Make the minutes count... so you can concentrate on form!!!

How many articles, commercials, and blurbs do we see about what we can do “in just minutes a day?”  Here’s the thing:  many of us do not have minutes to spend.  I think most of us have already focused in on our major time wasters (hello, cop shows; I am looking at you…) and found ways to avoid them or multitask during them (watch pretend science while we pedal our spin bikes!).  We have to set priorities.

In fitness, this means that we recognize that we have only so much time to devote to it.  We need to make sure that what we are doing works.  In my opinion this means:

Interval training.  It builds cardio-respiratory fitness faster than steady pace work, it bumps up the metabolism for the whole day, and it doesn’t take as long to get the benefits (i.e., half an hour of intervals reaps about the same benefit as a whole hour of non-interval training).

That leaves time for weight work, which builds muscle, which builds up the metabolism and shapes the body.

And there is still time to stretch and roll and relax.  We need to take a moment or two or three to restore the body and the mind.  We all have more tension than we need.  Stiffness is not fun.  Working out the kinks through myofascial release, flexibility work, and some deep breathing pays off in reducing pain and increasing mental clarity.

And we should also probably take two minutes to floss our teeth.

Sweet somethings... or not.

I had a great Hawaiian vacation on Maui.  One of the highlights was ziplining with Flyin’ Hawaiian Ziplines.  Much of the land over which we slid (flew?) consisted of sugarcane fields.  One of the guides told us that sugarcane takes about two years to mature.  The process of harvesting sugar contributed to the cultural diversity of Hawaii, as immigrants came from Portugal, China, Japan, and other places to work in the fields.  Nowadays, the cane is harvested by burning, which reduces the sugar loss between field and processing plant; unfortunately, the growers burn the fields, drip systems and all.  Burning plastics might not be the healthiest thing in the world.  In fact, the sugar growers willingly pay a fine for the environmental impact of burning fields.  All that irrigation is necessary because it takes about a ton of water to produce a pound of sugar.  For more on the environmental impact of sugar growing, check out World Wildlife’s data here.

Why is this a fitness issue?  Several reasons.  First, no one can be healthy without clean water and clean air.  Second, sugar consumption underlies a lot of the obesity problem we face personally and societally.  Sugar tastes good; we are programmed from birth to like sweet things.  We can all use a little more motivation to reduce our intake.  If the personal risks of sugar (excess weight, potential diabetes, energy crashes, etc.) aren’t enough to convince us to skip the sweets, maybe saving the world a little bit might help.

Smoothie, Diet Coke, Spin Class, Hard Boiled Egg, Vitamin Water Zero...

I hate logging my food and exercise.  It’s time consuming.  It’s boring.  It’s repetitive.  And that is just the paper kind of logging.  The available software seems to be worse unless I eat the exact same thing all the time (Apparently, most people eat about 100 foods.  I haven’t yet tried to figure out my 100.).

But.

I know when I do stop and write down what I am eating and what kind of exercise I am getting it helps.  Some of the help comes in the form of a well-known effect:  I won’t eat the 27 cookies if I know I have to write it down.  I will do the workout when I don’t want to because I don’t want a blank space on my chart (I don’t really believe in the Great Gradebook in the Sky, and yet I act like I do…).

Wriggling away from the truth does not count as exercise.  Let’s write it all down.

Do Be Do Be Do

“Civilization” comes from surplus.  I believe that is a reasonable summary of one of the premises of grade school social science as I learned it in the dark ages.  At that point, I think there were tinges of cultural superiority with overtones of colonialism, but I was about nine and my consciousness had hardly emerged, much less been raised.  It remains true that when we have to struggle for pure survival, we are perhaps less likely to develop elaborate architecture, write sonnets, or create action movies.

We have all read or heard or seen articles about how the end of the world is coming because of (choose any of the following or invent your own) greed, environmental destruction, new math, population growth, reality television, violent video games, cell phones, and the proliferation of kale.  We live somewhere in the tension between the fact that the world will, eventually, have to end and the fact that it hasn’t ended yet.  Some version of this hamster-wheel of thought invades all of us from time to time as we dash from work to grocery store to dry cleaners to soccer practice.  We are surrounded by things to do, varieties of stimuli, thoughts, feelings, events.

We get stuck in our heads.

One of the most precious gifts of exercise, from my point of view, is focus.  All the whirl of too much to do, too many thoughts, too many challenges can spin away with the bike tires.  I, and maybe all of us, can benefit from the emphasis on breath that aerobic exercise brings and the concentration on muscle coordination that enables heavy lifting.

Fight existential angst:  go out and play.

Action movies don't count as exercise, either...

The last few days, getting enough sweat has really not been an issue since the weather has been so, well, summery.  Unfortunately, breaking a sweat lifting the glass of iced tea doesn’t count as exercise, even though it may feel like more effort than it should be.

What to do?

Hydrate.  That means water, water, water, and more water.  Maybe something with added electrolytes if the workout is long, but mostly water.  This means before, during, and after the workout.

It doesn’t count as hydrating, but swimming is a great option for hot weather.  Also paddleboarding, surfing, splashing around, and water balloon fights.  Extra bonus points when we need to run away from a successful balloon bombing. 

Another option involves advance planning:  getting up early enough to work out before the scorch.  In theory, after the scorch also works, but I find that it takes an awfully long time for things to cool down in the evening.

If all else fails, find someplace with air conditioning, like a gym (ideal) or mall (power walking, anyone?).

Then again, we can always just think of what we are doing as Hot Workouts.  That’s because we all look so hot in our gym clothes, right?

"I got transported through a worm hole..."

“I broke my leg,” is a good reason to skip a workout.  “I’d rather watch all nine seasons of Star Trek Next Generation,” is, well, less good (although T.R. seems to be surviving a summer of doing just that).  “I’d rather floss my teeth,” at least involves a healthy behavior, but it’s not very plausible, it probably won’t happen, and it doesn’t take long enough to justify missing an entire workout.  And that is assuming it isn’t being said in the sense of “I’d rather poke my eyes out with flaming spoons.”

We all have days when we don’t feel like working out.  We can make up excellent and creative excuses for ourselves.  Our Inner Sloth will happily loll around on the lounge chair with a fruity drink.  Or our Inner Puritan will insist that we have important work to do instead.  Or our Inner Brat will just have a tantrum and demand a toy.  (It’s getting crowded In There!)

But we can ask ourselves a key question or two to sort out the good reasons from the bad.  Maybe “Do I feel up to going out with friends?”  (This is a little bit like when Mom would tell us if we were too sick to go to school, we were too sick to ride our bikes.)  Or “Which will make me feel better, getting this spreadsheet done now or working out?”  Or “Would I brag about what I did instead?”  Find the questions that work.  We might skip fewer workouts.

Shiny, Captain!

It is renovation season in the neighborhood.  Houses sport new colors, yards display new drought-resistant flowers, roofs fly off and return stronger than before.  Even I pulled weeds and trimmed up the back yard.

On an even more local level, we can do some renovations.  Maybe it’s time to clean our body houses.  I am not a believer in “detox” programs; we have livers for that.  However, we all can do the equivalent of cleaning out the fridge, waxing the floors (does anybody do that anymore?), washing the curtains, and decluttering the closets.

Maybe it is time to turn that idea that we can’t do some particular thing into mulch.  Or time to recycle our outdated body image.  Or even stop reading about new fitness techniques long enough to try some.

What will make us feel new and shiny?