Monday Workout: Halloween!

So just for fun, I made a Halloween workout.  I only had to finagle a couple of exercise names to do it.  “Extend triceps” is what we usually call skullcrushers (which is an awesome Halloween name, really).  And “narrow squats” just mean that we’re keeping our feet shoulder width apart or narrower, not doing sumo squats this time.  Three rounds should do it.

 

H	high knees	30
A	Arnold press	10
L	lunge	20
L	lateral raise	10
O	oblique crunch	10
W	woodchopper	30
E	extend triceps	20
E	elbow plank
N	narrow squats	20

 

Good Form!

What is good form?  Here are five questions to ask to check form:

 

1.     What are my abs doing?  They should be engaged.

2.     Are my joints lined up?  Knees should align with ankles, for example.

3.     Are my shoulders out of my ears?  This is a particularly good question to ask when lifting things overhead.

4.     Am I using the right amount of effort?  Too much is as bad as too little.  Sometimes body parts we are not trying to work keep “helping” us, which just makes us tired and tense.

5.     Am I breathing?  Holding the breath is not useful.

Be Difficult

I’m currently in the process of reading a book called Anxious People by Fredrik Backman.  (I like it so far, but I’m only 50 pages in.  Will report back when I’m done.)  Two of the characters are a father and son who are both police officers in the same station.  They don’t get along very well and on page 14 we are told, “The older man thinks the most important thing is for a police officer to do the right thing, the younger thinks it’s more important to do things correctly.”  I’m reading the book with a book group and a fair amount of discussion ensued about this part.

 

Unsurprisingly, I am difficult.  I want not just police officers but people generally to do the right thing and to do it correctly.  This applies to fitness as well as everything else.  Doing the right thing, in a fitness context, means getting in the cardio, doing resistance training, and remembering to work on balance, core, and flexibility.  Doing it correctly means paying attention to form.

 

Be difficult.  Do it all.

Change

I’m apparently feeling like Captain Obvious again today, but sometimes that’s useful.  Here’s your news flash:  if your workout isn’t changing, it’s not working.

 

All right, now that I’ve got the obvious bit out of the way, I’ll return to my usual nuance to add some detail to that statement.

 

Two things happen while we work out:  we get stronger and we get older.  Depending on which one is happening more, our workout needs to adjust to match it.  Most of the time, I think, we get stronger faster than we get older, so in general our workouts should involve heavier weights over time.

 

That said, getting older is still happening.  We may discover that we need to work out smarter and not harder, choosing fewer exercises (with those heavier weights because we are still getting stronger) so as to keep our recovery time manageable.

 

The bottom line is:  if your workout is exactly the same as it was five years ago, something is wrong.  I’m happy to help with an update. 

Monday Workout: Not Fancy

 

I’m not feeling fancy this week, so this workout just gets the job done.  Three rounds.

 

woodchoppers	30
bench press	20
Arnold press	10
squat to leg lift	30
rows	20
kickbacks	10
suitcase swings	30
flies	20
Russian twists	10

Five

(I am not a dietician or a nutritionist.  I have, however, studied fitness nutrition and it is within the scope of my practice to make general recommendations about food.  However, there are more expert experts out there and anyone with deeper needs can and should consult them!)

 

We know when we don’t feel great.  Sometimes we don’t know why.  Here are five food culprits that might be contributing to our malaise.

 

1.     Alcohol.  No, I’m not here to take away your weekly beer or that special glass of wine.  I’m just suggesting that we notice how it affects our sleep and our energy levels.  Those of us who may be menopausal might discover that we have more hot flashes when we drink.  Just think about it.

2.     Water.  This one is where we can, most of us, increase our intake to feel better.  Dehydrated people are grumpy people.

3.     Caffeine.  I know it is easier to get caffeine than sleep, but it’s worth the effort to get the sleep.  Really.

4.     Dairy.  As we get older, many of us find that digesting dairy products is not as easy as it used to be.  Plant-based substitutes may make things more comfortable.

5.     Sugar.  Empty calories.  Inflammatory.  Addictive.  Tasty, but is it worth it?

But why?

Most of us have a pretty good idea about what our less-perfect habits are.  We have that nagging little voice somewhere that keeps suggesting we might want to dust off the weights, or find our running shoes, or reconsider that second piece of pie.  Our problem is not knowing what we should do; it’s doing it.

 

While my clients are working out with me, they don’t have to find motivation.  That’s my job.  (And, really, most of my motivational skill comes from having that Mom Look.)  Sadly, fitness does not happen in a single session, or even a couple of sessions a week.  People who want to make progress need to work out when they are not with me.

 

What motivates people to do their workouts?  Depends on the person.  Some people want to look cute.  Some want to climb mountains.  Some just want to feel better when they wake up in the morning.  The other part of my motivational skill comes from having lots of ideas about where folks can find the right levers to push to get themselves to work out on their own.

 

(This is the part where I pause and strongly suggest that all of us choose positive motivations rather than negative ones.  Shame is not good for us.  Exercise is not a punishment for bad behavior.  In the long run, treating ourselves with love is a much better plan.)

 

So:  I’m here.  I have ideas.  Hit me up.

Feedback

I love food.  I also love movement.  This is good, because healthy people need to eat and exercise.

 

Like all loves, we need to avoid obsessive love of either food or exercise.  We can’t out-exercise poor eating habits and no amount of correct eating can make us fit without getting off the couch occasionally.

 

The good news is that our bodies like to give us feedback.  We do have to listen to them, though, to get the messages.  Sometimes the messages are obvious, like the day after we helped a friend move and our muscles hate us—we overdid it.  Similarly, the day after too much birthday cake, we know we have made a mistake. 

 

Other times, the messages are more subtle.  We’re a little crabby and it’s because our guts aren’t as fond of dairy as they used to be, or we’re kind of stiff and we realize it has been a few days since we remembered to stretch after our workouts.

 

Tune in.  Practice listening to the body and see what happens.

Monday Workout: Go for it

This week we’re doing a pretty straight-ahead workout.  Plenty of compound exercises to burn calories, build muscle, and increase heart rate.  Three rounds.

 

1 leg step ups with weights	30
renegade rows	20
pushups	10
jacks	30
bench press	20
curl	10
(lunge) punches	30
Arnold press	20
brains	10

 

Four Things

Sometimes workouts are not as fun as they could be.  Here are four things to make them more fun:

 

1.     Bring a friend.  Having someone to talk to or suffer alongside helps a lot.

2.     Turn up the tunes.  Loud music drowns out the screaming of muscles, too.

3.     Get silly.  Wear the crazy shirt or the weird hat.

4.     If all else fails and you STILL hate the workout, please try a different one.  There are so many out there!  Keep experimenting!

The one characteristic

If I had to pick one characteristic of a successful workout, it would be… FUN.  Why?  Because we don’t need a lot of encouragement to keep having more fun.

 

Workouts work because we do them, not because they’re the most perfect one ever.  I can design a workout that ensures that every muscle group gets the optimum amount of work.  It might take three hours to complete and a whole gym’s worth of equipment.  A few souls might try it, once, but once would be enough.

 

Now I’m not saying that I habitually design workouts with gaps in them or that none of us should ever do any exercise that isn’t fun (looking at you, burpees!)—I do try to balance the exercises I give to my clients and we all have to do a few burpees—but that we have to work out more than once for it to make real changes.  And to make that happen, the workouts had better be fun.

 

Fun-adjacent workouts also work, once we’re really into the fun bit.  People who love, say, biking, are willing to do some lifting if it means that they can bike better or longer or faster or with less pain.

 

Short version:  start with what you love doing and go from there.

Gloom

So pardon me if I’m a little gloomy here.  I’ve been thinking about death because of family things going on.  And I have some bad news:  there is no fitness routine that will keep us from dying.

 

But it’s not all gloom.  Our workouts make a big difference in the quality of our life as we get older.

 

Left to themselves, aging bodies will lose muscle mass, which means that we get weaker if we don’t exercise.  We also tip our body fat percentage in the wrong direction when we lose muscle, even if our weight doesn’t change.

 

Strong muscles help us have strong bones.  Those same muscles also help protect our bones by keeping us from falling, stabilizing us through life’s many uncertainties.

 

Cardio exercise keeps us happy and keeps our brains sharp.  It’s also often something we can do with friends to keep our connections thriving.

 

We are still going to die, but let’s enjoy every minute up until then.

Monday Workout: Twist!

I love working in various planes (not the flying kind!).  Going sideways and twisting as well as working forward and backward is good for our coordination, our balance, and our core control.  Three rounds.

 

kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s or over yets	10
squat to leg lift	30
bench press	20
lateral raise	10
woodchoppers	30
flies	20
pretty princesses	10

 

Gimme a reason (or five)

Sometimes we just need a reason to work out.  Here are five to choose from today:

 

1.     Because I told you to.  I’m an expert.  I know you should.  Now get to it.

2.     Because you’ll feel better afterwards.  Really.  The endorphins will move in your body and you’ll have a sense of accomplishment.

3.     Because it’s fun.  Fine, you’ll have to pick a workout you actually like.  Go biking, go dancing, play dodgeball with the kids.  Just get sweaty and breathless.

4.     Because you can have a treat afterwards.  (Be careful with this one, because it is hard to out-exercise a whole cake.)

5.     Because you look cute when you work out.  Really.  You do.

 

Go play.

No Little Minds

One of my favorite quotes from Emerson is this one:  “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”  This comforts me when I say one thing on one day and something seemingly opposite the next.  Keep this in mind as we proceed.

Yesterday I said that I like baby steps.  This is true.  But sometimes some of us do better making a big commitment.  We need the burn-the-bridges kind of system to propel us into change.

 

What does that look like in fitness?  It looks like showing up to the gym every day.  It looks like cleaning out the pantry and parting with the secret emergency stash of M&Ms.  It looks like telling a dear friend that no, we can’t meet for pastries, but we’d be happy to gossip and walk.

 

The advantage of the Big Change is that it is really noticeable.  Our dear ones might not treat our five minute daily walk with the respect it deserves and they might try to negotiate us out of it for any number of reasons.  They still might try to convince us not to hit the gym for our killer elliptical session followed by heavy lifting, but they can’t minimize it out of existence, either.

 

A big change works for those of us who enjoy a challenge.  It can motivate fighters who like an external enemy (even if it is fictitious or abstract!).  It helps if we like the spotlight, if we expect lots of opposition or lots of support from our friends and family (as opposed to a casual “you do you” approach), and if we actually mean it.

 

That last part is the kicker.  If we decide to do the Big Change, we have to follow through or we lose our credibility with ourselves and with others.

 

Here to help, whether it’s with big stuff or baby steps.

Don't Panic

When we first decide it’s time to work out, we can get overwhelmed really quickly.  Our well-meaning friends and family members may suggest everything from crossfit to yoga to Zumba.  We’ll see gadgets galore on the internet and we’ll get intimidated by the array of weird-looking machines at the gym.

 

Don’t panic.

 

This is why I am in favor of baby steps.

 

In general, the first thing that most people need as they transition from couch to activity is just to do something.  I tend to advise walking because unless something is drastically wrong with us, we can all do it.  Start with five minutes.  Yes, that is really easy.  That is the point.

 

Starting with something easy is important.  When we are faced with what seems like an impossible task, we tend to get flooded with emotional reactions, brain chemicals, and negative self-talk.  We want to curl up into a ball.  Doing something, anything, shifts our mindset.  We remember that we have at least a small measure of control.  This is the first step toward taking back our power.

 

That first tiny success encourages us.  We can take the next tiny step.  Eventually, we will feel ready for slightly bigger steps and we’ll take them.  If we have setbacks, we will remember that we can take tiny steps until we recover.

 

We can do this.

Monday Workout: Lots of Fun

We’re doing all kinds of fun things this week.  We have twisting, lateral movement, jumping, balance work!  Hooray!  Three rounds.

 

reverse lunge twist	30
rows	20
pushups	10
squat raise	30
deadlifts	20
(Kb) hammer curl	10
lateral bounds	30
1 leg squat	20
v sit press	10