The Amazing Stickie and Lateral Bounds

The Amazing Stickie, being smart as well as fit, knows that she can’t just work in the sagittal plane (things that go forwards and backwards) because life sometimes goes sideways.  To prepare, she practices lateral bounds.

Stickie begins in a small squat, then jumps sideways, landing again in a small squat, as if she were leaping over a puddle or a small box.  Then she jumps back the other way.

 

It is important, when jumping, to try to land softly.  Soft landings occur when we let the toe or ball of our foot impact the ground first, followed by the heel, ensuring that our knees are bent to absorb the ground forces.  It can help to point our toes down at the ground when we push up into the jump in the first place because then our feet, like Stickie’s, are in the right position for a good landing.

 

Sets of thirty jumps are good.

Fight the Wristy Overlord

Yesterday I wrote about working out when we are overwhelmed.  Today I am going to share, again, my larger plan for fitting fitness in to busy lives.  Meet my friend the minimum.

 I’m going to digress for a second or two.  I have an Apple Watch.  It tracks my exercise minutes, my active calories, and whether I stand up often enough.  When I hit its targets, it asks me if I want to make them more challenging next time.  It’s always there, adding just a little bit of pressure to do more.  My Apple Watch (or Wristy Overlord, as I call it) is part of a larger cultural phenomenon where we are constantly asked to work harder, smarter, and more.

 

We don’t need to.

 

What we do need to do is to pause for a moment and consider what makes us feel healthiest and best.  I feel better, personally, on days when I do get in some exercise.  I make sure that what my Wristy Overlord is suggesting is the minimum I need to feel good.  If I do more than that, it’s okay, but it is not necessary.  I can focus on other things.

 

Get in.  Do the minimum.  Get on with life.

 

Go play.

Overwhelming

It might just be my circles, but it seems like almost everyone I talk to lately is feeling a bit overwhelmed.  Sometimes fitness seems like one more too-difficult thing in a too-difficult day.

It might be true.  If it is truly too much to add to the day’s tasks, it is all right to take a rest day.  Our goal is to have a healthy, balanced life, not an award for perfect attendance.

 

However.  (You knew that was coming, right?)

 

When things feel overwhelming, sometimes what we need can be found in the gym.  Cardio elevates mood and increases our energy level and helps our brains work.  Strength training makes us strong (duh!), but also teaches us that we can do hard things.  Working on physical balance can help us, metaphorically, achieve life balance.  And our mind-body practices help us tune in to our breathing, calm down, and relax.

 

If we can manage to invest even a few minutes in movement, we may find that the rest of the day is less overwhelming.  Plus we get the rush of ticking off something on the to-do list.

Monday Workout: Kettlebells!

This week, I felt like using the kettlebells, a lot.  Three rounds.

 

skier jumps	30
flies	20
kb hammer curl	10
kb swings	30
kb twist	20
kb 8s	10
plyo/regular/mod jacks	30
front raise	20
V sit press	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Squat Raise

The Amazing Stickie knows that eventually tank top weather will be here.  She is preparing so that when it arrives, she’ll be ready to show off her beautiful deltoids.  One part of that plan involves doing squat raises.

To begin, Stickie stands in what she calls the starfish position, feet a little more than hip-distance apart, arms extended at shoulder level.  She uses light dumbbells, but those of us who don’t work out as often as Stickie may want to try the exercise without weights first because deltoids can be whiny.  She squats and brings her hands together in front of her chest, keeping her elbows extended.  Then she straightens her knees and hips and brings her arms back to the starting position.

 

Sets of thirty are good.

Annotations and Modifications

In yesterday’s post annotating the week’s workout, I occasionally mentioned modifications I would offer for different kinds of clients.  Today my plan is to annotate that annotation, more or less, and discuss modifications generally and why we might want or need to make them.

Workouts do not have to be horrible.  This is one of my foundational beliefs.  Life is too short for horrible things.  (This does not mean that workouts will always be all fun, all the time, but I try to find the least-horrible ways to get the job done for my clients.)

 

There are three basic reasons to make modifications to a workout:  to avoid an exercise that we hate, to make the work harder, and to make the work easier.

 

That first one could be easy.  I could just substitute any other exercise for the one my client hates and be done with it.  The trick is, though, that I want to find another way for my client to do the kind of work I think they need to do.  In other words, if my client hates squats, I need to find another way to work glutes and quads and hammies and abs.  It might mean that I shift multiple other exercises to get the job done if the hated exercise is one that does a lot of different things.  Also, I will occasionally leave the hated exercise in there because sometimes, as clients get stronger, they find they can tolerate it later.

 

Making exercises harder is fun because it means that we’ve made progress.  We can simply make the weights heavier or we can do more reps.  We can change the relationship to gravity, as when we put feet up on a box or medicine ball or bench to do pushups.  We can add instability by using a BOSU or a stability ball or by doing the exercise on one foot instead of two.  We can add jumping or another cardio element (for example, squats becoming jump squats).  We can change the tempo, making things either fast and explosive (once we’re sure that we have really good form) or slowing things down a lot to maximize time under tension.

 

When we need to make exercises easier, sometimes it is because a client is new and needs to build up endurance or strength, or hasn’t yet mastered the form of an exercise.  This is where we choose lighter weights, fewer reps, and shorter lever arms, as when we do knee- or wall-based pushups.  Other times, we are dealing with pain.  Once a client understands the difference between the kind of pain that means injury and the discomfort that naturally accompanies working out, I say:  if it hurts, don’t do it.  (Note:  physical therapists, who have a bunch more specific knowledge than I do, often make their clients do things that hurt for their own good.  Any injury that requires physical therapy is one that means no working out that injured part until after physical therapy is done and the PT says that it is all right to get back to workouts.  This is common sense.)  Some chronic conditions, like osteoporosis, do require permanent modifications in exercises.

 

We all need modifications from time to time.  I’m here to make them for you!

The annotated workout

If I am working with a client who both enjoys understanding some of the underlying reasons I am asking them to do what they are doing and also might need something to distract them from the momentary discomfort of doing that same thing, I often chat, a lot, about what exercises are for, what should be working, how stuff works in the body, and so on.  (I also sometimes tell stupid jokes, but nobody really wants to hear those.)

So, below, I’m going to talk about this week’s workout as if I happened to be working with a client who needed both information and diversion.

 

First:  here’s the workout (in case yesterday’s post got missed!):

 

suitcase swings	30
curls	20
lateral raise	10
(lunge) punches	30
bench press	20
truck driver	10
mountain climbers	30
squats	20
brains	10

 

 

Now for the analysis:

 

Suitcase swings:  These are a whole-body exercise.  The primary purpose is to get the heart rate up, which is why we try to move pretty rapidly while we do it.  We’re also burning lots of calories because we are moving many joints.  Whole-body exercises also have positive effects on our metabolisms, even after we are done working out.  Because the arm swing is facilitated by a little squat, one thing we want to pay attention to while we do this is where our knees are; they should be lined up over our toes.

 

Curls:  This is an isolation exercise for the biceps.  We often do sets of ten instead of twenty like we’re doing today because twenty is a lot.  We may choose lighter weights in order to complete the set with good form.  I can tell that the weight is too heavy when people begin to move their torso back and forth to get the weights up, even if they don’t know they are doing it.  Bodies are smart and like to find the easiest way to accomplish a task.  Or, to put it another way, they like to cheat and use other muscles to help when we want to use only one particular group.

 

Lateral raise:  This exercise is for the deltoids, a muscle group that often wins whining contests with the other muscle groups.  They are small muscles and they prefer cooperating to working on their own.  In fact, they tend to get all codependent with the upper traps and the scalenes, so I tend to watch clients’ shoulders to make sure that they are staying out of their ears.  The image I use, over and over, to help avoid shoulder lifts, is that our shoulder blades are like the counterweights on railroad crossing barriers; they slide down our backs as our arms lift up from our sides.

 

Then we get a rest and some water.  We want our heart rates to come down, because we are teaching our hearts to recover.

 

(Lunge) punches:  I happen to have several clients with pretty serious knee issues, so the lunge part of the punch is optional.  Punches work the abdominals in addition to all the arm muscles.  Adding the lunge increases the calorie burn, bumps up the metabolic effect, challenges balance, and recruits all the leg muscles.  Some of us naturally step forward on the same-side foot as the arm that is punching and some of us naturally do the opposite.  Both ways are good for this exercise.  We want to keep an eye on our knee alignment in lunges:  the front shin should not go past perpendicular to the ground and the back heel should stay in line with the back toes to keep everything safe for long-term knee health.

 

Bench press:  Nearly all of my clients do this exercise using a stability ball, which transforms it from a chest and arm exercise into a whole body one.  On the stability ball, clients support their head and neck on the ball, using their glutes (a lot!) to make the body bench-shaped.  This exercise also works the traditional way (on a bench, thus the name), lying on a foam roller lengthwise along the spine on the floor (bonus points for unstable surface), or even just on the ground.  No matter the set-up, the weights need to remain over the chest, not over the face.

 

Truck Driver:  This is an exercise I learned more recently than a lot of these other ones.  I really like it because it works the arms, a lot, and also provides a good amount of ab work.  The key is to keep the arms long to maximize the load.  I didn’t learn a lot in physics, but I did learn about long levers doing more work.

