Gumballs have nothing to do with this post

Some people love to do cardio.  They will run or zumba or bike all day.  They like the music or the sweat or the wonderful feeling of being done.  Other people love weights.  Power!  Moving heavy objects!  Shove over, Wonder Woman, I’ve got this!

The first group needs to tolerate weight lifting and the second group needs to put up with cardio.  Both are necessary for good health and fitness.

Cardio(pulmonary) activity, as the name suggests, works the heart and lungs.  We need our hearts and lungs to work so we can go on living for a long time.  Cardio burns calories, elevates mood, improves brain function, and sometimes even feels good.  It enables us to run around with children and dogs, be the last kid out of the bounce house, and scoff at elevators.

Weight training also burns calories, both directly and indirectly.  We all feel the calories sweating right out of our bodies when we lift, but we are also secretly building up our metabolisms.  Muscle tissue burns more calories than fatty tissue; the more of the former you have, the higher your metabolism (within reason.  We all need some body fat for optimal functioning.).  Weight training also strengthens bones.  We do not want to be that fragile old codger bent in the middle and so delicate that a breath can cause a fracture.  And, obviously, when we are stronger we can dare the folks at the supermarket to pack our bags heavier, we can move our own furniture, and we can amaze our friends with our ability to open the stickiest of jars.

So:  even if we like one kind of exercise better than the other, we have to suck it up and do the other one, too.  As Deion Sanders said in a commercial a long time ago, “Both, Coach.”

This one goes to 11

We like round numbers.  Ten reps?  Great.  But there is nothing magical about ten.  I know; I’ve tried to do magic with it and nothing happens.  In fact, when we constantly do ten reps of a particular exercise, we are training ourselves to do… ten reps, no more, no fewer.

The body responds to change.  That is where the growth happens.  Just for fun, try sets of eleven reps.  Every once in a while, do as many reps as you possibly can.  Maybe even increase the weight so that seven reps is the maximum, or three, or even one.  The body likes it.

The brain does, too.  We can all count to ten on autopilot.  Let’s wake up our minds as well!

Good news: It is June

Let’s pretend, just for a second, that it is September.  We have newly sharpened number 2 pencils and clean white pages in our spiffy Spiderman/Powerpuff/Kitten/Aaron Rodgers notebooks.  And the teacher says, “Write about what you did on summer vacation.”

What we choose to do over the next weeks will be the content of our imaginary essay.  We can hit Labor Day feeling invigorated, lighter, stronger, or… not.  I want to be able to write about my improved cardio, my greater mastery of some challenging Pilates exercises, my many bike rides, and my increased knowledge.

And I wouldn’t mind going swimming.  What’s on your list?

The goddess of victory says...

The culture has picked up simplicity as a buzzword.  There is a whole magazine about how buying a bunch of things will make things simpler.  Much is made of three-ingredient recipes, one-stop shopping, and seven easy steps to whatever.

That’s not what it is.  Or at least not necessarily.  We have some confusion between simplicity and optimization, between the look and the thing.  We do not need separate specialized gadgets for, say, poaching eggs, making quesadillas, and cooking bacon:  I do all those things with a pan.

In working out, we all have favorite toys:  bikes, weights, goggles, classes.  You can’t open a magazine without seeing some version of the perfect workout that uses just resistance bands, or tin cans, or park benches, or space aliens (actually, I would read the space alien one…).  Do whatever works.  Do what you like, what pushes you, and what your body responds to.  It doesn’t have to be complicated.  Just move.

Petals are kind of like pedals...

Over the weekend, shockingly, I went on a bike ride.  It was tougher than I expected in some ways.  Afterward, I talked it over with my Bike Guru because I suspected it had to do with food.

Side note:  It is really really really useful and fun to have smart friends to think things through with.  Pooling experience, swapping stories, and discussing strategies for survival make everything better.

We agreed that the particular ride was challenging because of food, water, and logistics.  The specifics don’t matter (although if you are interested, I will happily bore you with deep details…).  I spend plenty of time discussing choosing well with food, both in quantity and quality.  Usually it is a question of eating less of the former and choosing better examples of the latter.  However, when we do endurance things, hard stuff, we have to eat more.

Otherwise, we can end up performing less well, hurting more, and feeling much more stupid.  Lack of fuel promotes bad decision-making and crabbiness.  It also makes it hard to appreciate the passing scenery, which, on my ride, included emus.

I'll be popular some other time

It’s not very nice of me to talk about food on a day when many people have parties.  Oh well.  I guess I’m just not a nice girl.

Obviously, we all need to eat.  I would argue that it isn’t just about making sure the body has nutrients; it’s also about feeding our souls and building our communities and enjoying ourselves.

Here’s the thing:  we eat too much.

Choose wisely.  Eat what you really want in appropriate quantities.  You won’t face tomorrow morning looking for the loosest pants you have.

Happy weekend!

Welcome to Memorial Day weekend.  We are all ready, right?  We’ve planned to remember the dead, get supplies for the party, and prepare the perfect outfit.  Maybe we have packed the bags, loaded the car, boarded the kids, buckled in the dogs (wait… that doesn’t sound right… are we too stressed?).  Just one more thing:  plan to move your body.

Really?  Really?

Yes.  Somewhere in between the events and the s’mores and the singing of 99 Bottles of Beer, we need to move.  Even if we just offer to walk to the store to get more guacamole.  Even if we just take the fractious toddlers to the playground for a while and maybe sneak in a little swinging or sliding ourselves.  It will keep you from feeling like a ton of bricks on Tuesday morning.