Today the Amazing Stickie is working with medicine balls again. This exercise can be done alone or with a partner. When Stickie does it by herself, she thinks of the part where she goes to fetch the ball as part of the work, but having a friend does make it easier. Either way, she begins standing in good posture, holding the medicine ball at her chest with her elbows a little out to the side. Using her arms, she thrusts the ball forward and tosses it away from her. Sets of 10 are good.
Sometimes the person we are when we plan our workouts is not the person we are when it comes time to do the workouts. This can happen for any number of reasons (alien invasion, cranky baby, sore hammies…). Why it happens is not that important. Having a backup plan is, however, helpful.
I was recently reading a habit blog that suggested making a list of things that make us feel good for those times when we need to be reminded of how to feel good. I am shamelessly stealing the concept and applying it to our workouts. We need to make a list of exercises or a list of workouts that make us feel good.
In practice, this might mean that when we look at our planned workout, see that there are burpees, and think we might die right then, we choose, instead, to substitute an exercise we like for the burpees, like maybe flies. Another way this could work is that we could look at our planned weight workout, recognize that we’re sore already, and choose some restorative Pilates instead. We can all adapt. We just have to remember to plan for it!
Go play.
We all overdo ourselves from time to time. Maybe we were on vacation and we were hiking and it turned out to be more strenuous than we expected. Maybe we were trying to impress that cute person in the gym and we lifted more than was good for us. Maybe it was just one of those days. Now everything hurts. What do we do?
First, we need to decide if we’re sore or actually injured. If we think we might have an injury, we want to seek qualified medical advice. (I am not a doctor, a physical therapist, or anything like it, so I do not diagnose or prescribe treatment; get real help when needed!)
If we’re just really darn sore, I can make some suggestions that might help. Pain, while useful in keeping us from doing too many dumb things, is not a fun thing to experience.
Take ibuprofen or your favorite OTC pain reliever as appropriate. This is not being wimpy. Pain relief is a good thing. We are nicer when we don’t hurt.
Use ice or heat. Ice is particularly good for anything that feels inflamed or swollen. Heat soothes when things feel tense. Bonus points for heat in the form of a soak in Epsom salts, which will add to the soothing.
Move a little. This one may sound counterintuitive. We got this way from moving too much! But a little gentle movement really will help the body heal by keeping everything from stiffening up.
Rest. Duh. We need to stop doing what made us sore until we feel better. A good night of sleep or two will also help.
We’re all about the compound exercises this week to build our metabolisms and challenge our bodies. Three rounds.
plank jacks | 30 |
lunge to curl | 20 |
Arnold press | 10 |
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sumo squat to high pull | 30 |
flies | 20 |
1 leg deadlift | 10 |
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leg kicks | 30 |
bench press | 20 |
pretty princess | 10 |
The Amazing Stickie loves to play with medicine balls. Today she’s doing medicine ball soccer throws. (She’s demonstrating doing it by herself, which means that after each throw, she has to walk and pick up the ball to do the next throw. She could also do this with a friend and they could toss the ball to each other.) She begins standing with good posture holding the medicine ball behind her head. Maintaining good posture, she lifts the ball over her head and tosses it in front of her. Sets of 10 are good.
Yesterday we discussed in-workout strategies for injury prevention. Today we’ll look at general lifestyle choices that help.
The first big thing to do to prevent injury is to get enough sleep. Tired people make mistakes and workout mistakes make injuries. Getting enough sleep can be a challenge in our all-hustle-all-the-time culture, but please, let’s fight the dominant paradigm enough to get our rest. It’s worth it.
Another basic choice for injury prevention is proper nutrition. When we don’t have the nutrients we need to build our bodies or to run our cellular processes, we are less resilient, more likely to get hurt, and more likely to take a long time to heal. Our bodies can only run so long on caffeine and sugar. Throw the cells a vegetable now and then, please.
Another thing we can do to help keep ourselves injury free is to reduce our overall muscle tension. The cheap way to do that is to spend quality time with a foam roller or tune-up balls. The luxurious way is to make massage a habit. The time and money we spend on relaxing are investments in our wellbeing.
So: sleep, eat, relax.
We’re going to spend a couple of days talking about injury prevention. Today we’re focusing on things to do during our workouts that help and tomorrow we’ll talk about lifestyle changes that keep us less likely to get hurt.
The first thing we want to do in our workouts to prevent injury is to warm up. I have to admit that I was a slow adopter of warm-ups. Some of that is just that I was younger then and my body was more forgiving. And, even if I wasn’t a big believer in it, it doesn’t mean that my body didn’t have to warm up; my movement naturally got better and bigger and stronger once my body warmed up by doing whatever I was going to be doing anyway. Those of us who are smarter than I used to be will want to do an intentional warm-up of at least five minutes before jumping into the main part of our workout. Gentle cardio, some stretching, and a few body weight exercises are good choices for that.
