Choose hard

I’m wearing my Captain Obvious cape this morning, at least to start:  workouts can be hard.  This is pretty much the basis of my career.  If workouts were easy, no one would need me.

The thing is, not working out is also hard, just in a different way.  I tend to focus on the positive, but for a moment, I’m going to talk about what happens to us when we choose to avoid all the workouts.  When we don’t exercise, we find that stairs become more challenging.  We get tired and out of breath faster.  We lose muscle tone.  Jar lids defeat us.  Carrying the groceries gets harder.  We may lose our balance more often.  It even gets harder to pick up our socks from the floor.  And that’s just the direct physical stuff.

 

We may find that it is harder to manage our moods and our stress levels.  Our brains might feel a bit fuzzier.  We may not like how we feel or how we look.

 

Healthy bodies come in many, many shapes, so this is not intended in any way to be fat-shaming, but when we don’t exercise, we may find that it is harder to stay at the same weight.  This can be inconvenient, unless we have an unlimited budget for clothes.

 

A lot of things in life are hard.  This is unfortunate, but true.  The good news is that we can choose, in some cases, what kind of hard.  Working out is one of the hard things that, I think, is worth the trouble.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: More Balance

I really like balance exercises.  They’re practical and challenging.  So we get single leg deadlifts this week.  Three rounds.

 

squat to leg lift	30
1 leg deadlift	20
truck driver	10
1 arm clean and press	30
flies	20
lateral raise	10
jacks	30
bench press	20
femur arcs	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Front Raise

The Amazing Stickie, as we all know by now, loves a challenging exercise.  Today she is demonstrating the front raise.

She begins standing in her usual fabulous posture.  She holds some light weights out directly in front of her in what she likes to call the zombie position.  Then she raises the weights over her head until her upper arms are next to her ears.  She lowers back down to the starting position.

 

Stickie would like to remind us that it is important to keep good posture throughout.  Sometimes it can be hard to keep from arching the back while raising the arms.  It is always a good idea to keep the shoulders down out of our ears no matter what our arms are doing.

 

Because this exercise challenges the front part of the deltoids, Stickie likes to work in sets of ten to avoid listening to them complain too much.

Odious!

One of my clients, while she was working out with me, was chatting about a friend of hers whose workout routine is a weekly Pilates class and some walking.  My client was wondering if that could possibly be enough exercise.

I’m not going to answer that question, at least not right away, because there’s a much more important issue here.

 

We have to stop comparing.

 

We have to stop comparing our workouts to other people’s.  We have to stop comparing our performance to the person next to us in class.  We have to stop comparing what we are doing today to what we were doing when we were twenty or what we did last week.  We have to stop comparing our bodies to media images, to our ex-partners’ new flames, to professional athletes, to our own younger selves.

 

John Lydgate, around 1440, phrased it this way:  "Odyous of olde been comparisonis, And of comparisonis engendyrd is haterede."  Or, in plainer, more modern English:  Comparisons are odious.

 

What we need to do instead is to be present.  We need to work out in the now, with today’s body, however that happens to be.  It is not possible to work out with our past body or our future body, and it’s even less possible to work out with someone else’s body.  So:  let’s mind our own business and get sweaty.

 

Now:  to the question of how much exercise is enough.  It depends.  It depends on our age, ability, fitness level, injury history, health status, hydration level, past experience, and a whole bunch of other factors.  Most of us, as a general rule, want to aim for about 150 minutes of cardio a week, a weight workout or two, and some kind of flexibility and balance work, but that is purely a starting point for the usual experimentation I recommend to figure out our own perfect blend of activity.

Get up and go!

In response to one of last week’s posts about pain, a friend asked about how to deal with the pain of getting out of bed and doing a morning workout, so that’s what I’m going to talk about today. 

Let’s get the bad news out of the way:  there is no one right answer to this question.  Most likely it will take a fair amount of experimentation to find the solution that is right for each individual.  The good news is that experiments can be undertaken in a spirit of fun, like:  “I wonder what I’m going to get up to today with this?”

 

With that in mind, here are some questions to ask to guide our experiments:

 

Does the workout really have to be in the morning?  For some of us, the answer is yes, because we have very full lives and that’s the only time we can get some time to ourselves.  But if the comfy bed wins every single time, we might want to figure out if there is another time that works better for us, even if we have to get creative about it.  Lunch time is a reasonable time to work out for some of us.  Maybe it’s easier to say no to another episode of that really great show in the evening than it is to force ourselves out of the blankets in the morning.

