Run, run away

In a perfect world, I would never be grumpy.  Until the world becomes perfect, I have cardio.

I know a lot of people who tell me that they are too tired to walk or run or bike or otherwise move.  I understand.  I am sometimes one of those people.  The thing is, I do it anyway.

I may bitch and moan about how tired I am, but almost always by the time I’ve been walking or riding or swimming for five minutes, I am smiling again.  Some of it is chemical, no doubt.  I love endorphins.  But there is also the psychological benefit of Doing Something instead of hanging around just letting things fester.  Bonus points for going outside.

Friday Exercise: Medicine ball slams

The Amazing Stickie likes exercises that serve multiple purposes.  Medicine ball slams work the whole back of the body, demand coordination, and raise heart rate, all at the same time.  For bonus points, on days when Stickie feels frustrated, she can imagine that the things that are frustrating her are in front of her on the floor and smash the heck out of them.

She begins holding the medicine ball over her head.  Because medicine balls are not all that bouncy by nature, it requires a pretty good slam to get it to hit the floor and bounce back up to where it can be caught.  Stickie uses her arms and back to slam the ball down and her knees to get low enough to catch it as it rebounds.  She will often do thirty slams at a time, or, for a switch, slam the ball for a minute at a time between other exercises for a cardio burst.

Thursday Book Report: The Boys in the Boat

I didn’t really need another reason to like Andrew Luck.  He’s smart, talented, and a good sport.  Now that he has started a book club, I am a real fan.  I wrote about the book he chose for kids a couple of weeks ago.  His first selection for adults (although, depending on your kids, I can see them getting into it also) is The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown.

What a great story.  A bunch of mostly poor kids from Washington overcome all kinds of struggle from dysfunctional families to financial disaster against the background of the Great Depression.  They learn to pull together and win gold in Hitler’s Berlin.

It would have been very easy for this to have been just a sports book.  The athletic achievement of the group has enough heft all by itself, what with guys jackhammering on the construction of Grand Coulee Dam in the summer to raise money for school in the fall and incidentally get even stronger and other similar tales.  What makes it more is that Brown has a sense of history.  He puts all the grit and brawn and inherent struggle to achieve in the context of the Dust Bowl on one hand and the Nazi rise to power on the other. 

Go read it.

Remain

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” – Frank Herbert in Dune

What are we afraid of, when we head to the gym?  (Heading to the gym is not more scary than heading anywhere else, by nature.  I find that what is true about heading to the gym tends to be true about pretty much every other place.  This may be because I am a metaphor junkie.)

Sometimes we are afraid of failure.  Maybe we go to the gym and we don’t end up suddenly fit and wonderful.  Maybe we keep going and we don’t get the results we want and we become sure that it is because we suck and nothing can ever fix it and we should really just go get ice cream instead.

Sometimes we are afraid of success.  If we go to the gym and get stronger and fitter and cuter and smarter, suddenly we might feel able to transform in other ways and in other areas of life.

I think that really it comes down to fear of change.  We are used to How Things Are.  Except that things are always changing.  The question is whether we want to be agents or victims.  I vote for agents.

We can do it

Sometimes we forget.  Life gets busy and we spend our time zooming from one thing to another and we lose track.

We are strong.  We are powerful.  We can change the world.

Let’s remember that today as we work through what is in front of us.

Note to self

Almost everything out there about weight loss suggests that keeping a food journal helps.  Recommendations sometimes include writing down not only what was eaten, but how much, when, and in what emotional state.  There are many theories about why this works.

Of course, keeping data allows tracking.  If we don’t know what we are eating, how can we adjust?  The act of writing down each bite also creates mindfulness.  We may not want to record for posterity that midnight cookie, so we might skip it.  Patterns can emerge:  we overeat at those Sunday brunches with Grandma and on Mondays after that stressful staff meeting; we eat no vegetables on Thursdays because we do the shopping on Fridays and we are already out by Thursday.

Yes, writing down all the foods is a pain in the patella (as my son used to say when he was little).  Some people find the millions of software programs out there helpful.  Others like fancy notebooks.  All I can manage is a series of daily post-it notes.  I won’t do it if it is complicated.  As usual, the take-away is do what works.

Friday Exercise: Upright Row

The Amazing Stickie enjoys working the muscles of her back and arms to keep her posture lovely.  The upright row helps with this goal.

Today, Stickie is using a barbell, but dumbbells also work for this exercise.  She begins holding the bar with an overhand grip with her arms straight at her sides.  As she inhales, she makes sure that her body is aligned in good posture.  When she exhales, she lifts the barbell up toward her shoulders by bending her elbows.  The next inhale returns her to the starting position.

Depending on the weight she is using, she will do about three sets of 10 to 15 repetitions.