The Amazing Stickie and Saw

The Amazing Stickie knows that being able to rotate her spine and to bend sideways help keep her mobile.  This is another exercise that involves some spinal flexion, so it is best avoided by people who have osteopenia and osteoporosis.

She begins seated on the floor with her legs extended out in front of her about as far apart as a yoga mat is wide.  She holds her arms out in a wide V at shoulder height.  Stickie inhales to lengthen her spine.  As she exhales, she rotates her torso toward one side, simultaneously bending so that her arm comes across and down toward her opposite ankle, as if it were a saw chopping off her foot (no, I did not make that particular gory image up myself.).  Then she returns to the start position and repeats on the other side.

 

Four or five repetitions to each side are good.

No magic wand

So yesterday we started thinking about goals by figuring out what we want.  We have tuned into what makes us feel joyful.

That joy is the motivation to do the hard bits.  Which is what we’re going to talk about now.  Sadly, I do not have a magic wand.  This means that when we set goals they have to be more or less realistic while still bringing us toward what our little hearts desire.

 

What our hearts desire is our compass point, our big picture.  That’s the direction we’re going to go.  But we’re not orienteering to our goals:  we’re making a map. 

 

If, for example, what gives us joy is being able to travel, lugging our luggage, climbing up church towers or cliffs, eating all the local cuisine, and logging miles and miles of walking as we see the sights, our map to get there is going to need to include some strength training (to enable all that schlepping, to keep our bones strong, and to help our metabolisms process all those delicacies) and some cardio (so we don’t pass out when we end up in a hotel with no elevator and we have to take the stairs, or we want to scale the Mayan pyramids, or we want to do a Julie Andrews in an alpine meadow).

 

We want to figure out where we’re starting from (The couch?  Semi-weekly attendance at yoga class?  Trying Zumba once?).  Many gyms and personal trainers offer free fitness evaluations (yes, I do, too!) and that is a useful way to get some data, but it’s not necessary.  Once we have the starting point, we can begin to have an idea about the time it might take to get where we want to go.  We want to meet our goals safely, so we want to be consistent rather than overdo ourselves. A guideline for workouts is not to increase workout time by more than 10%, for example.  That means that this week’s 30 minutes is going to be next week’s 33 minutes and so on.  With weights, we increase our reps until we hit 10 to 12 with good form and then we increase the weight, dropping the reps down and continue alternating like that.

 

Personally, I like the kind of goals that go like this:  I’m going to do cardio five days a week for 30 minutes and I’m going to do one weight work out.  Then I’m going to see how I feel.  I will adjust each week until I am satisfied with my cardio endurance (it’s ok to attach a number to this, or some other measure, like not being out of breath at the top of the stairs) and I can tolerate two or three weight workouts per week.

 

Try it and see how it goes!

Joy

We’re getting toward the end of December, y’all, which means it is time to start thinking about goals for next year.  (We all have tons of spare time with the holidays, right?  Oceans of hours in which to reflect…)  This is the first of two posts on setting goals.

The only rule for right now is that we have to tell the truth.  This is not about the goals we should have.  I don’t care what our moms think we should do, or our spouses or our kids or our favorite magazines.  It’s about the ones we actually want.  I don’t care if it is silly or vain or unrealistic.  It just has to be real.

 

This might be harder than we think.  We have so many messages around us telling us how to be.  I’m pretty sure all of us have a knee-jerk answer about how much weight we’re supposed to lose.  I have a news flash:  happiness is not to be found in the number of lost pounds.

 

So.  Let’s spend a minute or two picturing or describing or feeling into the life we want to have in the new year.  Maybe we do want to look better than we do right this minute, but I bet we care more about feeling good and happy and full of energy.  Those of us who feel tired all the time might want to feel rested.  Those of us who get out of breath getting off the couch might want to change that.  Maybe we want to meet new friends playing a new sport or doing a new activity and we need to build a bit of strength to do that.

 

What we want to be able to do and to feel helps us to shape our goals.  We’ll discover that we want to be faster or stronger, that we want more stamina or energy, that we need more connection and more joy.

 

Find the feelings that lead to joy.  Then hold that thought for tomorrow.

Monday Workout: A Game!

For Christmas, we’re doing a workout game.  The only equipment required is a deck of cards, although it is handy to have an exercise ball or a yoga block for the pretty princesses and those of you who want to make things harder on yourselves may want some light weights to hold for the squats and punches.

This game can be played alone or with a friend.

 

One turn involves turning over a card and doing the exercise that matches the suit (see chart below) the number of times that is on the card.  So, for example, turning over the three of clubs would mean doing three pretty princesses.  Face cards can either be counted as ten, or jacks can be 11, queens 12, and kings 13.

