Miscellaneous: Righting Response

Because I am a responsible trainer and Pilates instructor, I keep up with my continuing education.  I often learn little tidbits that I like to pass along.  Recently, an instructor in a course I was taking said that when we are training balance, we actually want to lose our balance from time to time.

I thought:  WHAT?

 

Here is the thinking.  When we are unstable and we lose our balance in a safe environment, we train our righting response, or, in other words, our bodies learn how to catch us.  This, I think, is akin to learning how to fall in martial arts training.

 

The broader lesson is this:  learning comes through mistakes and failure.  If we are succeeding at everything we are doing in our workouts, we are limiting our growth.  I am NOT saying that we should do unsafe things, just that we can push ourselves just a little bit past our comfort zone in order to enlarge that very zone.

Miscellaneous: Walk to School

This month’s blog is going to be about the random little items I learn or questions I am asked.

Recently, one of my clients asked me about ankle weights.  She walks her kids to school, so she was wondering if the weights would help her maximize what she had to do anyway or if they were just a gimmick.

 

What I told her is this:  there are better ways to get bang for your buck out of this daily activity.  Here’s why.

 

Ankle weights are not very heavy.  They won’t result in much strength improvement, but they will increase fatigue. 

 

On the other hand, the idea of adding weight to the equation is not a bad one.  She could consider rucking.  Rucking is basically walking with weights on your back (as in rucksack).  Throwing a dumbbell (or, hey, a bunch of books!) in a backpack for the walk will make the walk burn more calories and increase strength, endurance, and core strength.  Rucking vests are also a thing, but personally I tend to try to use what’s on hand first before buying more stuff.

 

Another way to amp up that morning walk is to rope the kids in to some interval training.  Kids often do this naturally when walking with (slow, boring) adults.  They’ll run to the corner and wait for the adult to catch up.  Making the walk an interval for the adult would be more like everybody running to the corner, walking safely across the street, walking briskly to the next corner (or skipping, or hopping, or whatever), walking safely across the street, running to the next corner, and so on.

 

A third way to add value to the morning walk is to use the wait times.  Those traffic lights are things we all have to wait for.  Might as well get in some squats or some lunges or some jacks.  Maybe even some balance work.  The kids might join in or they might just roll their eyes at how embarrassing parents can be.  Either way, that’s a win.

 

Back to Basics: Putting it Together 2

There are lots of ways to put together a week’s worth of workouts that incorporate all the things we need to do.  This is good, because we all have different lives, bodies, and preferences.

Those of us who particularly love one kind of workout will have to make more of an effort to squeeze in the other stuff.  For example, it is often the case that folks who love lifting find it challenging to get around to doing flexibility work.

 

I have two suggestions for tactics.  The first one is to find ways to make it fun.  Maybe some of us really detest weight lifting.  But doing it while catching up with a friend?  That could be kind of awesome.  If the idea of treadmill time reminds us that it was first used as a punishment, maybe we’d do better getting our cardio from playing basketball or swimming or dancing.  Cue Mary Poppins singing “A Spoon Full of Sugar.”

 

The other suggestion is to find some accountability and/or community.  Classes and teams are popular for this reason.  People make friends.  In the case of classes, there’s also reduced cognitive load because we show up and someone tells us what to do.

 

Getting in our workouts can stimulate our creativity as we look for ways to get everything done and have a good time.

 

Go play.

Back to Basics: Putting it Together 1

We’ve spent the month going over the basics of the various kinds of exercises that are beneficial for our bodies.  The thing is, we need to put the kinds together for maximum benefit.

If that sounds overwhelming, stop for a second and breathe.  Any exercise is better than no exercise and starting with what is manageable is always a good idea.  (Also:  it is my job to put things like this together, so if you need help, you could hire me.)

 

A person who has been exercising for a while might have a weekly workout schedule that looks something like this:

 

Monday:  cardio and stretching

Tuesday:  cardio warm-up, weights and stretching

Wednesday:  cardio and stretching

Thursday:  cardio warm-up, weights and stretching

Friday:  cardio and stretching

Saturday:  yoga or Pilates

Sunday:  rest

 

Notice that resting is right in there, looking important, because it is.  We don’t want to overdo things!