 

Are we getting enough sleep?  Health is a holistic thing.  (I am allowed to use that word because I lived in Berkeley for 20 years.)  Working out is only one part of our total health.  If we are struggling to get up and work out, it might be because we are actually worn out.  Committing to getting enough sleep might be a good first step toward achieving that morning workout.

 

Are we excited about what we get to do at the gym?  (Or the pool, or the dance studio, or the ski slope, or whatever.)  There is very little in the world that could induce me to get up early to run.  I hate running.  But tell me I get to ride my bike and I’m ready to go!  Finding that perfect activity can mean trying a bunch of different stuff, but it is worth it.  One caveat:  sometimes we are going to have to do workouts we don’t love so much.  Yoga people sometimes have to do cardio.  Runners sometimes need to lift a weight or two.  But if we can make more of our workouts ones we love to do, we often find it easier to deal with the ones that are just good for us rather than fun.

 

Do we have to do it alone?  Friends and accountability partners can make all the difference in our ability to show up.  Maybe I don’t really feel like lifting weights, but I do feel like seeing my buddy and chatting, and we might as well lift while we do that.  It may take a while to find the right buddy.  It’s frustrating when we want to work out with someone who keeps flaking on us.  This is a place where classes come in handy:  it is unlikely that the entire class is going to flake out, so we will have somebody to play with!

 

Why are we doing this, anyway?  I know it’s not easy to face existential questions first thing in the morning, so maybe we figure this out at some time of day when our brains are really working well.  Then we remind ourselves about the reasons we want to work out when we’re debating the relative merits of staying under the blankets and putting on our tennies.  We have to find real reasons, even if they’re embarrassing.  Our fake-virtuous resolve to treat our body like a temple is not going to win over the really comfy pillow, but our honest desire to rock the bikini on the beach might do it.  (One of my personal reasons is that I always feel better afterward.  Always.)  It can be tempting to answer the why questions with intellect alone:  it’s good for us, we don’t want to die, we got a lecture from the doctor, blah blah blah.  What really gets us out of bed is emotion:  I want to be strong, I want to feel good, I want better sex, I want the joy of playing with my kids or grandkids, I feel light when I ride my bike.

 

I’m sure these are not all the possible questions, but they should give us a place to start.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Balance

I wanted to work on balance this week, so we all get to do single leg squat.  Three rounds. 

step ups	30
pushups	20
1 leg squats	10
kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s	10
reverse lunge twist	30
rows	20
brains	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Single Leg Deadlift Rows

The Amazing Stickie loves a challenge.  Today she is working her upper body while also working on balance by doing single leg deadlift rows.

She begins in the single leg deadlift position:  she stands on one leg with her other leg stretched out behind her parallel to the floor while her torso is also parallel to the floor.  She has a pair of fairly light dumbbells in her hands, which are hanging down to the floor.

 

Keeping the rest of her body still, Stickie bends her elbows and lifts the dumbbells toward her armpits.  She feels her shoulder blades move together toward the center of her back.  Then she lowers the dumbbells back to their starting position.  She keeps her abdominals engaged the entire time because they keep her from falling over.

 

Sets of five on a side are a good place to start.

Getting Started

I play pickleball.  (Go ahead and judge me.  I don’t care.  It’s fun.)  I play at the community courts where people at all levels can show up depending on the day.  In the last while, a person has been coming who has never played any sports before, ever.  She is learning a ton and, I think, having some fun.  It has made me think about the learning process for fitness generally.

Trying a new thing can be baffling.  All of a sudden we have way more body parts than we thought we did and they’re not where we thought they were and what is the score again?  We don’t want to make fools of ourselves (well, except me.  I’m good at it.), so we push ourselves to learn all the things at once.  This usually does not work.

 

Here’s what does work:  encouragement.  When we are new at something, we need to know that we’re doing something—ANYTHING—right.  Maybe we didn’t get the ball over the net, but we did hit it solidly.  Maybe we tried hitting the ball backhand instead of panicking.  Maybe we hustled to get to the ball.

 

Another thing that works:  focusing on one part of the task.  We can’t think about how to grip the paddle and where our feet are and bending our knees and keeping the paddle face in the right place and watching the ball all at the same time.  We need to pick one thing, maybe two.  We decide:  today I’m going to watch the ball hit the paddle and I’m going to follow through on my shot.  When that gets easier, we can try another thing.

 

One more thing that works:  forgetting the bad bits.  The last 27 serves went into the net?  So what?  We take a deep breath, we concentrate, and we hit the next one. 

 

Go play.

More about pain.