 

Continue as long as time and energy allow!

 

(This is a good way to wear out any kids you happen to have lying around!)

 

Cardio Poker
Suit	Exercise
Hearts	squats/jump squats
Diamonds	lunge punches
Clubs	pretty princesses
Spades	pushups

 

The Amazing Stickie and Swimming

Today the Amazing Stickie is working on all kinds of good things, including spinal extension, core strength, and shoulder mobility.  She is doing all this by doing the Pilates mat exercise Swimming.

She begins lying on her belly on the floor.  Then she extends her arms and legs away from her until they lift up off the floor.  She makes sure that she doesn’t just use her lower back to curve her spine, but also involves her middle back in the work.  From there, she pulses her arms and legs up and down as if she were kicking while swimming and whacking the water with her arms.  As she does this, she pulses her breath as well, breathing out for four counts and in for four.  Eight cycles is enough.

 

She lowers herself back to the floor and takes a rest.

Gotta do it.

As we get into the darker months and the months with more variable weather, it can be a challenge to go outside.  Personally, I think that I was intended to be a bear who slept through the winter.  Since I have yet to find a job opening in the hibernation industry, I’ll just keep on doing what I do.

Outside can be cold or dark or rainy or windy or even all of those things at once.  Unfortunately, going outside is still good for us.  We need daylight, however feeble it might be, and fresh air and trees.

 

Maybe we have to bundle up or grab an umbrella or bribe ourselves with tea afterwards, but let’s do it.  We’ll feel better and we’ll sleep better.

Them Bones

The prophet Ezekiel did not know anything about Pilates when he saw the vision of the valley of dried bones.  But, he did grasp one of the essential underlying themes of Pilates as he watched the bones knit together again:  it’s all connected.  (Sorry about the earworm about the foot bone connecting to the leg bone and all…)

This connection is good news.  It means that when we work on any part of our body, the whole body feels the effects.  Sometimes it means that it’s better to work on a part that is not the part that hurts because what’s causing the pain is not what is happening right there.  We are a holistic system.

 

That said, we often get best results when we begin with the spine.  As we get good alignment along this central part of our body, the extremities can fall into place.  If they don’t, we can work on them more afterward.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: 12 Days of Christmas

Yes, I know that next Monday is actual Christmas, but I’m not working then.  So we’re doing the 12 days of Christmas workout this week. 

For those of you who have not yet tried it out, here is how it works.  We begin doing one push press.  Day one is over!  Then, we start day two, on which we do two goblet squats and one push press.  We continue on until we have completed all twelve days.

 

It is ok to rest as needed, but we try to rest between the days rather than stopping in the middle.

 

Yes, I know that this adds up to 42 burpees by the time we are done.  I am not your true love after all.

 

Merry Christmas.

 

1 push press

2 goblet squats

3 Overhead press

4 1 leg squats each leg

5 deadlifts

6 burpees

7 pushups

8 renegade rows

9 mountain climbers

10 jump lunges

11 kb swings

12 plyojacks

 

The Amazing Stickie and Single Leg Kick

The Amazing Stickie likes to ensure that she has strong glutes, mobile hamstrings, and healthy knees.  One way she does this is by doing Single Leg Kick when she goes to Pilates.

She begins lying on her belly with her torso propped up on her elbows and her hands pointing straight in front of her.  She bends one knee, flexing that foot, and pulses it toward her behind as if she were trying to kick herself in the butt two times.  Then she points her toe and stretches her leg out long to return to the starting position.

 

Stickie does about five repetitions on each leg.

Speed Limit

One of the themes of my life right now is slowing down.  I am not happy about this.  But when the universe speaks, it’s safest just to listen.

I’ve mentioned that slowing down when it’s time for stretching is beneficial.  It can also be beneficial when we are lifting weights.  The concept we’re working with here is time under tension.  We get stronger when our muscles spend time under tension.

 

In practice, this means that we don’t want to lift the weights as fast as possible to get things over with.  OK, maybe we do, but that’s not the best choice.  There are circumstances under which we lift fast, like when we’re trying to develop power, but if our goal is strength, slow wins.

 

It makes sense.  When we take four counts to push up those weights on our bench press and another four counts to lower them, we are spending a lot more time with our muscles working than if we just pump those suckers up and down.  I realize that this is more work and it requires that we have some patience.  I am always the bearer of bad tidings.

 

One interesting note, though:  we can get most of the benefit of a slower tempo by just slowing down the lowering phase of the movement (the eccentric contraction, for those of us who relish a bit of fitness jargon).  That is, we lift the weights in a single count and then lower them much more slowly.