We also want to protect vulnerable body parts. What that means will vary with our bodies. Some of us will need to be extra careful about having supportive shoes. Others of us will want our ankle support or our wrist support. Obviously, the bikers among us need to wear helmets. We may also want to use some kinesiology tape to increase blood flow to particular areas.
During those workouts, we want to ensure that we spend some time working on core and balance work. Practicing balance helps us prepare for life’s little surprises. A strong core means that we can react gracefully to whatever comes along.
Proper form is crucial to injury prevention. When, say, we do our lunges without paying attention to knee alignment, we add strain to our knee ligaments. Similarly, a lack of focus on glute engagement can put pressure on our knees. We want to work with our best possible alignment from top to bottom to make our movements as efficient and safe as possible.
Finally, we want to make sure we stretch. Flexibility training gives us the appropriate range of motion to do our workouts safely.
Now go play.
We are working in every plane this week: sagittal, frontal, and transverse. In other words, we’re going back and forth, side to side, and twisting! This, plus the asymmetric exercises, will help with our balance and core control. Three rounds.
jacks | 30 |
renegade rows | 20 |
pushups | 10 |
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overhead curtsy | 30 |
deadlifts | 20 |
1 leg squat | 10 |
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side lunge 1 arm row/raise | 30 |
lateral raise | 20 |
brains | 10 |
The Amazing Stickie loves making a basic exercise more challenging. Today she is doing multiplanar lunges with reaches. What that means is that she takes her basic front lunge, side lunge, and transverse lunge (or curtsy) and adds a reach with her upper body toward the floor. It makes the movement bigger, which means it’s harder. Additionally, it shifts the body weight more, making it more of a core challenge to return to the starting position. She usually does a set of five in each direction.
A lot of us have back pain and tight shoulders and hips that creak and stiff legs. One possible culprit? Too much sitting.
Those of us who commute don’t have too much choice. We’re stuck in that car for as long as we have to be. Then, when we arrive, we’re often stuck at our desks. We get home and we plop on the couch for yet more sitting.
We may not be able to fix all of that, but there are a few things we can do. Desks that adjust to allow us to stand or sit are really useful. Failing that, we can choose to walk over to talk to our coworkers rather than call them or message them. We can make sure we drink plenty of water—standing up and taking a bathroom break is a guaranteed way to keep us from sitting for too long at a stretch.
Our lives are designed to keep us sitting a lot. We have to tweak that design where we can to allow our bodies to move like they prefer to do!
Our moms probably just wanted some space when they told us to go outside and play. Kid noise isn’t as intense when it isn’t bouncing off the walls. But even if that was the whole reason, our moms were on to something.
Today, I’m everybody’s mom: go outside and play.
We human animals need natural light. It helps us sleep better and have more energy while we’re awake. We need fresh air. We need movement.
For bonus points, we can find some nature to hang out in. We were not designed for concrete living. A glimpse of sky and some trees or flowers will do us a world of good.
If you need a “scientific” reason, it’s about the Vitamin D, which we get from the sun.
Working in the frontal plane (that is, side to side, like we do with squat to leg lift) is goo practice for when life goes sideways on us. Three rounds.
kb alternate arm swing | 30 |
kb hammer curl | 20 |
kb halo | 10 |
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squat to leg lift | 30 |
bench press | 20 |
skullcrushers | 10 |
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mountain climbers | 30 |
flies | 20 |
V sit press | 10 |
The Amazing Stickie knows that small variations can keep workouts interesting and fresh. The prisoner squat variation will slightly alter the way she balances as she bends and extends her body. She loves a balance challenge! Sets of 10 are good.
I used to think I had a problem with time management. I was wrong. I had trouble with energy management. I’d get to the time I’d set aside for whatever it is I wanted to do and I just couldn’t find the oomph to do it. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who has had this problem. But now I have some tools for energy management!
The big one is regular cardio exercise. It’s a little counterintuitive that doing more will give us more energy, but it works. Bodies are made to move. Pretty much all our systems work better if we get sweaty on a regular basis. It doesn’t have to be a huge amount, either. A brisk, 30-minute walk can do the trick. (And it can even be two 15-minute walks, for those who like smaller doses!)
We get a bigger energy boost from higher-intensity exercise. Amping up that walk with some speed intervals or hills will bring us even more benefits.
There is, however, a limit. Too much exercise is as problematic as too little. If we find ourselves sore for more than a few days or if we find that we’re having trouble sleeping, it’s time to rethink how much we’re doing.
