Four ways to rest

I might have overdone myself last weekend.  It happens.  Here are some ways to rest:

 

1.     Sleep.  This is the big one and the obvious one and it is always all right to get some if we need it.

2.     Nap.  If we don’t have time to catch up for real on our sleep, we can grab a little bit.

3.     Stroll.  This is not the time to tackle that hike with big hills.  This is just a gentle, short little walk that helps our muscles move enough that they don’t freeze in place.

4.     Stretch.  Again, not the time for three hours of hot yoga.  Just a little bit of movement, a chance to let the muscles relax and lengthen.

 

Go play, but gently.

Success in failure

There’s a fitness phrase that I don’t like much, but I haven’t come up with a better one:  work to failure.  It is when we do an exercise until we can’t possibly do another rep with proper form.  (Some people keep going anyway, with improper form, but that’s just a quick way to get injured.)

 

It’s an approach that we use when we want to determine our single rep max (the most weight we can lift only one time) or what we end up doing when we guess wrong about what weight to use for three sets of an exercise.  We get helpful information from it about our current capabilities.  What I don’t like is the name.

 

When we work out, we are automatically doing something that is a success.  We are taking care of our bodies and training our muscles to be strong and our bones to be dense and our brains to work better.  But I think we’re all at least a little susceptible to the word failure.

 

The reframing comes in when we can’t do that last rep.  We can’t do that last rep right now.  Even unstoppable forces like we are encounter times when the immovable object wins, but then we rest and grow and the immovable object has to shift after all.

 

Up from here.

Two Is Biggest

The hardest workout is the second one.  We can gear ourselves up for the first one and we have that shiny new energy going for us and maybe even a sense of virtue.  We don’t necessarily expect to be good at what we’re doing, so we just go along with whatever happens.

 

Then the time for the second workout rolls around.  Our former blissful ignorance has been obliterated by soreness.  We look at the weights and resent them for their heaviness, their deceptively small size, their treachery.  We have become more familiar with the steps we’re supposed to take, but this does not somehow translate into making us more willing to take them.

 

Good news!  Workouts after the second one are better.  We learn more.  We understand how to keep the soreness afterward to a bearable level.  We begin to associate the work we do with the outcomes we want:  more energy, greater strength, looser waistbands.

 

We can do this.

Monday Workout: MORE Choices

This week’s workout, again, has options to make it more and less challenging.  If you need a less intense workout this week, choose to do just rows, regular pushups, and regular jacks.  As always, choose what works for you.  I suggest three rounds, but that, too, is optional.

 

1 arm clean and press	30
lunge twist	20
Arnold press	10
squat to leg lift	30
row to kickback	20
spiderman pushup	10
jacks or plank jacks	30
bench press	20
brains	10

How to choose

This week’s workout had some choices in it.  Here are some ways to figure out when to make a workout harder and when to make it easier.

 

1.     I’m bored.  Time to make it harder!  It’s hard to be bored when we’re out of breath.

2.     I’m hurting.  Time to make it less hard, at least on the part that hurts.

3.     I didn’t sleep well.  Less hard, or at least a longer warm-up

4.     I’m stressed.  This one can go either way.  If we enjoy taking things out on our weights that we can’t take out on our actual stressors, harder is a good thing.  If we need to conserve energy to deal with life outside the gym, easier might be a good choice.

 

Go play.

Happy Skeletons

We rely on our skeletons, even though we (I hope!) don’t see them.  Keeping our bones strong is a good way to ensure that we have a happy and healthy old age.  I’m here to talk about how.

 

Our skeletons respond well to work.  They also, believe it or not, like gravity.  To keep our skulls smiling, we need to keep all those bones in motion, preferably with a bit of weight or impact involved.

 

The simplest way to make our skeletons happy is to lift weights.  We don’t have to get fancy or complicated.  One or two weight workouts of 20 or 30 minutes a week is enough.

 

All right, maybe that’s not the simplest way.  The simplest way might be to walk or run or play tennis or pickleball or basketball or anything where our bodies impact the ground.  (Sadly, biking and swimming, two of my favorite activities, don’t have enough impact to make a difference for bone health.)

 

The really good news is that what is good for our skeletons is good for the rest of us, too.  That weight lifting increases our lean muscle mass, boosts metabolism, and makes us look good.  The cardio improves our mood and burns calories.

 

Make your skeleton happy!

Let's just leave carrot sticks out of it...

This is an oversimplification, but basically there are two types of motivation:  carrots and sticks.  Carrots are rewards for good behavior and sticks are punishments for bad behavior (unless you hate carrots, like I do, in which case it is punishment or punishment.  I don’t hate metaphorical carrots, though, since they don’t taste bad, so I’ll continue to use the familiar terminology.).

 

Not surprisingly, I have a preference between the two.  Despite the fact that roughly half the people who walk into my studio say something along the lines of “Oh, a torture chamber!” I don’t actually punish anybody.  (I do say, “I charge extra for that.”)

 

The biggest reason for this is that punishments don’t work.  Fear and shame and all those negative emotions don’t make us want to do whatever it is that someone wants us to do; they just make us want to avoid the bad thing that will happen to us if we don’t.

 

Praise, on the other hand, and positive reinforcement makes us feel like we are capable humans, empowered to do hard things.  It draws out of us our best selves.  It feels good, maybe even good enough to make up for having to do things like burpees.  It also doesn’t make us associate our workouts with Bad Things, which is far more likely to help us want to do it again.

 

Go play, you powerful humans, you!

Monday Workout: Decisions!

This week we have options.  (Fine.  Every week we have options, but I’m highlighting them this week.)  People who would like more challenge should do the overyets and the jump squats.  People who would like slightly less challenge should stick with the kb 8s and the regular squats.  People with questionable knees are included in those who would like slightly less challenge, in case that was not clear.  Three rounds.