 

Try it out and see!

This one goes to...

One of the most memorable lines from the movie Spinal Tap is from the description of their amp:  “This one goes to 11.”  It’s funny in the same way that cutting a pizza into six pieces because we can’t eat eight is funny.  Just because we change the numbers doesn’t mean we change the total.

But, innumerate silly fools that we are, we do tend to think that one that goes to 11 is better than one that goes to 10.

 

Then along comes some reality and smacks me upside the head.  In stretching, not only do we not want to go to 11, we probably only want to go to about 5.  What the heck?

 

Let me explain.  Let’s say we’re stretching our hamstrings (because, let’s face it:  most of us need to stretch our hamstrings.).  (It is perfectly ok to test this out for real on our own bodies!  An activity!  Woot!)  We’re lying there on our backs with a strap around one of our feet and we begin to lift that leg up toward the ceiling.  The very first place we feel resistance is called R1.  Please note that resistance may not even feel like stretching.  It might just feel like the leg doesn’t really want to go.  If we keep lifting our leg up past that point, we get to a place where going farther would hurt.  This is called R2.  The space between R1 and R2 is the place where we should be stretching.

 

It turns out that if we gently move our leg back and forth between those two spots, we improve our range of motion.  In other words, we make the distance from R1 to R2 larger.  Pushing past R2 actually freaks our muscles out and they lock down and refuse to go anywhere ever again.  Not really.  But they do protect themselves by tensing up.  No more stretching for you, buddy.

 

Those of us who are used to pushing the edges of our stretches might not feel like we’re doing that much when we work in this space.  This is why it is good to try it and see.  I was surprised at how much more movement I could create by going gently.

 

So:  no pain means not only no pain (yay!) but also more gain.

Monday Workout: Back to Balance!

We are keeping the back of our bodies strong and working on balance this week.  Four rounds.

 

1 min cardio
suitcase swings	30
1 leg squat	10
bench press	20
woodchoppers	30
deadlift	20
pretty princesses	10

The Amazing Stickie and Standing Roll Down

The Amazing Stickie loves to maintain her spine mobility.  Those of us who have osteopenia or osteoporosis should not do this exercise along with her because spinal flexion is risky for those folks, but the rest of us can follow her good example in doing the standing roll down.

Stickie begins standing up with her usual good posture.  She inhales to lengthen her spine.  As she exhales, she nods her head forward and then curves her spine forward one vertebra at a time.  She keeps her weight toward her toes because as her torso bends forward, her hips want to push out behind her and she wants to prevent that as long as possible.  When she has curled forward as far as her body allows, she reverses the process, again keeping her weight toward her toes so that she can get her hips aligned over her legs as early as possible to provide a strong and stable base for her re-stacked spine.

 

Stickie often does three or four repetitions.

The difference

Recently I read a thing on the Internet (as one does) about the difference between self-soothing and self-care.  What our culture tries to sell us as self-care is often self-soothing:  fancy drinks, hot baths, retail therapy.  Self-care is often a lot more about doing the not-always-pleasant-but-useful stuff that our future selves thank us for.

Working out is one of those things.

 

While I certainly try to make workouts fun, that is not really the point.  The point is that we work out because it makes other things more fun.  It is much more fun to be able to breathe easily at the top of the stairs, to catch that excitable toddler or puppy on the playground, to spend time anywhere besides the hospital.  We work out so that we can garden and travel and go to our cousin’s quinceañera and eat cake at our own 100^th birthday party.

 

Helping ourselves be healthy humans is self-care.  If necessary, we can bribe ourselves to do it with a self-soothing hot bath at the end.

Play is the work of...

When I learn new things, I like to remember that it’s a process.  Those of you who have been reading along for a while know that my most recent continuing education effort was about flexibility and stretching.  I passed the course (of course!), but now that the academic part is done, I’m exploring the practical applications.

One way I do that is by… practicing.  I try techniques on myself.  I try stuff on my family members (they don’t mind; they’re used to me by now).  As I get more of a feel for how different things work, I throw one or two new things into my workouts with my clients.  Not surprisingly, some things work better for some people than others.  Whether the specific exercises I try work the way I want them to or not, I learn.

 

I know I say this a lot, but it is really worth repeating:  experimenting is the way to go.  Our culture is super hyper focused on successful results and that inhibits our ability to play, to be curious, to find out.  Trial and error is not trial and error if there is no error.  Learning what doesn’t work is often as useful as learning what does.

 

Go play.  It might be fun.  It might not be.  But odds are that we’ll learn something either way.

Monday Workout: Whole

I am enjoying the shorter circuits right now.  This one should get the whole body working!.  Four rounds.