 

Hooray!  We get to rest again and have some water.

 

Mountain climbers:  There are a couple of variations of this exercise.  Some clients like to do the standing version, either because they get light-headed getting up and down from the floor or because a lot of weight-bearing on the arms is not appropriate for them right now.  In the standing version, I want to see continuous movement to get the heart rate up, plenty of side-bending to work the abs and create or preserve range of motion, and arms maintaining the cactus position for best arm work.  Those doing the more traditional version can make it more or less difficult depending on what the arms are resting on:  BOSU is most challenging, then floor, then bench/step/chair.

 

Squats:  As I have said time after time, squats are my very favorite exercise.  They are practical.  We are all getting older and the big determiner in how long we get to live independently is whether or not we can go to the bathroom by ourselves.  Squats will delay assisted living.  They also shape the glutes, strengthen the legs, challenge the core, burn calories, and demonstrate how well our bodies move.  Different clients may do squats with body weight or holding dumbbells at their sides or in the goblet position.  Sometimes we do sumo squats.  (I don’t do heavy squats with a barbell via Zoom; that’s not safe.)  No matter what the position is, we want to ensure that our knees and toes line up.  If we are doing regular squats, we also want to try to keep our torso parallel with the line of our shins—the tendency is to bend the torso a lot more forward because it gives us the illusion that we’re going lower than we are.

 

Finally, we get to lie down and do brains.  Brains are a great abdominal exercise for the obliques.  They are safe for people of every age because the spine is stabilized against the ground.  Clients with low-back problems may need to bend the knees (those levers again!) to reduce the load.  Also, the exercise forces some thinking; it is called brains because the brains have to engage to get the opposite arm and leg thing working.

 

After a rest, we do the whole thing two more times and then we stretch.

Monday Workout: Arms!

This week we are getting our heart rate up through arm work!  Three rounds.

 

suitcase swings	30
curls	20
lateral raise	10
(lunge) punches	30
bench press	20
truck driver	10
mountain climbers	30
squats	20
brains	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Alternating Kettlebell Swings

The Amazing Stickie loves kettlebells for many reasons, but one is that they challenge her abdominals.  Regular kettlebell swings are great, but when Stickie wants some extra work for her obliques, she chooses alternating arm kettlebell swings.

She begins with one hand on her hip and the other hand holding the kettlebell.  She swings the kettlebell back between her legs and then snaps her hips forward, straightening her knees and bringing her arm to shoulder level.  She transfers the kettlebell from one hand to the other at the top of the swing, placing the free hand on her other hip.

 

A set of thirty swings (in other words, fifteen for each arm) is a good place to start.

Pilates Principle: Movement Integration

We’ve made it to our last Pilates principle!  Hooray!  It is movement integration.

 

The best way to talk about movement integration is to talk about what happens when we try something new and suddenly we have about 27 more body parts than we know what to do with.  We can do whatever we are supposed to be doing with our arm, but then our knees and feet are doing something else entirely.  As we keep practicing and learning and paying attention, eventually our various body parts get with the program.  They integrate into a whole, all concentrated on the task at hand.

 

The mindful practice of Pilates helps us learn how to go through that integration process.  We start with simple exercises, work with the breath.  We refine separate parts of movements.  Then we add complexity.  As our brains and our bodies learn more, we can do more, until we can move with fluidity and grace.

 

Go play. 

Think Fast!

If you know me at all, you know I am not into fads or weird eating programs.  I believe in food.  In general, my nutrition advice is this:  eat your veggies and drink lots of water.  The rest of it, for many of us, is a matter of experimentation while we figure out what kind of eating makes us feel good.  I know people who feel best eating vegan and people who feel fabulous with keto and people somewhere in between.

All that is about what we eat.  There is a certain amount of evidence that when we eat can affect how we feel as well.  Enter intermittent fasting.

 

The theory behind intermittent fasting is that back before agriculture and electricity, we ate when we could and we slept when it was dark because there was nothing to binge-watch.  We know, physically, how to thrive when we don’t eat all day every day.  At least that’s the idea.  Theories are, by nature, generalizations and we have to test stuff out to see how they apply in our own personal, particular, unique-snowflake lives.

 

The science suggests that intermittent fasting can have a positive effect on lean body mass, longevity, and brain function.  Check out this link: 

 

Anyone who wants to experiment can try the 16/8 method, in which we fast for 16 hours and eat during the other eight, or the 5/2 method, in which we eat normally five days a week and have only a single meal on the other two days.  If we feel good, great!  If we don’t, we can stop and return to our normal eating patterns.