 

Go play.

Back to Basics: Balance

Balance work is, like flexibility, both essential and often neglected.  The statistics on older people who fall are not pretty.  Hint:  we are all getting older.

With my clients, I make sure that we work on having a strong core.  This means more than doing a few ab exercises.  The core is all the trunk musculature, all the way around.  We can’t neglect working those deep back muscles that support and move our spines.

 

Additionally, I make sure we do asymmetric work.  When we work one side of the body differently than the other (in a one arm clean and press, for example), our bodies have to figure out how to stabilize us.  And, of course, this means straight-up balance work, like single leg squats, single leg deadlifts, and the like.

 

Pilates, by nature, enhances both core strength and balance.  Yoga, likewise, is a great practice for those who want to improve balance.

 

The best thing for balance?  Practice.  I often suggest using the time we are standing around anyway to practice balance.  I have at least one client who has taken me up on this (and told me about it).  She works on her calf raises while she’s waiting in line at the grocery store.  (Because she is awesome, she thinks of the amusement caused in her fellow shoppers as bonus points.)  I can say that her constant practice has yielded results, both in her actual balance and her confidence.  Those of us who don’t want to practice in public can use tooth-brushing time, microwave time, or commercials time for mini-practice.

 

Go play.

Back to Basics: Flexibility

Most of us could use to be a little more flexible.  And yes, I do mean this both literally and figuratively.  I find that literal flexibility does tend to encourage figurative flexibility because it teaches us to deal with the discomfort inherent in the process.  But I digress.  My wheelhouse is literal flexibility.

First, I need to explain that flexibility and mobility are related but not the same.  Flexibility is about the ability of our muscles to flex and extend.  Mobility is about how much movement is available at our joints, or in other words, it’s about bones.  Bones and muscles work together to create both movement and stability.  I’m not going to talk about mobility today, even though it is certainly a worthy topic for some future date.

 

OK:  flexibility.  I’m pretty sure that many of us have had negative experiences of stretching.  We may have had that teacher who decided we weren’t stretching enough and exerted unnecessary force to increase our stretch to an uncomfortable or even damaging degree.  We may have not been taught that discomfort and pain are not the same thing, or even that sometimes discomfort is productive.  That can make it hard to work on flexibility.

 

Others of us have the opposite problem.  Stretching feels good, so we skip it.  How can it possibly be good for us when it feels fabulous?

 

Still others have issues with making stretching a priority.  There’s already so much to do!  We need to cardio and we need to weight and now we need to stretch too?  (Yes, I just invented those verbs.  I’m a little sorry, but not much.)

 

The bottom line is this:  stretching is good and doesn’t take long and shouldn’t hurt.

 

When we stretch, consistency is key.  Doing five minutes a day is better than stretching for an hour once a month.  I’m sure we all waste more than five minutes somewhere in the day.

 

Here’s the process, using a hamstring stretch as an example.  For this particular hamstring stretch, we’re going to lie down on our backs and use a strap.  To begin, one leg will be bent with the foot flat on the floor.  The strap will be around the other foot, which will be raised off the floor.  I’m not going to specify how high because this is the part where we have to pay attention.  We’ll lift that leg gradually and we will stop when we feel tension in the hamstrings.  Notice I said tension, not pain.  Pain is actually bad for flexibility because our muscles freak out.  If we move into tension and hang out there a bit, our muscles realize that nothing bad is happening and they relax.  We can move in and out of tension gently (not bouncing, like they taught us in my youth).  We can explore different angles of attack.  Muscles have multiple fibers and small variations in position can stretch different fibers.  It’s kind of cool, really.  Once we have explored the tension, we can change the stretch by extending the bent leg along the floor.  This increases the stretch, so we may need to lower our stretching leg a little to avoid pain.  Hang out and explore again.  The whole process, on both legs, should take maybe two minutes.

