The Amazing Stickie and Roll Up

Today the Amazing Stickie is working on her spinal articulation.  People who have osteopenia and osteoporosis should not do this exercise; Stickie has no actual bones, so this is not a problem for her.

She begins lying on her back with her arms at her sides (beginning with arms overhead is also all right).  She takes a big inhale.  As she exhales, she curls herself up until she is in a sitting position with her back straight and her arms extended in front of her in what she and I like to call Zombie Position.  She takes a big breath in and then as she exhales she curls back down to the starting position.

 

For those of us who find this too difficult, Stickie is also demonstrating the assisted version of the exercise, which begins with the legs in tabletop position.  The extra leverage from the weight of the legs helps us get our spines off the floor.

 

No matter which option we choose, three to five repetitions are enough.

Another really short one!

So if we got up feeling like not working out again this morning, I have bad news:  we need to do it.  Let’s go. 

Might be my shortest post ever!

Sometimes we get up and we just don’t want to work out.  If today is one of those days, it is all right.  We get to have one every once in a while.  Go rest.

Monday Workout: Heavy

I am on vacation this week.  So here is an opportunity to hit the gym and do a heavy workout with a buddy to spot you. 

Here’s how it works.  Begin (after the warm up) with the first pair of exercises.  Choose a weight for each that works for ten reps.  Do a set of ten of each.  Then increase the weight a little for each, reducing the numbers of reps as needed.  Continue to alternate exercises until you can only do a single rep.  Take a longer rest, drink some water, and move on to the next pair (if you have the energy.  It is totally ok to spend half an hour doing squats and bench press to the 1 rep max and then go straight to abs, SMR, and stretching.)  Continue until you run out of energy or time.  Write down the starting and ending weights for each exercise!

 

Basic Heavy Workout
5 minute cardio warm-up
	Start	Finish
squats
bench press
deadlift
flies
lunges
rows
abs
SMR and stretch

The Amazing Stickie and Arm Arcs

The Amazing Stickie likes to ensure that her shoulders function like they should.  She does arm arcs to assist her in keeping them both stable and mobile.

She begins by lying on her back with her knees bent and feet flat on the floor.  (It would also be all right for her to extend her legs long, but it’s usually more comfortable to work with the knees bent.)  She has her arms down by her sides.  For the full length of her inhale, she raises her arms until they are over her head.  Then, for the full length of her exhale, she lowers them back to the starting position.  At first, this seemed like a very slow pace, but now Stickie enjoys it.  She does a set of ten.  Then, to make things more interesting, she puts one arm overhead and one down by her hips to start.  Then she swaps their positions.  Even though her arms are moving in opposite directions, Stickie maintains her shoulder blades in a neutral position on both sides.

 

Sometimes for fun, Stickie does the same exercise lying on a foam roller (roller along her spine) or on an Oov.  It feels extra good and adds more challenge.

Water

When it is hot, we get dehydrated more easily.  We want to avoid that, because it feels bad.  Our bodies work better and we are nicer humans when we are hydrated.  (Insert quote from The Breakfast Club here, if you are old enough.)

A lot of us are not hydrated enough under normal circumstances.  A quick way to know if we are drinking enough is this:  bathroom trips should occur at least every hour.

 

There has been a bunch of debate and argument and blah blah blah about what liquids count for hydration.  The short version is:  all of them, but some are better for us than others.  Most of what we drink should be water.  It has no calories, comes clean out of the tap, and doesn’t require shopping.

 

I am not here to take away anyone’s morning coffee.  I would not survive.  And the truth is that it is probably not bad for us, as long as we aren’t drinking it by the gallon.

 

Those fancy sports drinks can come in handy when it is very hot or when we work out very hard.  They have electrolytes in them that replace stuff we sweat out.  We don’t need them unless we’re working out for two hours or more (think marathon, century ride, etc.) or unless it is so hot that we’re sweating faster than we can drink.  They won’t hurt us, so if they taste good and we don’t have to watch our calories, we can drink them in place of some of our water.  It gets expensive, though!

 

One liquid we need to be careful about:  alcohol.  Obviously, we don’t want to drink to excess for lots of reasons, but we especially want to be careful when it is hot because we get extra dehydrated from alcohol.  We need to drink more water when we drink.

 

Go play.  And take the water bottle.

Don't get me started on peas.

Most folks strongly prefer one kind of exercise over others.  Not skiing over rugby or pickleball over yoga, but more generally:  cardio or weights or flexibility.  We all have different gifts, after all, so it is not surprising that the kinds of exercise we like best vary among us.

Unfortunately, this means that we have to do the exercise equivalent of eating our carrots (you may like carrots; I do not, but I eat them because they are good for me.).  Those of us who are more than happy to spend a chunk of time with the treadmill will need to trundle over to the weight racks.  Our new friends at the weight racks will have to learn to share the weights and then try out the elliptical trainer.  All of us need to go chill out at yoga or Pilates.