 

Tell me what you think!

Monday Workout: Stretch

One of the things I like about the combination of leg kicks and squat to leg lift is that we get some dynamic stretching in with our cardio.  Three rounds.

 

leg kicks	30
flies	20
curls	10
squat to leg lift	30
rows	20
kickbacks	10
mountain climbers	30
bench press	20
plank	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Jump Squats

The Amazing Stickie knows that a great way to add challenge to a workout is to add plyometrics.  Plyometrics is a fancy word for “jumping.”  Today she is doing jump squats.

She begins in sumo squat position, knees and toes aligned and pointed outward, back up straight, knees bent.  From there, she jumps into the air, straightening her legs and pointing her toes toward the floor.  To land, she comes down first with the balls of her feet and then her heels, bending her knees at the same time to absorb the forces from the ground.

 

When she first started doing jump squats, Stickie paused between reps, but as she progressed, she learned to minimize her time on the ground.  She uses the momentum of her landing plus the bend in her knees to propel her upward for the next jump.

 

Sets of thirty are good.

Pilates Principle: Alignment and Weight Bearing of the Extremities

Our next Pilates principle is alignment and weight bearing of the extremities.  In other words, we want to approximate straightness (in our bodies!  This is not queer-shaming!) for optimal relations with gravity.  Eric Franklin says, “Ideal Alignment involves all body parts approximating toward the central axis, as much as structure permits.”

Structurally, we’re actually not all that straight.  Our spines curve multiple times from top to bottom.  Our femurs angle in from the hip sockets to the knees.  Our knees, even though they are mostly hinges, also have some rotational abilities.  What we want to do, when we align ourselves, is to make sure that we are moving our bones in ways that facilitate movement and avoid injury.

 

In Pilates, we do this by working with what are called kinetic chains to refine our movements.  There are three kinds:  closed, pseudo-closed, and open.  Closed kinetic chain movements are those when we are working against a stable surface.  When we do footwork on the reformer, that is a closed chain movement because our feet are firmly on the foot bar while our knees and hips are bending.  Doing a single leg pump on the chair is a pseudo closed chain movement for the working leg because the working foot is stabilized against the chair pedal while the pedal moves through space.  Open chain movement is what happens when we do femur arcs on the mat:  our foot is not stabilized against anything as it moves through space with the motion of the hip.

 

Closed kinetic chains are simplest for our bodies.  The stabilization provided by the closure lets us focus on the parts that are moving without worrying about the parts that are held still.  As we progress, we can learn to stabilize ourselves and carry on through open chain movements with proper alignment.

 

Another way we work on this principle is by doing exercises with different relationships to gravity.  Footwork on the reformer, double leg pump on the chair, footwork on the trap table, and squats are all very similar exercises, but our relationship to gravity and weight-bearing is different in each position.  Sometimes, as in footwork on the reformer, we are not working against very much resistance at all, which allows people with problematic knees to experience the movement of a squat without all that stress.  We can build up our ability to deal with gravity gradually.

 

All this work helps us learn where our bodies are in space, move with efficiency and grace, and feel good.

 

Go play.

Procrastination

We all have things we don’t feel like doing.  (Sometimes it is writing blog posts!  Shh… don’t tell anyone!)  I am here to help.  Here are some exercises to do while we are procrastinating about other things.  Or, possibly, something we want to do even less than whatever we are procrastinating about.  Either way, we will end up ahead, whether we exercise or we get down to other business. 

1.     Squats.  Squats are my favorite exercise for lots of reasons, but the one I’m going to focus on right now is that they don’t require any equipment!  We just have to stand there and then get to work.  Do ten or twenty.

2.     Foot exercises.  We don’t even have to stand up to do these.  If we have a ball, we can do the push like a pedal, side to side, sink into the grass exercises in series.  If we don’t, we can lift our big toes, then our little toes, then our middle toes.

3.     Neck stretch.  We put our right hand on the left side of our head, pull our right ear down toward our right shoulder, and press our left hand down toward the floor.  We hold a while and then turn our head as if we are giving our biceps a kiss.  Then we do the other side.

4.     Doorway stretch.  We stand in a doorway, arms stretched out against the doorframe.  Then we lean forward to stretch our chests and shoulders.

 

Worst case, we have spent about five minutes.  We might even feel a little more energized.

Monday Workout: More

Sometimes challenge comes in the form of doing more reps.  We’re doing twice as many pushups this week as usual.  It is always all right to modify or to rest as needed.  Three rounds.

 

kb swings	30
kb twist	20
kb 8	10
woodchoppers	30
deadlifts	20
curls	10
squat raise	30
pushups	20
pretty princesses	10