Thursday List: 1?

If we find that we want to change our goal, what do we do?  Here’s a list:

 

1.     Change it.  It’s ours.  We can do whatever we want with it.

Shift

Things change.  (I know.  I should dress up as Captain Obvious for Halloween.)  But sometimes we kind of freak out when they do.

Let’s say we’ve imagined ourselves in an ideal future where we’ve met our goals (like I talked about yesterday).  We’ve been working along toward making that real.  And then something happens.

 

Sometimes what happens is a bad thing, like getting injured or needing to care for a family member.  Sometimes it’s a good thing, like getting whisked off to Paris by a handsome partner for a month of debauchery.  Sometimes it’s just… different.

 

When the changes are good or bad ones that happen in our circumstances, we know pretty much how to adjust.  But when we’re trucking along toward a goal and the goal turns out to be not what we want after all, sometimes we get stuck.

 

It is okay to change the goal.  I’m going to yell it:  IT IS OKAY TO CHANGE THE GOAL.

 

We don’t need to justify it.  We don’t need to rationalize.  We just want something else now, something different. 

 

When that happens, go for it.  Change that goal.  Do you.

Vision and Goal

Halloween week is a great time to pretend.  Everybody’s doing it!  Your kids are dressing up as anime characters you’ve never heard of.  Your boss is pretending to be Glinda the Good Witch.  The guy who delivers your packages is wearing bunny ears.

We can do all those things, but I’m suggesting that we pretend in a different direction.

 

We’re going to pretend we have reached our personal goals.  (If your goal is to be Glinda the Good Witch, that’s awesome and I probably can’t help with that.)

 

Take a few minutes.  Get quiet.  Maybe grab some paper if you’re a person who likes thinking by writing or drawing.  Take a couple deep breaths and let them out.

 

Now:  imagine.  You have achieved it!  You’re whatever it is you wanted to be.  How does it feel in your body?  Warm?  Cool?  Relaxed?  Powerful?  Purple?  (No, I don’t know what purple feels like, but I wanted to make sure that everybody knows that what it feels like in your body only has to make sense to you.)

 

What does this newly achieved world look like?  Calm and peaceful?  Joyous and noisy?  Lively?  Natural?

 

Who is with you?  Are they the folks who have been cheering you on?  Cool people you met along the way?  Are the haters there, sufficiently cowed by your new awesomeness?

 

Roll around in all this a bit.  All this stuff is the fuel that will get you to the reality.

Monday Workout: Halloween!

It’s festive, right?  (It’s not my fault that no exercises start with N and that I had to cheat a little on the E.)  Happy Halloween!  Three rounds.

 

H	high knees	30
A	Arnold press	10
L	lunge	20
L	lateral raise	10
O	oblique crunch	10
W	woodchopper	30
E	extend triceps	20
E	elbow plank
N	narrow squats	20

 

Thursday List: 5

There are lots of ways that thinking about the future helps us in fitness.  Here are some ways we can be kind to our future selves.

 

1.     Pack the gym bag the day before.

2.     Make a grocery list that includes good-for-us snacks and meal ingredients.

3.     Do the laundry so there are clean workout clothes.

4.     Buy the Epsom salts or Advil or whatever helps recovery.

5.     Schedule the massage or training session or class.

Time, part 2

That relationship to time that I was writing about yesterday is about the future, too. 

Most of the time, when we work out, we want to be in the present moment.  That’s the one we have influence on.  That’s where change happens.  If we’re working with a trainer, our trainer will help us stay focused on what we’re doing in the moment.

 

But.  We also need to have a little bit of consciousness of the future.  That’s where motivation comes from.

 

Say, for example, that I’m doing burpees.  I don’t like burpees.  Almost nobody likes burpees.  They’re hard and uncomfortable and we get sweaty and all that.  If we are too much in the present moment while doing burpees, those of us who are sane are going to say enough of this and stop.  But if we remember that our goal is to have enough stamina for a marathon or for a marathon game of tag with our kids or grandkids, we will keep going.  We use our future goal to fuel our present work.