I’ve done a couple of posts recently about pain and discomfort, but I realized that I have a bit more to say about the recovery process.  Just like we need plenty of strategies for getting through our workouts, or even getting to our workouts, we need a toolkit to deal with the inevitable soreness.

Please note:  I am not a doctor or a physical therapist.  Actual injuries require actual medical treatment, not just some advice from a personal trainer.

 

Traditionally, trainers recommend RICE for dealing with soreness and injury:  Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation.  Those are all useful things to try, but they’re not the only things we can do.

 

For one thing, we can take Ibuprofen (if it is appropriate for us) to reduce inflammation and pain.  (There is no added moral benefit to suffering when there are helpful drugs available.)

 

Ice is great for swelling and it can reduce pain, but if we’re just sore and not swollen, heat can be helpful as well.  Personally, I find that when I have to ice some part of my body, the whole rest of my body tenses up from the cold so I have to be really hurting to be willing to do that.  On the other hand, I love adding heat, either via a heating pad, a microwaveable gizmo, or a hot bath or shower.  Your mileage may vary:  do what works.

 

Gentle movement has been shown to reduce sensations of pain.  This means some stretching or maybe a casual walk.  Again, if it doesn’t work for you, don’t do it.  Rest is also good and useful.

 

Our friend hydration also has a role to play in recovery.  Water is essential to so many body processes, including coping with the waste products of exercise.  Drink up.

 

Appropriate nutrition also helps us recover.  We need enough calories.  It can also help to avoid excess sugar, which can contribute to inflammation.  We also need enough protein, but basically none of us needs to worry about that.

 

Self-myofascial release using foam rollers, tiger tails, or yoga tune-up balls can help with those very very tight places.  It can be uncomfortable at first for people who are not used to the feeling, but most people find it to be a “hurts so good” kind of thing.

 

Possibly my favorite way to deal with soreness is massage.  It will be obvious if I ever win the lottery because I will get a massage every day.  Finding a massage professional who gets your body is worthwhile.  Different people respond best to different levels of pressure.  It is important to communicate with your massage therapist about what hurts, what level of pressure you like and can tolerate, and what your priorities are.

 

What are your favorite tools for dealing with the results of workouts?

Monday Workout: Old and New Friends

This week we have a bunch of compound exercises (no surprise).  Some of them are old friends, like burpees, and some are newer friends like skier jumps.  All of them will challenge us!  Three rounds. 

skier jumps	30
kb hammer curl	20
V sit press	10
squat heel lift	30
skullcrushers	20
burpees	10
mountain climbers	30
Arnold press	20
pretty princesses	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Star Plank

Today we see a rare image of the back of the Amazing Stickie!  In this picture, we are looking down on her from above as she does a star plank.

To do the star plank, Stickie begins in plank position:  hands directly under her shoulders, legs out long.  She makes sure that her body is a nice straight line from the top of her head to her heels.  Then she moves her arms out into a V position on the floor and spreads her legs into another V.  This will lower her body toward the floor a bit.  She holds the position for as long as she can manage without losing good form.

 

Thirty seconds is a good first goal.

How to Deal with Discomfort

In response to a post last week about pain versus discomfort, I was asked about how to cope with discomfort during workouts.  It’s a good question.  And, like all good fitness questions, the answer is to experiment and see what works. 

No, I’m not going to leave it at that.  That would be mean.  I’m going to offer some suggestions that we can try.

 

My first suggestion is that we find something we love to do.  When I am biking, for example, I can tolerate way more discomfort than I can if I’m stuck in traffic.  The sheer joy of biking helps me deal with the burning in my thighs and the breathless feeling and the way my hands eventually stop working altogether.  (OK, that last part is why I keep my bike rides short nowadays; that hand thing edges over into the pain and damage thing I talked about last week.)  Maybe for some of us we find our joy in dancing or in heavy lifting or in swimming or skiing or roller skating.  All of those things can bring on discomfort if we are working/playing hard.

 

Sometimes, though, for our own good we find ourselves facing the parts of workouts that do not bring us joy.  We need to get through those parts, too.  Don’t worry:  I have yet more suggestions!

 

Most of those come down to treating ourselves like fractious toddlers.  We can try distraction (hey, listen to this great song while we do our lunges!).  We can make sure we’re hydrated, fed, and rested to minimize the energy crashes (filling up a water bottle is a totally allowable rest period during a workout).  We can figure out what the absolute minimum goal is and stop then (Just one more lunge; you can do it!).  And we can use bribery (after this workout, I get to take a long, hot shower with the good-smelling soap!).

