A single step

“Impatience is a vice; vice is a disgrace,” my son said the other day in the car, adapting the old adage about patience and virtue to the current topic, which was probably traffic, since we were in the car.  Impatience is also dangerous, especially in a fitness context.

Our bodies adapt to what we require of them.  All they ask is a little time to get used to it.  We can finish that long race and lift that amazingly heavy weight, but only if we let the body adjust by finishing shorter races and lifting lighter weights on our way.  We need to show the body not only what to do, but how to do it so we can live to tell the tale with a minimum of soreness.

We are, mostly, tortoises.  We put in the slow and steady work to win.  Admittedly, we aspire to being tortoises with bursts of speed at the crucial moments.  We get those by being smart.

GOAL!

We all know that goals help us get results.  What we don’t think about as often, perhaps, is how goals shape our fitness process.

Some of us work out as part of a general healthy life.  We want to get our 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise most days because we know that will help our bodies and minds remain strong and healthy even as we get older.  When this is our goal, we do not necessarily need to be going for the gold all the time.  We show up, we do our aerobic intervals, we make sure we are doing some weight bearing or weight training exercise, we stretch, and we’re good.

When injuries set us back, we focus on regaining our full abilities.  This is when we focus even more carefully on our form, patiently lift the temporarily lighter weights, put up with extra myofascial release and flexibility work.

Then there are the performance training times.  We find our weak spots and work them.  We push to go faster, harder, longer.  We figure out the small adjustments that make big differences.  We sweat and swear and feel the aches that come from growth.

Knowing what kind of goals we have in mind, we can plan effective workouts that meet our needs.  Mindful training is always better than mindless training.

Does this bias make me look fat?

I don’t like to drink my breakfast.  No, not because whiskey is not an acceptable breakfast.  I just like chewing better.  I am sure that I could happily and healthily live the rest of my life without drinking a smoothie, but I find it instructive to challenge my biases as often as possible.

Looking at the blender this morning, however, I almost bailed out.  It is cold and dark when I get up.  A nice cold drink was really not what I had in mind.  A nice cold drink full of seeds and nuts and fruits?  Crazy talk.  But I did it.

Guess what?  I lived to tell the tale.  I even feel good.  I’ll do it again tomorrow.

Your biases might be different than mine are.  You may feel that salads are not meals, or that vegetables should never be orange, or that whoever decided that peanut butter is not a food group unto itself was wrong, wrong, wrong.  Trying to stretch past that bias may not change anything (I keep trying to like olives and have not yet succeeded…), but then again, it might.

Eventually, we may find that we are happy without some previously treasured foods and with some new and different ones.  What have we got to lose?

Dance dance dance...

(OK... I had technical difficulties.  This is the video I wanted to put here:  https://youtu.be/CdvITn5cAVc)

Last week, I went to see an amazing dance production put on by the Destiny Arts Center and the Laney College Theater Arts Department.  Sitting in a theater doesn’t count as exercise, but it did give me exercise thoughts, two in particular.

First, every kind of body can exercise.  There were big dancers and little dancers.  Men, women, boys, girls, and all genders in between and outside danced wonderfully.  The careful little box of What Dancers Look Like blew up into a thousand pieces of gorgeous confetti.  No excuses.  We can all dance—or swim, or play soccer, or whatever gives us joy.

Which is the second thought.  The joy of the dancers seeped into everyone in the audience.  While we are working on some particularly sticky bit of training, we might forget that we are also exercising our joy muscles, but we are.  We are enabling our hip-hop selves to leap higher, our track star selves to feel the wind in our hair rushing ever faster, our yoga selves to fold more beautifully.

Go play.

Wheels Go Around

Most of the time, I am in favor of baby steps, the small, incremental gains that come from regular practice and achieving little victories.  Sometimes, however, going for the giant step makes the journey more interesting and fun.  Admittedly, the big steps scare the pants off me, but in a good way (no, not because I end up without pants afterwards—that would be bad).

The weekend after next I will be riding my first century.  One hundred seven miles in one day.  I’m not sure I can do it.  My previous best distance in one day is 80 miles, after which I promised to kill the friend who told me I could do it.  She said I’d have to catch her first, which means she is still alive and well.

I’m training.  I have a purpose with my spin classes and rides.  It turns out that when I give myself the challenge to go farther and faster, I find out that all that incremental stuff has paid off.  I can do it.

We can all use the knowledge that our work is, well, working.  Let’s rise to our challenges!  After all, if I go 81 miles, I have still gone farther than ever before.

Duck's Weekend

Duck needed a cold beverage on the way to So. Cal.

And then, of course, Duck needed a pit stop.

He had to stop at the bank for party funds.

Aaah... at last!  The pool!

But wait!  Duck's partner in crime needed a suit!



Duck!  You know what happens when you drink!  You start checking out the girls!



...And then you head out to find a place to party!

Duck likes Frank Sinatra!

In the morning, Duck woke up feeling like Godzilla.  So he headed to the golf course to devour some golfers!

By afternoon, he felt like relaxing some more by the pool.



After the drive home, Duck visited the car wash.

 All tucked in for a good night's sleep!  Great weekend, Duck!

Bend and stretch. Also Duck begins an adventure!

Remember the sit and reach test?  It was one of the yearly tortures of the President’s Physical Fitness Test (discontinued after the 2012-2013 school year apparently, and replaced with a new program with healthy living goals).  That may have been the last time we were actually evaluated on our flexibility.  Peeking around at the other people in yoga class doesn’t count; that is not an objective measurement (or helpful). 

Many people find working on flexibility to be about as fun as grocery shopping with a screaming toddler, if not as loud.  The good news is that toddlers eventually stop screaming, and so do our muscles when we get used to stretching them.

The better news is that flexibility helps us keep range of motion so that we will still be able to tie our shoes, walk, and scrub our own backs when we are old.  There is some evidence that flexibility helps prevent injury, but it isn’t conclusive.  Relieving tension, however, is always a good goal and stretching does help with that.

So even when we are pressed for time, we need to remind ourselves to do at least a little stretching.  Our bodies will appreciate it.

In other news, my duck has decided to go on vacation with one of my clients.  Here he is planning his trip to Palm Springs:

And here he is trying to find the car keys: