The gift of faithfulness in workouts is a huge one. When we show up regularly to our workouts, change happens. When we commit to the habit of movement, we really see results. So giving myself the gift of faithfulness is giving my future self a healthier, happier body.
What could be better?
The gift of goodness relates to workouts in several ways.
Perhaps most obviously, a good workout is one that works for us. Maximizing the goodness of a workout is a Good Thing, whether that means we work for maximum strength, increased muscle mass, or just the joy of moving. For me, there are lots of good workouts, whether they involve swimming or weights or spin or Pilates or any of the other things I do that move my body.
Another way goodness comes into it is that there is an inherent goodness or virtue to working out period. Treating our bodies to movement is good.
Then there is the work we do during the workout. When we do good work, we head toward a flow state and that’s just amazing.
What is good about workouts for you?
As always, we need to modify for our bodies. When I write “jacks,” you can do crouch jacks, plyojacks, ordinary jacks, or modified jacks, depending on what works. Choose weights that work for you. Do your YTA on a ball or bench or standing. Workouts have to work for us and with us. Three rounds.
kb swings | 30 |
kb twists | 20 |
kb 8s | 10 |
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jacks | 30 |
skullcrushers | 20 |
YTA | 10 |
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squat to leg lift/ticktock | 30 |
overhead press | 20 |
brains | 10 |
Workout kindness comes in many flavors.
1. Use headphones. Not everyone wants to jam to your jam.
2. Wipe the equipment. Because no one wants to share your sweat.
3. Put the weights back in the rack. Duh.
4. Let folks work in. You need to rest between sets anyway.
5. Pick up your stuff. You’re a grown-up now and it isn’t that hard.
Kindness is so useful in workouts. I need more of it, myself. It shows up in at least two ways.
One way is in doing the workout itself. Taking care of my body is kind to it, even if it isn’t always fun in the moment. Kindness takes vitamins and flosses teeth. It eats veggies and drinks plenty of water.
The other way is in how the workout gets done. When I’m working out, I am, definitionally, doing hard things. Sometimes I don’t do them very well. I can choose to be kind to myself in that moment and keep an eye on showing up rather than performing to perfection. Very occasionally, kindness can even mean resting instead of working out. Kindness listens to the body.
What’s your favorite way to be kind?
Patience is a gift that I can always use more of. (A friend of mine once said it is a bad idea to pray for patience, because God will send all kinds of patience exercises. I think that is definitely one of God’s ideas of humor.) When it comes to workouts, it’s really key.
I don’t think I’m alone in wishing that workouts gave more instant results. What do you mean I have to do this every day for weeks to see results? Also, learning new things can be challenging. It’s very tempting to get impatient with myself for not getting it right away.
One thing that helps me practice my patience is to keep the long term results in the back of my head while I focus more on the instant gratification. I really do feel better right away when I work out. I may not be instantly stronger or cuter or anything, but I do feel good.
What helps you be patient?
Sometimes I forget about an exercise for a while. It’s time to punch things! Three rounds.
(lunge) punches | 30 |
bench press | 20 |
1 leg squat | 10 |
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1 arm clean and press | 30 |
flies | 20 |
renegade row | 10 |
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woodchoppers | 30 |
deadlift | 20 |
pretty princesses | 10 |
Ways to bring more peace to workouts:
1. Plan ahead. It’s much more peaceful to work out when we have all our stuff.
2. Finish with stretching.
3. Smash the cis/hetero/white supremacist/capitalist/imperialist patriarchy (definitely good exercise, too.)
Peace may not spring to mind as a fitness gift, but let me explain.
When I work out, I burn off negative emotions. Rage workouts are good workouts. Nothing fights the Depression Monster like some nice, hard cardio. If I’m crabby, I really ought to choose the gym every time.
Further, workouts make me tired, and tired people are usually peaceful people. After I’ve worked out, I just don’t have the energy to act out.
Not enough? Fine. I’m also going to give myself peace in my workouts by letting go of my attachment to the outcome. Maybe I didn’t do the best workout ever, but I did a workout. I can be at peace with that.
The next gift I’m giving myself is joy. In the current world, joy can be a rare thing because there are so many things to worry about and stress over. We all have too much to do, personally, socially, politically. That’s all true.
And yet.
Every single time I get on my spin bike, I feel better afterward. When I get up early in the morning and the sky is blue and pink and the sun is coming up, it’s beautiful. Things are growing in the garden. I get to hug my loved ones. There are books to be read and naps to take and I love taking photos and cooking things.
Some of those things are fitness related and some not so much. However, one aspect of my fitness practice helps with all the things I need to notice joy. It’s my daily yoga and meditation and my Pilates work. The mindfulness I get from moving my body (and quieting my mind) makes space for joy to emerge, even when things are less than perfect.