 

We may never come to adore the kinds of exercise we don’t naturally gravitate toward.  Carrots may always be carrots.  But we may come to appreciate how we feel when we have a few carrots thrown in with our chicken and mashed potatoes.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Straightforward

This is a pretty straightforward workout.  Three rounds.

 

jacks	30
flies	20
pushups	10
woodchoppers	30
kickbacks	20
reverse flies	10
clean and press	30
side lunge	20
V sit press	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Side to Side

The Amazing Stickie is enjoying Side to Side today at Pilates.

She begins by lying on her back with her legs in tabletop position.  She inhales and drops both knees to one side of her body, keeping her shoulders down on the floor.  She exhales to return to the starting position.  On her next inhale, she drops her knees toward the other side of her body.  She continues until she has done a set of ten.

 

When she desires to challenge her body more, she extends the leg that is going to be on top as she drops her knees toward the floor.  In other words, when she drops her legs to the left, she straightens her right knee.  The knee bends again as she returns to the start position.  Then she extends the left knee as she drops her legs to the right.

 

For even more challenge, she does the whole exercise with straight legs.  She begins lying on her back with her legs straight up toward the ceiling.  Both legs drop from side to side, staying straight the whole time.  If she feels any strain in her lower back doing this, she stops right away and goes back to one of the less challenging options.

Why is the answer never "build a blanket fort?"

Risk is inherent in life.  We may not live like Wile E. Coyote, liable to have a safe or a piano dropped on us on a regular basis with only a small pink umbrella to protect us, but the world is sometimes a dangerous place.

The answer, sadly enough, is not that we need to build a blanket fort and hide in it all day reading murder mysteries and eating popcorn (although if anybody wants a play date, let me know!).  It’s preparation.

 

I’m not talking about having an earthquake kit or a first aid kit (even though it’s a good plan).  I’m talking about working on balance.

 

What we need for the routine dangers of our lives is balance.  We need to learn how to react when we unexpectedly step off a curb.  We need our bodies to adjust, automatically, when our toddler grandchild crashes into our legs or when the dog we are walking suddenly tries to chase a squirrel up a tree.

 

Balance comes from, among other things, knowing where our bodies are in space to begin with and from having the strength to adjust to sudden changes.  We can work on improving our balance in lots of ways.  One of the easiest is to practice standing on one foot, maybe while we’re standing at the sink anyway brushing our teeth or when we’re stuck in line at the grocery store.

 

If we want to get more intense about learning balance, we can cart ourselves over to yoga class or the Pilates studio.  It’s just being a good scout:  prepared.

Friends and Workouts

When we work out with friends, it can be a lot of fun.  I’m in favor of fun and of working out, but it’s important to understand which thing is taking priority at a given point.  Let me explain.

Say my friend and I decide to go for a walk together.  What we actually do could be anything from intensive interval training where we both manage to have just enough breath available to egg each other on to a casual stroll along a shopping street looking in the windows and ending up at the café for coffee and pastries.  There is some work involved in both those scenarios, but one is focused on the work and one on the fun bits.

 

This is important:  both scenarios are totally good ones.  We don’t have to work out at our very hardest every single time.  And we do need friends for our wellbeing.

 

What we also need to do is balance.  We need to consider whether we’re concentrating too much on sweating and not enough on listening to our friend’s nasty breakup, or if we’re slacking because we really want all the gossip about the new hottie down the hall in their building.  It is possible that one of us is more fit than the other.  That can mean that one person’s tough workout is the other’s rest day.

 

Both our mental health and our physical health contribute to our overall happiness.  Give both of them the attention they need.

Monday Workout: Nasty but useful

Burpees are nasty, but useful.  When we practice them, they don’t feel quite so awful.  Three rounds.

 

leg kicks	30
bench press	20
burpees	10
squat raise	30
skullcrushers	20
Arnold press	10
mountain climbers	30
rows	20
Russian twist	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Bent Knee Opening

Today in Pilates the Amazing Stickie is working on bent knee opening.  This is a great exercise for all the stabilizing muscles of the core.

She begins lying on her back with her legs in tabletop position (thighs perpendicular to the floor, shins parallel to it, feet flexed).  As she inhales, she holds one leg still and opens the other leg to the side.  Then she exhales and returns the leg to the starting position.  The entire time, she keeps her weight even on both sides of her pelvis.  This is more difficult than it sounds.  She does five reps on one side and then five on the other.

 

When she wants additional challenge, she begins by alternating sides (i.e., opening the right leg to the side, returning to center, and then opening the left leg.).

They don't actually exist

So the Personal Training Police are probably going to come take me away for saying this, but I’m doing it anyway.  Weight workouts don’t have to take a long time.

Let’s say we have a cardio habit.  We’re good at getting in our half hour most days a week, but we’ve been struggling to find another chunk of time to get in the weights.  Just do two weight exercises at the end of the cardio.

 

Here’s how it might work.  Monday, we do our 30 minutes on the spin bike and we do two squats and bench press, two sets of ten each.  If we alternate between the squats and the bench press, we don’t have to rest much between sets because we’re using different muscle groups.  That takes maybe five more minutes and then we stretch and get out of the gym.  Tuesday we go play outside and do our thirty minutes running or hiking or walking.  Wednesday, we go back to the gym, hit the elliptical for 30 minutes and then do deadlifts and flies, again, two sets of ten each.  Thursday we go to Zumba.  Friday, we do intervals on the treadmill and then do lunges and rows.  We’ve done a balance of work on our upper and lower body and we’ve only added a few minutes to our gym time on three of our days.

 

Try it!

Might take more than one session

Recently I listened to a webinar about Pilates and self-esteem.  I do these things so no one else needs to.  The presenter was very… sincere.  She spent an hour talking very earnestly and here’s what we need to know:  Pilates can improve our self-esteem when we approach the exercises with a sense of curiosity, ready to explore what our bodies can do, rather than with an ego-driven need to succeed (whatever that means) at Pilates.

Simple enough, right?  Sure.  Park all that achievement-minded programming we’ve been receiving at the studio door.  Ignore all those messages about our bodies and what they’re supposed to look like and feel like that have been bombarding us our entire lives.  Defeat the dominant paradigm, and hey, presto!  self-esteem!

 

Well, defeating the dominant paradigm might take more than one session, but we begin with the breath.  Focusing on our breath, coming into our bodies, sensing what we actually feel:  these are the first subversive steps.  They help us let go of all those voices, those distorting mirrors.  We move.  We think about how we move.  We move some more.  And as we keep going, we do get curious.

 

It's a little bit like being a kid.  We’re stuck waiting for the school bus at some random corner of the sidewalk.  At first, we’re bored.  There’s just concrete.  But then we notice the dandelions pushing up through the cracks and the line of ants and the ladybug.  We find a cool stick.  We use the stick to poke around in the pile of last year’s leaves and find a bottle cap and a nickel.  By the time the bus comes, we’re squatted down, fascinated by the trickle of water into a storm drain, totally engaged.

 

Breathe through the boredom.  Find the little bits of interest.  Follow them.

Monday Workout: Plus

This week, we’re working plenty of compound exercises, plus some balance work.  Three rounds.

 

sumo to high pull	30
lunge twist	20
truck driver	10
kb alternating arm swing	30
kb halo	20
kb hammer curls	10
plank jacks	30
1 leg deadlift	20
brains	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Bridge

The Amazing Stickie loves Pilates.  Today she is working on bridging, which is an excellent exercise for strengthening glutes and hamstrings, working on spinal mobility, and synchronizing breathing with movement.

She begins lying on her back with her arms at her sides and her knees bent so that her feet are flat on the floor.  She ensures that her feet are hip-distance apart.  Stickie inhales deeply.  As she begins to exhale, she tilts her pelvis toward her belly button.  She continues this curling motion until her behind lifts up into the air and she is a straight line from her shoulders to her knees.  Some of us find that our hamstrings don’t enjoy this process.  Stickie used to have this problem, too, until she learned to imagine pulling her knees out away from her pelvis.

 

Stickie inhales at the top of the motion.  Then, as she exhales, she pulls her hips away from her shoulders and rolls herself down, one vertebra at a time, back to the starting position.

 

Safety note:  Because Stickie doesn’t actually have bones, she is not ever going to get osteopenia or osteoporosis.  Anyone who does have either of those conditions should not roll the spine up or down.  Instead of tilting the pelvis and rolling up, those folks should keep the spine a straight line, lifting the hips straight up toward the ceiling and lowering the same way.

 

Stickie likes to do four or five bridges during her Pilates workout.

Back to Basics

I don’t know about anybody else, but sometimes my life feels kind of overwhelming.  I have so many tasks and responsibilities.  I get so busy and caught up in completing errands and crossing things off.  And suddenly I am not working out.

When that happens, it takes me a little while to notice and then a little while to gather my forces to take action.  And then what I need is to get back to basics.

 

Here are the basics:  do cardio for at least 30 minutes a day and do one weight workout sometime during the week.  I get bonus points for remembering to stretch.  When I have managed that for a couple of weeks, I’m ready to think about making my workouts more ideal for my body.  What that means varies by how I’m feeling, but it might include more weight workouts, different or harder cardio, more Pilates, more yoga.

 

I am a trained professional and sometimes I need to remind myself about the simplest level of working out.  That might mean that everyone else does, too.

 

So:  get in that cardio and lift weights at least once this week.

Go Do Stuff

I love making lists.  I make lots of lists.  I have lists with sub-lists, because what is not to like about that?  My lists help me get things done.

Except when they don’t.

 

Sometimes, making a list makes me feel like I have done things, when really I’ve only made a list of things to do.  It is great to make a list of things to do, but it is even better to go out and do the things on the list.

 

And, on days when I’ve got far into my own head, it is often a good idea to ignore the list entirely and go work out.  I know what a workout is.  We all do.  We don’t always need to have a list and a clipboard and a complicated system.

 

Go do stuff.