 

One other non-toddler friendly technique that we can use since we are grown-ups is keeping our eyes on the prize.  When we focus on why we are suffering through these lunges (to look cute, to climb Machu Picchu, to reduce our body fat percentage, to impress the boys, to have strong bones for independent living in old age, whatever…), we are more willing to undergo the hard parts.  A caveat:  it has to be a real reason, not one that we think we should have.  This is not the time to pretend we have some noble reason like being able to rescue baby animals from burning forests when what we really want is to make the mean girls at the high school reunion jealous of our awesomeness.  No one has to know our reasons.  No one gets to judge them.

 

A final thought:  for most exercise goals, there are lots of ways to accomplish them.  It is possible, oftentimes, to avoid exercises we truly hate by doing one we hate less.

 

Go play.

Vacation workouts are fun. Unless they're not.

I spent last week on vacation, so I’m thinking about vacation workouts.

For some of us, the whole idea of vacation workouts is oxymoronic.  Or just plain moronic.  It’s a vacation.  Nothing work-like or workout-like about it.  I am actually totally fine with the idea of going on vacation and not working out.  We all need rest times and seasons.

 

Then I go on vacation and… I want to work out.  Maybe I don’t want to do heavy lifting and it’s not like I can pack my Pilates equipment to take with me, but I want to move.  I now always travel with a yoga block and some yoga tune-up balls.  I have done yoga and mat Pilates in hotel rooms, at my mom’s house, and in the slightly-larger-than-a-folding-table space in our trailer.

 

Depending on the vacation, I may also walk a lot more than I do in my regular life.  I love to explore new places on foot, poking around in shops and trekking through museums.  I love strolls on the beach and hikes in the hills.  On other vacations, I get to swim.  Skiing is a vacation and a workout at the same time!  This last one, we got to play some pickleball.

 

What I’ve learned is that I personally do better when I get a bit of movement in, even if I spend most of the day sitting in the sunshine reading.

 

As always, my guiding principle for everyone is experimentation.  We need to do what works best for our own unique and wonderful selves.

Monday Workout: Abs

This week we’re keeping our abdominals engaged by doing asymmetrical exercises and exercises with a plank element.  Three rounds.

 

1 arm clean and press	30
bench press	20
renegade rows	10
woodchoppers	30
flies	20
kickbacks	10
squat to leg lift	30
deadlifts	20
star plank	10

  

The Amazing Stickie and Leg Kicks

Sometimes the Amazing Stickie wants to keep it simple while still getting her heart rate up.  Doing leg kicks is a good way to accomplish both of those things.  No equipment is required.  On days when Stickie’s hamstrings are feeling tight, this exercise also gives her some dynamic stretching.

To begin, she stands with her usual good posture.  Then she quickly kicks her right leg up in front of her, touching her toe (or shin, or knee, for those of us with less flexibility than Stickie).  She lowers her arm and leg and repeats on the other side.  The faster she goes, the more her heart rate gets up.

 

Sets of thirty work well.

Pain in the...

Let’s talk about pain, because of course we want to start the day on a good note, right?  If we have started to work out for the first time in January, or if we got back to our good workout habits, we have probably noticed that it’s not all fun and comfy times.

While I try to keep workouts fun, or at least tolerable, discomfort is an inevitable part of growth.  What we need to learn is to distinguish between that discomfort and actual pain.

 

Pain is intended to be our friend.  Its job is to warn us that we’re doing something dangerous or harmful.  When we feel pain during our workouts, we need to stop.  Working through pain is not bravery, but stupidity.  Yes, even if we are professional athletes in a crucial game situation, which most of us are not.

 

However, if we feel our muscles complaining a little while we’re working them, that is all right.  If we feel sore and tired at the end of our workout, that is also all right.  Soreness may persist or even worsen the next day.  This is entirely normal and expected.  We can do some gentle movement, take some Ibuprofen (if that is appropriate for us), or use heat (to soothe) or ice (to reduce swelling).  If we are still sore several days later, we learn that we might want our next workout to be a little less strenuous.  (This can be frustrating if the workout is one that we used to do with ease, but we work out with today’s body, not the one we had back in the day.)

 

In that last paragraph, I’m betting that a lot of us skipped right over that gentle movement as a treatment for soreness, so I’m giving it its own paragraph.  Movement reduces the perception of pain.  Now:  I’m not saying that we should go hop up and down on a broken leg or anything.  I AM saying that taking our sore selves for a short walk or doing some stretching will help us feel better sooner.

 

Then, when our soreness has passed, we can go work out again!