 

Go play.

Back to Basics: Pilates 2

One of the other principles of Pilates that seems both basic and powerful is alignment. 

In the literal sense, when we move with improved alignment, our bodies are more graceful and efficient.  We are less likely to get injured, either through repetitive stress or catastrophe.  Balance and coordination are easier.

 

The thing is, the alignment of our literal bodies tends to have metaphorical effects as well.  As we align, say, our heads over our shoulders, we align our principles with our actions, our values with our work, our hearts with our minds and bodies.

 

I’m not saying that doing Pilates will automatically transform our lives.  Just that there is an opportunity there for the kind of small shift in alignment that can have, over time, big results.

Back to Basics: Pilates 1

 

Getting back to basics with Pilates is kind of the point of Pilates.  When we show up to our sessions, we want to check back into our bodies, to connect the body and mind more consciously (pro tip:  they’re always connected; it’s our awareness that shifts).

Personally, the part of Pilates that triggers that most directly and easily is the breath.

 

I’ve had more than one person tell me that they were bad at breathing.  That is not a thing.  Anybody who is not dead is doing a perfectly adequate job of breathing.  So we’re all starting from a place of success.

 

There are two exercises that, for me, facilitate connection to the breath most and they’re both really simple and accessible.  One is the pelvic clock.  To do it, we lie on our backs (hooray!) with our knees bent and our heels lined up with our sit bones.  As we exhale, we tilt the pelvis gently toward our belly buttons.  Then, when we inhale, we tilt toward our pubic bones.  There are further progressions of the exercise (tilting side to side and making circles), but this basic movement takes the natural motion of the spine as we breathe and slightly exaggerates it.  What I mean by that is that our spines naturally flex a little as we exhale and extend as we inhale.  We make conscious what happens without our even knowing it.

 

In a similar way, arm arcs do the same thing in a different part of the spine.  To do them, we start in the same position as for pelvic clock with our arms down at our sides.  As we inhale, we raise our arms overhead.  Then we lower them as we exhale.  This exaggerates what is called the “pump handle” motion of breathing.  As we inhale, the spine extends and the sternum rises like an old fashioned pump handle.  The exhale lowers the sternum, pumping out the breath.

 

Bringing attention to the way our breath moves our bodies and our bodies move our breath is a quick route to mindful movement.

Back to Basics: Strength 2

So:  you’ve got a workout.  Now what?

First things first:  you want to aim for two or three strength training sessions per week.  (OK:  some people do more.  That’s beyond the basics, for one thing, and also gets into dividing the body up into segments for things like “leg day.”  If you want to know about that stuff, poke me and we’ll talk.)  The overall principle is that you give muscles you’ve worked a day off between workouts.

 

There are multiple variables in weight workouts.  What you choose depends on your body, your goals, and your current state.

 

For each exercise, you need to consider how much weight to lift, how many reps and sets to do, and how quickly or slowly to do the lifting.  In general, if you are choosing lighter weights, you will be choosing to do more reps and/or sets.  Most of us will choose a moderate tempo for our lifts, unless we are working on power, which, by definition, is the ability to move a heavy weight fast.

 

However, once a workout starts, you may need to adjust.  Maybe last week I did my lifts with 7 gabillion pounds, but today I can hardly unrack 6 gabillion.  Or maybe I’m even stronger this week and need to use 8 gabillion.  (Yes, I am using fictitious measures because some of us get over-attached to the numbers.  That’s not useful.)  In general, I want the weight I choose to be heavy enough that it is challenging to complete the number of reps with good form.

 

Go play.

Back to Basics: Strength 1

Starting, or re-starting, strength training can be daunting.  Unless we happen to have a bunch of weights lying around (me!  I do!), we need to acquire some or go to a place that has them.  That can be intimidating or expensive or both.  Then we have to figure out what to do with the weights.