What gives you joy? How do you notice it?
New month, new challenge. Usually we do ten pushups. Today we’re trying a set of twenty. Three rounds.
suitcase swing | 30 |
rows | 20 |
kickbacks | 10 |
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mountain climbers | 30 |
pushups | 20 |
reverse flies | 10 |
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db circles | 30 |
(lunge to) curl | 20 |
hamstring curls | 10 |
Four ways to love movement:
1. Slowly. This kind is for building mindfulness, learning new skills, and integrating complex movements.
2. Fast. Speed is fun. Think about the breeze on your face as you zoom down a hill on a bike.
3. Daily. Habits are reassuring. The morning just makes more sense with movement in it.
4. With music. Whether this means dancing or just getting the Led out while lifting, it’s easier to love a workout with tunes.
Welcome to April! I happen to be an April Fool, in that my birthday falls in this month. Naturally, what’s on my mind this month is gifts. (Books. Books are always a good gift.) What do gifts have to do with fitness? Well, I’m making a list of fitness gifts to give myself this month and maybe you’d like to do the same along with me. It’s a virtual party!
I’m not going to start small. The first gift I’m giving myself this month is love. As we all know, love is what love does. So I’m going to love myself with weights and cardio and, weather permitting, swimming. I’m going to love myself with vegetables and sunlight, walks, and sufficient sleep.
But let’s back up a minute. Love can also be expressed in words. I’m going to try to give myself the gift of nice words. I talk to myself in ways I would never talk to someone else. Other people make honest mistakes; I am a mumblety-mumble idiot, except I use other words where the mumblety-mumble is and they’re not nice ones. Love might be giving myself the same grace I give other people.
What would the gift of love be to you this month?
How are we feeling? We’ve spent a month thinking about freshness. Was it helpful? Did we try things that we liked? Hated? Did we learn stuff?
In one of my previous lives when I worked in nonprofit as a coordinator of a service learning program, I spent a lot of time thinking about praxis, which is, as my old French teacher would say, a ten-dollar word. Praxis, in pennies, means the union of theory and practice, in which we think about things, try them out, and then think about what happened. Then we go around again based on what we learned the first time.
So: what do we want to keep from this month? What can we let go of? Where are we off to experiment next?
I’d love to know what y’all are doing out there! And, of course, I’m here for all your wellness coaching, personal training, and Pilates needs.
It’s the end of the month and I’m feeling sneaky. So we have squat pop ups this week, which are like the bottom half of a burpee. Four rounds.
1 min cardio | |
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woodchoppers | 30 |
flies | 20 |
squat pop up | 10 |
opposite knees | 30 |
bench press | 20 |
plank saw | 10 |
We can Pilates in the wild! Three things to try in daily life:
1. Deep breathing.
2. Aligned posture.
3. Efficient movement.
Another way to refresh the Pilates experience is to take it out of the studio and into the world. This is in line with Uncle Joe’s general philosophy.
What does that mean? It can mean anything from thinking about how we are moving while we are weight lifting in the same way we do while we are doing Pilates—focusing on what our bones are doing, on how and when we exert effort, on the quality of the movement itself—to watching the flow of our breath in line at the grocery store or while we wait for the microwave to beep.
Pilates, like all fitness, is not intended as an end in itself, but rather as a means to a happier, healthier, more zestful life. (Zest is a word that Uncle Joe liked a lot!)
Go get zesty!
Pilates, like all practices, can fall into ruts. We show up, we plop down on the reformer and we go through the motions. Uncle Joe would applaud that we showed up and yet be disappointed in our behavior, maybe.
One of the easiest ways I’ve found to wake up in Pilates is to switch equipment. For a lot of the repertoire, there are versions of the exercises for use on the reformer, or trap table, or ladder barrel, or chair, or spine corrector, or mat, or all of the above. When we move from one piece of equipment to another, we may find ourselves in a different relationship to gravity. We may experience resistance in different ways. We may learn different qualities of motion.
If we are habitual users of the equipment, doing a mat workout can be instructive. Similarly, mat class habitués may find enlightenment in using the equipment.
Change is good in this context, friends.
We’re working balance in a variety of ways this week. Obviously, the single leg work works on it, but the skier jumps and the dumbbell pullovers with bridge also recruit what we need when we have to balance. Three rounds.
tap backs | 30 |
1 leg deadlift | 20 |
1 leg squat | 10 |
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squat raise | 30 |
gorilla row | 20 |
curls | 10 |
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skier jump | 30 |
db pullover with bridge | 20 |
brains | 10 |
More strength fresheners:
1. Change the tempo.
2. Try a circuit.
3. Swap machines for free weights or vice versa.
4. Change the usual order.
