Timothy Leary's dead...

A lot of times exercise can be mindless.  We just keep running or pedaling or pushing or rowing, only tuning in when something starts to ache or complain.  After all, the treadmill never goes anywhere, the pool water is always the same color, and gym ceilings are not known for their intricate frescoes.  That kind of mindlessness can be good, working to still the constant wheeling of our brains.

However, paying attention has benefits.  We learn where our bodies are in space (“proprioception” for you word nerds playing along) when we think about the movements we make.  We discover which muscles are working.  We can even figure out how to mitigate some of those aches with better form.

Change can be difficult, but paying attention makes it easier.

The flower is off-topic, but pretty

When my alarm goes off in the morning, I don’t want to exercise.  I want to roll over and sleep.  Besides, it is cold and dark outside the covers.  Somewhere in my brain, I know that I will feel great once I’m moving, but that part hasn’t exactly awakened yet.  Here is how I make myself exercise anyway:  planning.

I get out my exercise clothes the night before and even find my shoes, which can be a challenge since I am good at leaving them all over the place.  I meet up with a friend, or at least have to tell her I’m not coming; texting requires me to be awake enough that I might as well just get up and go.  Since I’ve acquired this smoothie habit, my breakfast gets made ahead; open refrigerator, insert face.

Everyone is different, of course.  What works for me may not be what works for you.  But maybe a little attention ahead of time can make your workout easier to get to.

Continue straight past the lizard...

Test is a loaded word.  Whether it evokes number 2 pencil post traumatic stress or that nightmare about the final in the room we can’t find on the subject we forgot we signed up to take, the very word can set off a stress response.

People, we are not in school anymore.  When we test ourselves, or submit to tests for ourselves, the point is not to gauge our success/worth/general reason for existence or even grade.  We test to get information.

I think about the assessments I do with clients as more like checking the GPS.  Where are we now?  The little blue dot on the map is not a moral judgment.  We can look at the results of the step assessment, for example, as the gas station where we turn to get to the corner of Main and Elm, a place we need to pass through on the way to our destination.  From there, we can see what we need to do next to arrive at the party.

No panicking, okay?

Jar-Jar Binks, however: always scary

Qui-Gon Jinn, noted Jedi master and sage, commented, “There’s always a bigger fish.”  His companions, somehow, were not reassured about their chances of survival as they fled the underwater menaces in The Phantom Menace.  Both Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan have valid points of view on this topic and they are relevant for our fitness pursuits.

Most of the time, we react like Obi-Wan:  scary monster!  Panic!  I will never make it through this overwhelming weight, workout, hill, injury, whatever.  It is okay to be freaked out by some of the things we attempt. 

Qui-Gon’s insight, however, reminds us that if we understand that there will always be bigger challenges (and sometimes pleasant surprises in the shape of things that seem worse and turn out to be the key to success), we can remain calm and deal with the monster.  Eventually, we will look back at the things that terrified us when we first attempted them and realize that they are about as scary as those once-frightening monsters that lived behind the curtains when we were kids.

Keep breathing and keep on working!

Dipping birds, drumming monkeys, and more

Sometimes my clients are surprised when I describe the things we use during our session as toys.  If a cardboard box can be a toy, so can a barbell.  It is easier to imagine the toy potential of a bosu—bouncing is fun!—or a giant exercise ball.  I speak that way about my equipment on purpose.

When we think about fitness as play, as fun, it is easier to stay motivated.  No kid getting out of bed in the morning says, “Drat!  I have to play today!”  (Not just because kids don’t normally say, “Drat!”)  That kid jumps up and grabs the Legos or the stuffed rabbit or the tiara or the football or all of the above and gets into it.  Sometimes play has hard parts, like getting that block tower to stay balanced, but it is still fun.  My block towers are things like single leg squats or tree poses, but the principle is the same.

There is no wrong way to play.  All of the toys are good toys and all of them build our minds and bodies one way or another.  Of course roller skating is more fun when there are fewer band-aids involved; that is why we practice our form, why we want to get better.

Also, laughter builds strong abs.  So come over and play!

Typecasting

My dissolute life has come back to haunt me.  Yes, I have to confess:  I used to do all kinds of office work, from straight data entry to payroll to all the other computer-worshipping and keyboard-intensive tasks.  Next time, I’m choosing a more fun version of a dissolute life.  The point is, the repetitive stress, which never bothered me on the job, is now biting me in the hands, wrists, and forearms, interfering with my fun on my bike and, incidentally, with my “activities of daily living,” as physical therapists say.  I’m not looking for sympathy.  I’m not having a personal pity party.  I just have some quality time scheduled with the chiropractor, the ice packs, and more weight training.

I, much like the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland, am much interested in the moral of the story.  Which, in this case, is:  choose your vices carefully.  The sub-moral is:  learn about harm reduction.

Sure, office work is not really a vice.  It is a convenient way of turning time into food, shelter, clothing, and books.  We all have things we need to do that are perhaps not ideal for our bodies.  That means that we also need to invest in our fitness, nutrition, sleep, and professional help to keep us suffering as little as possible.

Less pain is more fun.  Go play.

"Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages"

“It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct,” wrote Thoreau near the end of Walden, as he reflected on why he went to the cabin in the woods and why he left.  Similarly, when my kids were little, we often walked to the local bakery, usually on the same side of the street.  When we used the opposite sidewalk, the kids called it “the sneaky way.”

Leaving our usual paths and taking the sneaky way shifts our perspective.  I ride the same routes on my bike most of the time.  Over the weekend, I rode a new way.  I saw new views.  I faced new challenges.  And growth happened.

Even during the ride, the perspective changed.  The top picture is from near the beginning of the ride, the next two are from the middle and the end, each showing a bigger world.  Fitness is about a bigger world, one with more adventures and laughter and play.

Let’s explore the big world.  (Oh, the title is swiped from Chaucer, on the desire to travel in April.)