 

kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s or overyets	10
mountain climbers	30
renegade row pushups	20
curls	10
(jump) squats	30
1 leg deadlifts	20
v sit press	10

 

Five

Sometimes we have one of those weeks.  Here are five treats we can give ourselves that don’t involve calories:

 

1.     Nap.  Yep.  It’s good for you.

2.     Walk.  A little change of scene is helpful, as is the mood-boosting power of cardio.

3.     Bath.  Swim works, too, but I’m thinking of the luxurious feeling of soaking right now.

4.     Connection.  Call a friend or text or meet up for a chat.  We feel better when we are surrounded by people who care about us.

5.     Choose some music.  Maybe you need to chill out to some classical or maybe you want to boogie in the kitchen.  Pick something that makes you happy.

 

Enjoy!

Naturally...

Yesterday I talked a little about why I don’t use fitness photos for these posts all the time.  Here’s another reason:  nature is good for us.

 

As annoying as it is when our moms turn out to be right, it’s good for us to go out and play, especially in natural settings.  Forest bathing is a thing because it really does reduce our stress and calm our minds.  People who struggle with meditating can get a lot of the same effects by walking under trees or at the beach.

 

Please note:  nature is all over the place.  We don’t have to go far to find some, even in the city.  We have parks and gardens and even street trees.  It may be awesome to get to somewhere there’s a lot less car noise and crowding, but even a quick five-minute stroll down a tree-lined street can help us reset our brains and our bodies.

 

So for today, I will be playing the part of your mom:  don’t waste this whole beautiful day inside!  Go out and get some fresh air.

Not a fitness tree

The photos I use for these posts don’t usually have a lot of fitness equipment in them or anything.  It’s not just because fitness equipment is not always super photogenic.  Fitness is, for me, not a goal in itself; I’ll go out on a limb here and say that it shouldn’t be for most people, either.

 

Fitness is a tool so that we can do other things we want to do, like hike around and take photos of nature and flowers and stuff.  If I were a diving enthusiast, maybe more of my photos would be of fish, but the underlying condition for being able to dive and take the photos would be fitness.

 

Maybe another way to think about it is that love is an excellent motivator.  I think most of us, in the early stages of being in love with that Special Someone, have done all kinds of challenging things (you know, like combing our hair or giving up anchovies on our pizza).  When we are in love with playing with our grandkids, we’re willing to do some cardio to make that easier.  When we are fascinated with Mexican indigenous culture, we train so we can climb those pyramids someday.

 

Do the work and then go play.

Monday Workout: Simple

Some weeks the right answer is to keep things simple.  This is a pretty straight-ahead workout.  Three rounds.

 

woodchoppers	30
rows	20
pushups	10
squat raise	30
skullcrushers	20
deadlift/1 leg deadlift	10
suitcase swings	30
curls	20
pretty princesses	10

Go Team!

Working out is a team sport.  Here are some possible members (besides ourselves, of course!) for our teams:

 

1.     Our doctor.  Doctors provide data about lots of health markers for us and fix us when we are broken.

2.     Our trainer or coach.  These folks help us figure out what to do with our bodies and help keep us safe while we do it.  They watch our form and encourage us to keep showing up.

3.     Our chiropractor.  Adjustments can, for some people, make the difference between suffering and comfort.

4.     Our massage therapist.  They work magic on our sore bits.

5.     Our nutritionist.  They know how to feed us better than we do ourselves.

6.     Our physical therapist.  When we need to come back from injury, they help us do it safely.

7.     Our cheering squad and workout buddies.  These are the folks who want us to succeed.

 

Who’s on your team?

Ruh-roh

I’m working my way through the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, not for the first time, but this time I’m doing it with a group.  In our meeting last week, we were talking about habits, both good and bad.

 

We don’t have bad habits because we’re bad people, or because we’re lazy or stupid.  We have bad habits because we get something out of them.  For example, when we have a bad habit of skipping workouts to lie on the couch and watch cartoons, it is not because we don’t know that working out is good for us.  It is not that we’re lazy bums.

 

What it IS could be a lot of things.  It could be that we’re actually just needing rest.  It could be that we are afraid that we might be capable of change and that might be the first domino in a whole concatenation of them and we’ll have to deal with everything from our loser partner to our childhood trauma to cleaning out the vegetable drawer in the fridge.  Or something else entirely.

 

Spending a little time analyzing why we don’t want to work out and figuring out ways to make working out work better for us is useful.  But we don’t have to put it into practice until Scooby Doo unmasks the bad guys.

Not a punishment.

Welcome to the day after the picnic or barbecue.  I hope it was fun and fabulous.  And now I hope that, whatever it is that happened yesterday, we forget it today.

 

But wait!  There was ice cream and pie and popsicles and beer and cheeseburgers and Grandma’s famous potato salad and and and.  I don’t care.  It was a holiday and maybe we made good choices and maybe we didn’t.  That was yesterday.

 

Today we are about treating our bodies with love.  We are not working out to “pay” for what we did yesterday.  Working out is good for our bodies.  It is not a punishment.

 

Let’s move and be happy today.

Monday Workout: New Exercise!

We have a new exercise for our cores today!  The V-sit press works the core in multiple ways.  Begin sitting just behind the sit bones with the spine leaning slightly backward and the legs lifted so that the body makes a V (if necessary, it is ok to bend the knees).  Hold a dumbbell in one hand at the shoulder and extend the other arm out toward the knees.  Lift the dumbbell overhead and lower it.  That’s one rep.  Repeat until five reps are done and then do the other side.  Three rounds.

 

step ups	30
flies	20
v-sit press	10
jacks	30
bench press	20
1 leg squats	10
(jump) lunges	30
rows	20
Russian twist	10