Most gym memberships come with a free orientation.  Gyms use these as a tool to sell personal training, but that doesn’t mean we have to buy.  (Buying personal training is definitely a useful idea, but when I did those orientations myself, I wanted to ensure that gym members knew how to use the equipment safely on their own.  Any reasonably ethical and responsible trainer should do the same.)  It is worth taking the gym up on the freebie rather than just relying on watching other folks, who may or may not know what the heck they’re doing.  In the orientation, the trainer should show you how to set up and use machines safely, where the free weights are located and what safety precautions to take (things like weight collars for barbells, for instance), and should help you figure out where to adjust seats and arms and such for best performance.  You should end up with a sheet of paper that tells you all that stuff for reference in the future.  That’s a great place to start.

 

Another possibility for a no-cost start is to take a trainer up on a first-session-free offer like I give.  Typically, this can include a fitness assessment and interview to discuss who you are, what you want out of a gym experience, what your injury history is, and what motivates you.  Then you get a workout.  That workout is one you can use on your own in future, whether or not you sign up for training.  Some trainers get grumpy if you take the free one and don’t sign up for training.  I do not.  I often encourage people I know shouldn’t be paying me (or any other trainer) to come for a free one because I think I can help them.  If their circumstances change in future, maybe they’ll buy sessions; if not, I’ve done a good deed.

 

Tomorrow:  some thoughts on specifics.

Thursday List: 7

There are any number of ways to get cardio exercise in.  Here are a few:

 

1.     Take a ten minute walk after breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

2.     If you watch something with commercials, do jacks (or the exercise of your choice that gets your heart rate up) until the show comes back.

3.     Variation on 2:  If you don’t watch TV with commercials, every time the main character says That Thing They Say, do jacks.  Kind of like a drinking game, but better for you!

4.     Dance.  This can range from going out with friends to taking a Zumba class to cranking the tunes in the kitchen and boogie-ing down while sauteeing the spinach.

5.     Borrow a kid.  Play tag, any variation.  Climb on the play structure at the park.  Try to get your phone back from the little booger.  Take them swimming or hiking or biking.

6.     Challenge a friend to a game.  No, not chess, unless you play full-contact chess.  I’m thinking basketball or soccer or pickleball or ultimate frisbee.

7.     Hubba hubba.  But no just lying there thinking of England.

Back to Basics: Cardio 2

If you know me, you know that I am always in favor of whatever exercise we get out and do.  Something is always better than nothing.

That said, it’s good to know what we’re aiming for.

 

Before I talk about targets, I need to pause and say that we are all unique.  We all have skills and injury histories and life experiences and proclivities that help and hinder us in our pursuit of fitness.  Fitness is not even kind of one size fits all.  What is appropriate for me is not necessarily appropriate for you.  Heck, what’s appropriate for me today is not ideal for 20-year-old me or 80-year-old me or even next-week me.  We work out in today’s body.

 

So.  Ideally, we want to get about 150 minutes per week of moderate cardio exercise.  That’s half an hour, five days a week.

 

Moderate, in this context, (as Lemony Snicket says), means “at a heart rate that is between 65 and 80 percent of our maximum heart rate.”  Now there’s an explanation that doesn’t explain much.  The next bit contains math.  Sorry about that. 

 

If you want to skip the math, see the rubric I used yesterday (if you can sing, you need to work harder; if you can’t talk, you’re working too hard).

 

OK:  math. 

 

A person’s maximum heart rate is 220 – their age.  For me, this means 220-58, or 162.  My moderate cardio range, therefore, is 65 to 80 % of 162.  That’s 105 to 130.  If we’re wearing a tracker or smart watch, we can see our heart rate right there.  If not, we can take our own pulse.  Over time, however, we get a feel for when we’re working out hard enough and when we’re not.

 

I don’t much worry about people working out at or over their maximum heart rate.  As we approach that level of work, we start to feel like we’re going to die and, being sensible humans, we slow down!

 

Math is over now.

 

Those of us who work out a lot will not have trouble getting in our 150 minutes.  Those of us who prefer screen time to gym time might have to work up to 150 minutes much more slowly.  Starting with five minutes or a walk around the block can be totally appropriate. 

