When the Amazing Stickie wants to work on movement integration without going to Pilates, she chooses exercises like the split squat pulldown because lots of body parts have to move in a coordinated fashion.
She begins holding light dumbbells overhead, one foot forward and one foot back. Then she bends both knees and lowers the weights to her shoulder level by bending her elbows. She returns to the starting position.
Stickie likes to do sets of fifteen on each side.
I talk a lot about reasons to work out. Today I’m going to talk about reasons not to work out. (Yes, I believe we are all better when we work out, but why we do it matters.)
It’s a bad idea to work out because someone else thinks you should. Even me. When we work out for someone else, we resent the process. Working out is hard enough as it is. We don’t need to carry somebody else’s goals for us, too.
It’s a bad idea to work out because we think we are inadequate the way we are. We’re not. We are worthy human beings whether we do a single rep or not. People who go to the gym are not better than people who don’t. When we do go to the gym, we do better if we go because we know we are worthy of care.
It’s a bad idea to work out when we are sick or hurt. Rest is as much a part of health as working out. Working through pain is just… painful. There is no virtue badge for doing the work anyway.
We can do this.
Don’t get me wrong: I like working out. Cardio is my favorite mind-altering drug. I love the feeling of efficacy I get from lifting weights. My Pilates practice keeps my body actually capable of moving. I would be an even more stressed human being without my yoga practice.
But.
When people tell me about their hours and hours of workouts, I’m not impressed. I think: but don’t you have other stuff to get to? Don’t you have a life? (I’m not trying to harsh anyone’s happy place. If the gym is yours, you go!)
What impresses me is people who get their workouts done efficiently and effectively. They don’t screw around with half-baked systems. They work hard and they go home.
Go play.
It may be hot outside, but we’re pretending it’s Christmas inside this week. Here’s how the twelve days of Christmas workout works. On the first “day” we do one push press. On day two, we do two goblet squats and one push press. Day three is three overhead presses, two goblet squats, and one push press. And so on. Yes, I do know that this means we will have done 42 burpees before we are done. Yes, I also know that I’m not really your true love. Have fun!
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 wants to work her abdominals, get some cardio, and get stronger, all at the same time. So today she is doing skier jumps. She has no idea what this exercise has to do with skiing.
She begins in plank position. Then she jumps both feet to the left and back to the right.
Sets of 30 are good.
Most of us don’t have to remember to brush our teeth. It’s just something that happens automatically. This is the power of habit. It took me a long time to admit it, because it’s really not very sexy, but I thrive on habits and routines. I suspect I’m not the only one.
When we have the habit of fitness, it doesn’t take as much energy to get to the workout. We just go, like we always do. We know where our shoes are and we know, more or less, what we’re going to do. The mental load is low.
This means we can use that energy toward the workout itself.
This is a win all the way around.
Let’s have a little chat about perfectionism. Even the rebels among us are susceptible to its messages—we have to rebel perfectly to show how little society’s emphasis on perfection means to us.
Perfectionism is not our friend. It’s a tool that the cis-hetero-white-supremecist-imperialist-capitalist-patriarchy uses to keep us working and working and working some more. We can never work enough to make the system happy with us. We can only work ourselves to death.
So. In a fitness context, this has a couple of implications. One is: take the time to work out. We are worth it, no matter what society tells us. We can take back that much of our time to do something that makes our bodies feel good.
Another is: we can work out before we have the perfect body or the perfect workout. It is all right to show up at the gym in whatever clothes we happen to have on. We don’t have to know all the things to do from the first day. We are allowed to try stuff out and be bad at it.
And: the fact that we’re never going to be perfect does not mean that we don’t want to work hard. The fun in working out comes from learning and growing and getting better at stuff, which only happens if we show up and play hard.
Go play. It’s gonna be perfect.
Sometimes I forget about an exercise for a while, but then I remember and it’s exciting and new all over again! We’re doing roll out abs this week. Three rounds.
woodchoppers | 30 |
rows | 20 |
pushups | 10 |
| |
overhead high knees | 30 |
deadlifts | 20 |
curls | 10 |
| |
jacks | 30 |
reverse flies | 20 |
roll out abs | 10 |
Today the Amazing Stickie wants to work a lot of body parts at once so she can get on with her busy life. Therefore, she is doing the reverse lunge twist.
She begins standing with good posture, holding light dumbbells. Then she steps back into a lunge (most of us prefer to step forward into a lunge, but we’re going for challenge here!) while turning her torso to the side and raising her arms to shoulder height. She returns to the starting position and then repeats the exercise by stepping back with her other leg.
She likes to do sets of 30.
It is my job, as a trainer, to encourage everyone to do all kinds of exercise. But there is a very good reason that my work focuses on strength training: it works.
Most of us work out for some combination of the following reasons: to look good and to feel good. Looking good, for many of us, implies losing some weight and/or shaping up the weight we have. Feeling good may spring from looking good, or from doing something we couldn’t do before, or from taking pride in our new skills, among other things.
Strength training is the way to maximize looking good and feeling good.
When we do strength training, we increase our lean muscle mass. That lean muscle mass burns more calories. We increase our metabolism. That, in turn, can lead to weight loss (no, we can’t out-exercise a terrible diet). Even if we don’t lose weight, the weight we have will look better as we build muscle and we are likely to get smaller if not lighter. In other words: we can check off looking good.
As for the feeling good part, lifting heavy stuff releases the good brain chemicals. When we lift weights, we get stronger both in body and in mind. We take the sense of accomplishment we have in the gym out into our regular life. Plus we can open our own jars and move our own couch.