 

1 min cardio
step ups or high knees	30
renegade rows	10
flies	20
kb alternate arm swing	30
Arnold press	10
oblique crunch	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Spine Twist

The Amazing Stickie likes to ensure that she works in all planes of motion to keep herself supple and mobile.  Today she is doing Spine Twist to work in the transverse plane.

She begins sitting on the floor with her legs out in front of her at an angle that is about the width of a yoga mat.  Her arms are raised at shoulder height out to the sides, palms facing forward and elbows soft.  She inhales to lengthen her spine toward the ceiling.  As she exhales, she twists her body to one side, making sure that her arms stay in the same relationship to her torso.  It is as if she is a doll with no moveable joints in her upper body; only her waist can twist.  Then she returns to the start position and repeats on the other side.

 

Stickie does about five reps on each side.

A Moment With Uncle Joe

Today’s post is brought to you by Uncle Joe Pilates:  it’s time to take a deep breath.

We’re going to start our deep breath by standing up.  We’re going to use our good posture, because if we’re all slumped forward, we have a hard time making space in our bodies for the breath.  This means, ideally, that our ears are over our shoulders, which are over our hips, which are over our knees, which are over our ankles.  For most of us, this means we need to pull our heads back a bit, roll our shoulders down and back, tuck our pelvis under a little, and soften our knees.

 

Now we start.  As we take our deep breath in, we can notice that our breastbone lifts, our spine arches just a little, and our ribcage and abdomen expand.  A lot of us think that our breath just expands us to the front, but really the breath opens up the sides and the back of the body, too.

 

As we exhale, the breastbone sinks a little, the spine curves back, and everything else deflates a little.

 

If we do this nice and slowly a few times, we will tap into our parasympathetic nervous system, which helps us relax and rest and recover.

 

Carry on!

Free the Tupperware!

So we’ve done the holiday thing and we’re probably more or less tidied up by now.  All that’s left is… leftovers.  What I like about leftovers is that they’re easy.  No decisions needed!  Throw stuff in the microwave and there we go!

Metaphorically, though, we have leftovers, too.  We may feel a little yucky still from too much pie, or too much gravy, or too much of Uncle Stanley.  Maybe we hardly moved all weekend and we feel stiff.  Or maybe we spent the whole time running around doing things and we feel sore.  It’s easy to sink into those leftovers, too.  We might tart them up with a dollop of guilt or a smidgen of shame or even a little rage, but we’re still feeding ourselves the same metaphorical stuff.

 

Y’all can do what you want with that last bit of stuffing, but I have my bossy pants on and I’m going to tell you that it’s time to pitch those metaphorical leftovers because they’re stinking up the joint.  Whatever happened over the holiday happened.  And now we’re done with it.  We start fresh from right here and right now.

 

We can choose healthy foods.  We can move.  We can even rest if that’s what we need.  We can do this.

Monday Workout: Core and Balance

We have a few things that work laterally today, some changes of direction, and some one-sided work, all of which adds up to a bunch of work on core and balance.  Three rounds.

 

squat to leg lift	30
flies	20
1 leg deadlift	10
lateral bound/side lunge	30
bench press	20
reverse fly	10
jacks	30
curls	20
V sit press	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Rollover

Having worked on spinal extension for the last two weeks, this week the Amazing Stickie decided to do some spinal flexion.  This exercise is not suitable for anyone with osteoporosis or osteopenia.  The Amazing Stickie wants everyone to work within their own personal safe range of motion and to stop if anything feels wrong.

To begin, Stickie lies on her back with her hands at her sides.  She inhales and raises her legs until they are perpendicular to the floor.  Then, as she exhales, she rolls her spine up, bringing her legs over her face until they are parallel with the floor.  She inhales and separates her legs so they make a narrow V shape.  On the exhale, she rolls her spine down, circling her legs as she returns to the position with her legs perpendicular to the floor.

 

Three reps are usually enough.

Attention!

What our personal trainer or Pilates instructor knows is certainly important.  We want them to keep us safe and to know how to get us to our goals.  But it might be just as important to think about how that person pays attention.

One of the things I watch for with my clients is form.  I want to ensure that they are using their bodies in ways that don’t lead to injury.  I’m checking to see that their knees line up right or their elbows are doing the correct thing.

 

I’m also watching for signs of effort.  It’s my job to notice that ten reps are not going to happen safely and to stop the set at eight.  I tune into the energy drops and ask about whether there was food today, or enough sleep.

 

When something unusual happens, a client moves in an unexpected way, I see it and I think about why.  We talk about what is going on.  We move together.  We experiment.  And we learn from the results.

 

Paying attention is what makes progress.