 

Some goals are better than others, but I can’t say definitively which ones because the best goals are the ones that motivate each of us.  Mine are not yours.  It’s worth spending a bit of time visualizing your future awesome self doing whatever it is that inspires you.  That will get you through the burpees.

Time, part 1

It helps to have some perspective on time when we want to create a healthy relationship with fitness.

When we get started on a program, we need to think a bit about the past.  A good trainer will ask about what we’ve done before, what we liked, what we didn’t like, what injuries we’ve had, and a bunch more stuff about what has already happened with us.  This data helps a trainer keep us safe and also to create a program for us that suits our needs and desires.

 

Once that’s done, our job is to forget about the past.  We also have to keep forgetting it on a daily basis.

 

What do I mean?

 

We’re working out today.  The only relevant body is the one we’re in right now.  It doesn’t matter if we used to weigh 700 pounds.  It doesn’t matter if we used to be the world champion.  We are who we are today.  We need to work with the limitations and capabilities of this moment.  Focusing on where we used to be just distracts us from what we’re working on right now.

 

Some days go better than others.  Some days we can do All The Things and other days not so much.  The only thing that matters in each workout is that we do the best with what we’re working with this time.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Choose Wisely!

I’m still thinking about balance.  Today everybody gets to choose whether they’d rather do single leg squats or single leg deadlifts.  Three rounds.

 

kb swings	30
kb twist	20
kb 8x	10
db circles	30
1 leg squat or dead	20
plank up down	10
step ups	30
skullcrushers	20
Russian twist	10

 

Thursday List: 5

One of the keys to a good routine is a good checklist.  We use it until we internalize it and it all happens on autopilot.  Here’s an example of a morning checklist:

 

1.     Brush and floss.  (People who floss their teeth are generally healthier.  It’s unclear if it’s the flossing or just that people who floss their teeth are more tuned into taking care of their health.  It doesn’t take long.)

2.     Eat a healthy breakfast that includes some protein.

3.     Do a workout.

4.     Take a few minutes for mindfulness.

5.     Get on with the day.

Novelty!

(Yesterday I talked about the power of routine.  Today I’m moving on to the value of novelty.)

So:  there we are with our healthy routines in place.  Monday we lift weights.  Tuesday we do Pilates.  And so on.  Nothing we’re doing is bad, but it’s all a little… dull.

 

Novelty to the rescue!  Our brains and our bodies like shiny new stuff.  We can add a fresh tweak to our routines and suddenly we’re not bored anymore.

 

There are lots of ways to do this.  We can throw a new exercise into our weight session or change up the tempo.  We can go work outside if we’re normally gym rats or the other way around.  We can experiment with a new class or sport or piece of equipment.  The point is that we give our brains and bodies some kind of different challenge to wake them up and help them grow.

 

What should we try next?

Routine!

My brain thrives on two opposing things:  routine and novelty.  I am probably not alone in this, so I’m going to talk about how those two forces affect our workouts, routine today and novelty tomorrow.

Routine is, well, routine.  It has the reputation of being boring, but that’s also its power.  Routine doesn’t require a lot of thought or energy once it’s established.  We can just float along with the flow we’ve established.  Oh, it’s Monday—I lift weights on Mondays.  I don’t have to get up in the morning and figure out when and how I’m going to work out.  I just go.

 

The trick is to build a routine that is good for us.  Weights on Mondays would be an example of a positive routine.  A post workout meal of French fries and ice cream might be a less positive routine.

 

When we build healthy routines, we are doing our future selves a solid.  Our potentially tired self doesn’t have to think too much and maybe even before we’re fully awake, we’re at the gym and getting going.

 

Try it!

Monday Workout: Planes and Gravity

We’re working in a couple of planes and in different orientations to gravity today.  That’s a fancy way of saying we’ve got a little of everything going on here, even burpees.  Three rounds.