 

Start small and go play.

Back to Basics: Cardio 1

Good news!  It’s September!  While it has been a long time since I’ve been in school, I still think of September as the month when things start.  Maybe summer was fabulous; maybe not.  Either way, we’re seizing the opportunity to get back to basics, beginning again.

This week, we’ll dig in with cardio.

 

Cardio is a great place to start because almost all of us have the ability to do it right now.  We lace up our shoes and we head out for a walk or a run.  Ta da!  Cardio!  (Those of us who are dealing with disabilities that prevent us from walking or running will, as with most things, have to find a work-around.  I can’t speak to every flavor of accommodation needed in a short post, but if you need one, poke me and we’ll brainstorm!)

 

Cardio exercise doesn’t require any special expertise, either.  We all know if we’re getting a little breathless.  (Rubric:  if you can sing while you’re doing your cardio, you need to work harder.  If you can’t talk, you’re working too hard.)

 

The benefits of cardio are pretty instantaneous, too.  We often notice an immediate lift in mood.  We burn calories.  We have sharper thinking.  We sleep better.

 

Tomorrow I’ll talk about more nitty-gritty details.

3R Favorites 2

Another rest/recovery/regeneration practice I love is what I call oilcan exercises.  These are the exercises we do that take us from Tin Man before Dorothy to Tin Man, ready to roll.

 

What exercises make up the oilcan for each of us will vary.  Some days, my list changes based on what I’ve been doing or not doing recently.  Here are a few ideas to get us started on building a base list that can change as needed:

 

•      The whole routine should take no more than five or ten minutes.  This is about rest/recovery/regeneration, not working out.

•      Most of us get plenty of spinal flexion (bending forward) because of our desks and screens.  We probably want to add some gentle back bending (spinal extension).  This can be as simple as standing up straight, raising our arms in what I describe as the Olympic salute, and lifting our breastbones toward the ceiling.  Bonus:  spinal extension like this tends to lift mood.

•      That stiff bit?  Stretch it, gently.

•      That old injury that still sometimes irritates?  Dust off one or two of those exercises you got in physical therapy.

•      A few foot exercises can reset our balance.  Try putting your feet flat on the floor and just lifting your big toes.  Then try putting the big toes down and lifting the rest of the toes, keeping the ball of the foot on the ground.  Extra challenge:  put the big toe and the baby toe on the ground and lift the three middle toes.

•      Breathe.  I like to do this while doing arm arcs, inhaling as I lift my arms overhead and exhaling while lowering them down to my sides, either standing or lying down, but any kind of focus on breath is good.

 

Let me know what’s on your list! 

3R Favorites 1

All that movement is fabulous for us, but no month of favorites would be complete without a chance to rest, restore, and recover.

 

One of my favorite ways to reset my busy little brain is by meditating.

 

I am a terrible meditator.  And that’s okay.  I keep practicing.

 

Sometimes I use an app to time my sitting or for music or a guided meditation.  Sometimes I sit and focus on my breathing.  Sometimes I think about a word or phrase.

 

Even two minutes can help me reset.  Heck, even five breaths helps.

 

Give it a go! 

Pilates Favorites 2

My other favorite Pilates mat exercise is the bridge.  Again, because most of us spend too much time sitting, we suffer from tight hip flexors and relatively weak glutes.  Bridge to the rescue!

I love how many variations of bridging there are, including the single leg version, the “chip and dip,” the typewriter, and more.  I particularly love adding a hip flexor stretch by sliding a yoga block under my pelvis at the top and then extending my legs long to let gravity do the work.

 

One important note, though.  Those of us who have osteoporosis need to be a little careful in our bridges.  Articulating through the spine is not recommended because it puts us at risk of fracture.

 

Be careful, but enjoy!

Pilates Favorites 1

Since not everybody has a studio full of Pilates equipment, I’m choosing my favorite Pilates exercises from the mat work.  We all have floors.

Because, like most of us, I sit at a desk more than is ideal, my favorite Pilates exercise is the supine twist.  I like to do it with yoga tune up balls under my back at the spot just above my bra strap (people who do not wear bras will have to envision the spot) with one ball on either side of my spine.

 

To do the exercise, we lie on our backs (With or without balls.  People new to this exercise might find doing it with balls a little… spicy.).  We bend our knees and place our feet flat on the floor.  So far, so comfy!  Then we extend our arms up toward the ceiling and place the palms of our hands together.  Throughout the exercise, the hands stay together and the elbows stay straight.

 

First, we keep our head still and move our arms as far from side to side as we can without moving our hips or suffering more than discomfort.  After about ten reps, we shift to moving our arms and taking our heads with us; another way to think about this is that we keep an eye on our thumbs as we move.  Then, after about ten more reps, we take our arms one way and our head the other way for ten reps.

 

At the end, our upper backs tend to feel looser and our breathing is easier.

 

Try it!

Strength Favorites 2

My next favorite strength exercise is the fly.  It’s not as popular, perhaps, as the bench press or as practical as the row, but it feels good.

We all need that feeling of expansion in our chests that we get in the lowering phase of the fly.

 

Additionally, when we do flies, we have to concentrate.  Form is important.  We need to pay attention to how far we can lower the weights and still get them back up.  We need to know how to protect ourselves if the weight becomes too heavy (Bend your elbows, bring the weights in toward your body, and then, if necessary, drop them on the floor.  You are more important than the floor.  And ripped rotator cuffs are No Fun.)

 

Another great thing about flies is that when we do them, we learn about the value of the eccentric contraction.  Eccentric, in this context, doesn’t mean slightly odd.  When we lift weights, the working muscles contract; this is the concentric phase.  Then when we lower them again, the muscles lengthen; this is the eccentric phase.  Because the eccentric phase cooperates with gravity, the job our muscles are doing in this part is controlling the descent.  When we do flies, that lowering phase requires control because if gravity takes over, we are back to that ripped rotator cuff scenario.  (Choose your weights wisely and it’s good to have a spotter.)

 

Go play.

Strength Favorites 1

Strength training is a good thing to lean into in August.  Most obviously, it makes us stronger.  That physical strength often translates into strength of character and other kinds of resilience, and who doesn’t need that?  Strength training has positive effects on our metabolisms and our body composition.  Plus we look cool.

There are approximately eleventy bazillion strength training exercises, so choosing a favorite has a certain amount of challenge.  If I had to choose only one, I would choose the squat.

 

Squats are the ultimate in practicality.  We have to do them many times a day.  They are the key to our independence in our old age:  when we can’t squat, we can’t go to the bathroom alone, and that’s a problem.

 

They’re also flexible.  We can do them with body weight wherever we are.  We can do them with heavy weights.  We can do them on one leg to work our balance.  We can use a barbell across our shoulders, dumbbells in our hands hanging at our sides, or holding a kettlebell at our breastbones.  Those of us who need a little more support can do them with a stability ball against a wall.  For additional challenge, we can squat on either side of a BOSU.

 

No matter how we do them, we’re working pretty much our whole bodies.  That’s efficient!

Cardio Favorites 2

My other favorite cardio exercise is swimming.  I have said, semi-seriously, more than once, that my personal aromatherapy scents are chlorine and sunscreen and maybe a hint of grape soda because those are the smells of my childhood summers.

Swimming is a great cardio exercise for a bunch of reasons.  It’s not an impact sport, so it’s easy on the joints.  The water provides resistance, so it’s a good amount of work.  The work is in water, natch, so there isn’t that uncomfortable sweaty feeling.

 

There’s a funny thing about swimming for me.  I am not a particularly great swimmer.  I couldn’t do a flip turn to save my life and I have never met a pair of goggles that I like.  What’s great is that it doesn’t really matter.  I get a perfectly good workout and I have a fabulous time.  Over time, I am improving, but I don’t have any Big Goals about swimming, except not drowning.

 

Go play.