might want a notebook or camera, extra clothes, a first aid kit, a towel, etc.

Sumer is icomen in

Summer is coming.  This means that we need to figure out how we’re going to combine our fitness activities with the heat.

 

I know I’m always banging on about how we need to stay hydrated, but in the summer I mean it even more.  We need to be replenishing the water we lose to sweat.  That means that we need to drink before, during, and after our workouts.  If we don’t need to use the bathroom at least every hour, we’re not drinking enough.  Go fill up that glass or bottle; I’ll wait.

 

One reason the hydration is so important is because it helps us maintain our body temperature.  Dehydration can make it so we feel the heat even more, which is at best not fun and at worst dangerous.  Don’t go there.

 

Which reminds me:  sunscreen is a good thing.  (I tend to forget this one, even though the smell of sunscreen is one of my favorite aromatherapy scents.)  A healthy body has healthy skin.  Burned skin is not healthy.  It’s uncomfortable in the short term and potentially cancerous in the long term.  Also:  hats.  It probably gives us fitness bonus points if our hats make us look silly because… because… oh, yeah, because laughing is great work for our abdominals.

 

Getting the workouts in early is a really good idea.  Late can also work, but really, early is cooler.  Indoor workouts where there is air conditioning are also a good idea.

 

More ideas?  How about workouts with water?  Swimming, water aerobics, rowing, paddling, competitive Marco Polo, whatever gets the heart rate up!

 

Go play.