Mother May I: Have My Feelings

Today we have permission to love our workouts or to hate them.  In other words, we get to feel however we feel.

When we’re doing something really hard and it isn’t going super well and we’re tired and grumpy, it’s good to remember that we don’t have to like the process of what we’re doing.  We certainly need to work out, but we don’t need to add pressure to ourselves to think it is the best thing ever all the time.

 

On the other hand, some folks really want us not to like our workouts.  (This is not their business, but this does not stop them.)  For their own reasons, they seem to need us to hate the gym or weights or exercise generally or whatever.  Ignore them.  We have permission to have fun at Zumba or on our bike or doing a personal record lift.

 

Workouts are enough work all by themselves.  We don’t need to add a bunch of emotional work on top.  Really.

Mother May I: 4

Unless we are dead, we are eating something at least occasionally.  Eating is natural.  It’s essential!  And yet, somehow, I still feel like I need to remind us all that we have permission to eat.  Here are some things we are allowed:

 

1.     Vegetables.  The more, the merrier!  Eat as many colors as possible!  Eat them in salads, soups, on the side, on top, or underneath.

2.     Fruits.  Whole is better, but juice is ok, too.

3.     Protein foods.  What these are vary by human.  It’s good to choose lean proteins and maybe a fair amount of plant-based protein for optimal health.

4.     Treats.  Yes:  we are allowed treats.  We just need to remember that they are sometimes foods.

Mother May I: Lift

Today, I’m granting everyone permission to lift weights.  Any weights you want and can move with good form.

Sometimes we might feel intimidated by the weights.  We might not know exactly what to do with them.  (This is what trainers are for!)  And sometimes there are some large, muscular types hanging out by them acting like they are their weights.  They are not.  We are allowed to use them, too.

 

Here is how:  put on our grown-up pants, walk over to the weights, and use them.  If someone is already using them, we ask, politely, “Can we work in?”  The answer to this question should be yes.  If it is not yes, it is ok to go check with gym management because working in is good gym etiquette.

 

Some of us may think that we shouldn’t lift weights because we are too (choose one:  old, female, weak…).  This is not true.  We may want to choose the weight we lift carefully and appropriately for our skill level and strength, but nearly everyone can and should lift weights.

 

Go do it!

Mother May I: Sweat

In May, we celebrate Mother’s Day.  I’m going to do it a little differently (you’re shocked, right?).  We’re going to play Mother May I with fitness topics.  Here’s my thinking:  sometimes what we really need on our fitness journey is someone to give us the permission we need.  For this month, I’m “Mother” and I am here to grant you leave.

So let’s get started.  Today, you all have permission to sweat.

 

Personally, I am good at sweating.  I could be sitting there in a freezer and I’d be sweating.  I’ve mostly made peace with this, but there were times when I was younger when this did not feel like a Good Thing.  (Thanks, patriarchy!  Not!)  As a result, I was a little shy about exercising.  I mean, who wants to spend forever doing their hair and makeup and then just drip all over it?  (Again, thanks, patriarchy.)

 

Here in this century, maybe we can understand that there are times to get sweaty and then times to get clean.  Sweat is a useful marker that tells us we are working hard and making progress toward our goals.  The gym is there to sweat in, not to pose in.  (If you want to pose there, you do you, but please, don’t hog the good machines or the free weights.)

 

Go play.

Gifts: 9

Just a summary of the month’s gifts today.  They are:

 

1.     love

2.     joy

3.     peace

4.     patience

5.     kindness

6.     goodness

7.     faithfulness

8.     gentleness

9.     self-control

 

Add your own!

Gifts: Self-Control

The final gift I’m giving myself this month is self-control.  I mean this in multiple ways.

First, there is the aspect of self-control expressed in my motor skills.  I want to move mindfully, to integrate complex motions into a coordinated whole.

 

Second, I want to manage my emotions.  Working out, because of the way our bodies hold emotion, can get hairy from time to time.  We work stuff out when we work out, and that can be a challenge.  I want to feel my feelings and also I want to express them in healthy and kind ways.  That’s a self-control task!

 

Finally, I want to use my self-control to maintain my healthy habits of work and eating and rest.

 

Anybody else want this gift?

Gifts: Gentleness

Gentleness might not seem like the most obvious gift in a fitness context.  I mean, we’ve all heard “go hard or go home” and similar sayings.  And yes, I am going to work hard when I work out.

 

Even so, the attitude I bring needs to be gentle.  My body is not there to be punished, but to be loved.  When I am working to my limit, I need to be gentle with myself because that is hard stuff.  I would never yell at a client, so why would I yell at myself when I don’t quite measure up to my own expectations?

 

Gentle encouragement makes the difference so many times.

What is gentle in your workouts? 

Gifts: 3

Ways to be faithful in workouts:

 

1.     Show up daily.

2.     Practice good form.

3.     Be a good workout buddy.

Gifts: Faithfulness

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?

Gifts: Goodness

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?

Gifts: 5

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. 

Gifts: Kindness

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?

Gifts: Patience

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?

Gifts: 3

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.)

Gifts: Peace

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.

Gifts: Love

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?

Fresh: Praxis

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.

Fresh: Pilates 2

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!

Fresh: Pilates 1

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.

Fresh: Strength 2

Another approach to freshening our weight workouts is to adjust the variables.  These include the number of reps, the number of sets, and the intensity (or what weight we use as a percentage of our single rep maximum).

Captain Obvious would like a word here.  We don’t want to increase all the variables at once.  If we choose, for example, to do a lot more reps, we’re going to need to choose lighter weights.  We need to be fresh-minded (yes, I just made that word up), paying attention to our bodies as we work to know when we have had enough.

 

Again, we don’t have to switch all the variables for all our workouts.  Making one a week or one a month different can be plenty to keep our bodies entertained and growing.