Don’t know how to start? Talk to me!
Angeles Arien wrote some words that have been helpful to me throughout my life, but especially in fitness. She offered four rules for life: “Show up. Pay attention. Tell the truth. Don’t be attached to the results.” Here’s why.
Show up. No matter how perfectly we plan our workouts, they do nothing if we don’t do them. We need to get out of our heads sometimes and into our bodies. We get stronger by lifting weights, faster by running, more attuned to our bodies in space by doing some Pilates. If we don’t take action, nothing happens.
Pay attention. Once we do show up, we get best results when we take some care about what we’re doing. (A half-hearted workout is better than no workout, but the point is still valid.) When we focus on our form, we do better work. Our bodies function better. We learn and improve.
Tell the truth. There are lots of ways to apply this one to our fitness journey. I’ll talk about two. When we’re trying to motivate ourselves to do our workouts, we have to tell the truth about what we want out of it. If making our ex-partner drool when we run into them in the grocery store is what we really want, we need to own it; picturing them suffering as we sashay by will help us finish a tough set way more than pretending we’re there for our health. (Of course, the reverse can be true too: if what we want is to get to the top of the stairs with enough breath to take another step, we’re not going to be motivated by skinny jeans.) The second place that the truth is important to our workouts is in our performance. We need to notice when our form slips, even if we really want to lift one more, or one heavier. We need to look clearly at what our bodies are doing today, even if it’s not what we want them to be doing.
Don’t be attached to the results. At first this might sound like a contradiction to those other steps. Of course we want good results of our work. The thing is, we want to let the results take care of themselves. We do the process and trust that results will come. If we keep showing up, keep paying attention, keep telling the truth, we will get results. We just need to keep our egos out of the way. Another way to look at this might be to consider Sisyphus. Who’s he? He’s the guy from Greek mythology who was so bad in his lifetime that he was condemned to roll a giant rock up a hill over and over again for eternity. Pretty nasty punishment, right? Except for one thing. If Sisyphus came to enjoy the process of rolling the rock and released attachment to getting it to stay at the top of the hill, his punishment becomes something else entirely. Love the process and there is no punishment involved.
Go play.
A lot of overhead work today! Three rounds.
suitcase swings | 30 |
bench press | 20 |
lateral raise | 10 |
| |
clean and press | 30 |
flies | 20 |
Arnold press | 10 |
| |
squat to leg lift | 30 |
kickbacks | 20 |
pretty princesses | 10 |
The Amazing Stickie is challenging herself today. The single leg squat touchdown works coordination and balance. She begins standing on one leg holding a light dumbbell with the same arm as her standing leg as if she has just completed a curl. She does a single leg squat. Then she bends at the waist and extends her elbow so that the dumbbell lowers toward the floor. She straightens up to standing (still on one leg!) and lifts the dumbbell overhead.
She likes to do a set of five on each side.
Some people like to keep separate things separate. They don’t want their broccoli to touch their mashed potatoes. They’re good at sorting laundry. Their work is work and their play is play. This is a perfectly useful and valid way to be in the world, but it’s not mine.
What this means for my clients is that my personal training clients get a little Pilates and my Pilates clients learn from my personal training practice. I know what I know, and I apply the knowledge that best meets the current situation.
Recently I listened to a talk about the legacy of Joseph Pilates. Since he left this plane of existence, his students and their students in turn have interpreted his work in different ways, sometimes peacefully and sometimes less so. The people giving the talk spoke with lots of Pilates elders and with folks from multiple Pilates schools and practices. What they found was that we have more in common than not.
What we all do, as teachers, is respond to the needs of the body in front of us, whether it is our own body or a client’s body. We come in with a plan, but we stay present with the human working, adapting as needed to give that person a positive experience of movement.
I hope that as my clients see me change what we are doing to meet the needs of the day, they learn to adapt themselves to their own circumstances. We live in flux. We need to stay aware and flow along. Even if sometimes the broccoli and potatoes touch.
Taking tai chi class has, as expected, given me new things to think about. One of those things is tempo.
I have, basically, two speeds: full on and total stop. Naturally, this makes tai chi with its deliberate pace something of a challenge for me. That’s a polite way to say it’s flipping hard. My brain feels like it has to hurry through the moves lest I get left behind. It doesn’t understand that no one is actually going to be leaving the park until class is over.
I know I am not the only one who hurries when I’m doing something hard. My clients do it, too. For some things, getting through quickly is good. But maybe, just maybe, if we all slow down a little, we can learn something different.
Maybe slowing down will let us be more precise in our movements. Maybe we can realize that we’re feeling an exercise more in one part than another. Maybe, as we breathe, we can come to a new understanding of what we’re doing and it might make us have more compassion toward our bodies.
Maybe not. But it’s worth a try.
This week we’re doing my second-favorite kettlebell set because I like to do things differently sometimes! Three rounds.
jacks | 30 |
deadlifts | 20 |
1 leg squat | 10 |
| |
kb alternate arm swings | 30 |
kb hammer curls | 20 |
kb pushups | 10 |
| |
mountain climbers | 30 |
renegade rows | 20 |
V sit press | 10 |
When the Amazing Stickie gets bored with plain old pushups or plain old renegade rows, she mixes things up by combining them!
She begins in plank position, her hands on dumbbells directly below her shoulders. She lowers herself to the ground by bending her elbows, keeping her elbows in close to her body. Then she straightens her elbows to return her to plank. From there, she rows one arm up off the ground and replaces it. That is one rep. She repeats the pushup and then rows with the other arm.
Sets of ten are a good place to start.