Aim for the sweet spot!
When it comes to change, a lot of us struggle. We look at where we are and where we want to be and the distance just seems too big. There are so many things we ought to be doing and it’s all so overwhelming. I get it. So here’s my suggestion: do one stupidly easy small change.
Let me break that down.
We’re going to choose ONE thing. Not one thing and seven super-secret bonus things. Not two things, because really, we’re the overachieving type and if we’re supposed to do one, we can certainly do two. One. Choosing one means that we’re living in a binary experiment. We either do the thing or we don’t do it. There’s not a ton of wiggle room.
We’re going to make it stupidly easy. We’re working a Jedi mind trick on ourselves here, showing ourselves that we can, in fact, change. It’s a proof of concept thing. If we can make this one small, easy change, we’re learning that we have efficacy, that we can make a difference. And, as we all know, that thousand-mile journey starts with one step. So this first change is going to be as easy as possible. This is not the time to say we’re going to work out for an hour every day when we don’t even know where our workout clothes are anymore. This is where we decide to walk for five minutes. Other examples might be not pushing snooze in the morning or cutting the sugar in our coffee in half or eating a vegetable every day.
We’re going to make it small. Again, no marathons here. No pantry-clear-out-diet-makeovers. Just one small shift. Five minutes of weights. A hard limit of one episode of TV at night. An apple.
When we make one stupidly easy small change and we stick to it for a month or so, we learn that we can learn. Then the change is our new normal and we can shift something else.
If we get carried away with enthusiasm and fail spectacularly, we can always return to one stupidly easy small change.
We can do this.
This week we’re working balance and core throughout the workout! Three rounds.
1 arm clean and press | 30 |
1 leg scaption | 20 |
truck driver | 10 |
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woodchoppers | 30 |
rows | 20 |
kickbacks | 10 |
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step ups | 30 |
curls | 20 |
femur arcs | 10 |
The Amazing Stickie knows that using kettlebells challenges her in ways that dumbbells don’t because of how the weight shifts in different positions. Today she is doing the kettlebell hang, clean, and jerk.
She begins holding a kettlebell in one hand. She squats down, lowering the kettlebell toward the floor. Then she stands up straight again, lifting the kettlebell to shoulder height. From there, she lifts the kettlebell overhead. Then she returns to the start position for the next rep.
Sometimes the best way to get out of our own way in fitness is to do something we like that we are not good at.
Counterintuitive, right? I’m supposed to be telling everyone to excel or something. Actually, I’m not. I’m here to promote health. And sometimes health is about playing.
Playing doesn’t have a goal in mind. When we play, we do whatever it is we are doing for the joy of doing it. It doesn’t mean we don’t play hard, but we’re not attached to some outcome beyond the present enjoyment.
Take me and swimming, for example. I am not a great swimmer. I’m unlikely to drown, but that’s about all that can be said about my abilities. But I love swimming. I love being in the water and the feel of my body moving through it. Because I love it, I’ll do it and have a good time even if objectively I’m doing a poor job of it. My body gets to work and I get to let go of all the judgments that I might put on myself about my performance (other people who want to judge my performance can go pound sand; I’m too old for that crap.).
Of course I’ll get better at swimming over time, but I’m not thinking about improvement. I’m just enjoying what I’m doing.
Go play.
Some folks are not going to like this one. I’m okay with that. Competition is not our friend when it comes to fitness.
Sure, there are people who are motivated by contests. Who can lose the most weight? Who can win the gym’s bingo game by going to the most different classes? I’m not trying to ruin anybody’s day or take away their joy or whatever.
Here’s the thing: competition requires someone to lose. In fitness, the goal is for everyone to win. Further, because we’re all starting from different place, my win may not look anything like someone else’s win. The comparisons are useless and/or unfair.
It’s hard to do, but here’s what we’re aiming for: doing our best on a daily basis. We do this not by looking at what anyone else is doing. We also don’t need to look at what we did yesterday or what we think we should be able to do today. We just need to show up, be present, and work hard.
Go play.
Time for another shorter circuit! Four rounds full of compound exercises should be fun!
1 min cardio | |
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squat to leg lift | 30 |
flies | 20 |
overhead press | 10 |
deadlift to curl | 30 |
renegade row | 20 |
brains | 10 |
The Amazing Stickie has amazing-looking arms, of course. To maintain her beautiful shoulders, she often does goblet pours.
She begins standing with good posture, holding two light weights at shoulder level with the ball parts of the dumbbells pointing up and down. Then she twists her arms as if the weights were goblets and she wants to empty them on the ground. She repeats this motion about ten times.