 

step touch	30
bench press	20
YTA	10
plank jacks	30
flies	20
burpees	10
tap backs	30
deadlift/good morning	20
V sit press	10

Thursday List: 4

Since I’ve been talking about range of motion this week, here are some of my favorite stretches:

 

1.     Calf stretch:  Stand on a stair (or curb or sturdy box).  Hold on to something if necessary for balance.  Place your feet so that the balls of your feet are on the edge and the heels hang over.  Lower one heel down below the level of the stair until you feel a stretch in your calf.  Gently raise and lower at a slowish tempo or just hold for about thirty seconds.  You can also do both heels at once if that feels better to you.

2.     Hip flexor stretch:  Lie on the floor on your side, legs out long.  Bend the top knee back as if you were going to kick yourself in the behind.  Reach your arm back and grab your foot or ankle (or use a strap if you can’t reach).  If you feel a stretch, great!  Hang out there.  If you need a little more, you can push your hips forward a bit until you do.

3.     Chest stretch, two ways:  My favorite way requires a long-ish foam roller, one that allows you to lie on it long ways with both your behind and your head supported.  Then you just open your arms out to the side at shoulder level.  If possible, lower your hands to the floor.  To increase the stretch on one side or the other, leave your hands on the floor and roll slightly to one side.  The side you are rolling away from will stretch a bit more.  If you don’t have a roller, you can do the same thing standing in a doorway.  Put your arms on either side of the door frame and lean through it until you feel a stretch.

4.     Static thoracic extension:  This one also uses a roller, but a firm bolster will also work.  This time, put the roller across the back just above where a bra strap would go (use your imagination, people who don’t wear bras!).  Then lean back over the roller, arms overhead.  I like to do this with my legs out long, but if you feel like your lower back is compressing, you can bend your knees and put your feet flat on the floor.  If you don’t like the feeling on your neck, you can support your head with your hands or with a yoga block.

Physics!

Yesterday I mentioned the connections between all our body parts and talked a little about how they interact.  Today I’ll give another reason to work on range of motion in all the different parts.  It’s physics.

Don’t worry:  there is no math in what follows.

 

The physical principle that we care about in this instance is that distribution of motion allows distribution of force.  That means that when we have an amount of force, we can put a lot of force in a few places, or a little bit in a lot of places.  That second option is usually better in our bodies.

 

Take, for example, our knees.  There they are, sandwiched between our hips and ankles, trying to mind their own business.  That’s fine as long as the hips and ankles do their part.  However, if our hips get stiff and restricted from too much sitting or our ankles get too used to wearing heels, they can’t move as much.  That makes the forces we generate when we walk land on our knees.  Over time, that force wears our poor knees out. 

 

The good news is that we can loosen up the tight places and give our knees a break.  Pilates is fabulous for this, but stretching, SMR, and massage also help.

 

Want to try Pilates?  You know how to find me!

Dry Bones

In the old song, the ankle bone’s connected to the knee bone and the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone and so on.  The anatomy might be a little questionable, but the overarching theory is correct:  our bodies connect.

This is not just a bulletin from Captain Obvious, as much as I like those.  The fact that the different parts of our bodies connect has implications for how we move.  If, for example, we have an ankle that doesn’t have much range of motion, that changes how our knees work.  How our knees work, in turn, impacts how our hips work.  We may feel pain in our lower backs while the problem might be somewhere else in the body entirely.

 

As a result of this connection, I try to ensure that every workout involves as much of the body as possible.  When we work all the parts, they tend to work together more smoothly.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Hips

I’ve been thinking about hips and how they contribute to balance and posture.  Strong and mobile hips help all kinds of things, including lower back pain.  So we’re working on that this week.  Three rounds.

 

suitcase swings	30
rows	20
db thrust	10
1 arm clean and press	30
Arnold press	20
hip rotations	10
skater jump	30
kickbacks	20
side banana	10

Thursday List: 9

We all have times when things… do not go well.  While falling into the ice cream is a coping technique, it might not be the healthiest one.  Here are some other choices:

 

1.     Meditating

2.     Connecting with others

3.     Reaching out for support

4.     Journaling

5.     Reading

6.     Resting/napping

7.     Music

8.     Exercise

9.     Time outside in nature

 

I have my own personal list.  What’s on yours?