Sitting in the sun is a good one...

Somewhere out there, there is probably a band named Emergency Third Rail Power Trip.  If there isn’t, there should be.  (Why, yes, I do have a problem with reading signs and giving them different interpretations than they were intended to have…)  Furthermore, we should all also find our own emergency third rail power trips.

We all have emergencies.  Some are real (sudden illness, natural disaster) and some less so (A zit! Right there!  On my face!), but all of them cause stress.  The point of an emergency third rail power trip is to remove the power supply from that stress so it fizzles and dissolves instead of sending its little cortisol messengers out to encourage us to flip out.

Let’s have a little disaster preparedness seminar with ourselves and figure out what we can do to unplug the stress.  Maybe it is breathing practice.  Maybe it is hard cardio work.  Maybe it is hugs.  Whatever it is, let’s figure it out before the emergency comes so we can stop the madness.  It will keep us healthier.

Friday Exercise: Renegade Rows

Stickie, naturally, is a Styx fan.  How could she not be?  On days she wants to crank up Renegade, she does renegade rows and works her abdominals and her upper body strength.

She starts in pushup position with her hands holding dumbbells on the ground.  Keeping her hips and shoulders level, she raises one dumbbell toward her armpit and lowers is back to the ground.  Then she repeats with the other arm.

Sets of ten are good.

Thursday Book Report: How Learning Works

My kid recommended How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching by Susan A. Ambrose, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha C. Lovett, and Marie K. Norman.  Being a trainer is not the same as being a teacher or professor, but some aspects transfer.  Also, I think of learning as part of life; we are all students and can maximize our learning.

The seven principles are:

1.     Students’ prior knowledge can help or hinder learning.

2.     How students organize knowledge influences how they learn and apply what they know.

3.    Students’ motivation determines, directs, and sustains what they do to learn.

4.     To develop mastery, students must acquire component skills, practice integrating them, and know when to apply what they have learned.

5.     Goal-directed practice coupled with targeted feedback enhances the quality of students’ learning.

6.    Students’ current level of development interacts with the social, emotional, and intellectual climate of the course to impact learning.

7.     To become self-directed learners, students must learn to monitor and adjust their approaches to learning.

When I think about how I plan and implement workout plans, I see how these principles apply to fitness.  For example, we all come to our workouts with some level of knowledge about our bodies and what they can do.  Sometimes we “know” how to do things incorrectly and that means we have to re-learn now to perform a particular task or exercise.  Welcome to the first principle!

Similarly, all of us who have progressed from one level of an exercise to another have experienced the third principle.  We begin our pushups on the wall, move to the bench, maybe use our knees on the floor, and so on, each progression marking a stage of mastery over our bodies.

Let’s take a look and see what we might want to focus on to increase our learning during our workouts.

Focus

I wear glasses.  My prescription has only the slightest correction for distance vision; I don’t have to wear my glasses to drive safely.  The real reason I need to wear my glasses is so that I can see what is right in front of my face.  (Glasses are easier to come by than longer arms.)

That said, I need both kinds of vision.  So do we all.  When we figure out what we want in fitness goals, we need to look both at the distance to figure out where we want to end up and at the immediate to figure out where to start.  We need to know where we are going and what steps to take to get there.

Let’s invest five minutes in naming the big fitness goal and then deciding what to do today or this week to bring it closer.

I'm so lazy I need to work out

In some ways, the best reason to focus on fitness is laziness.  Laziness loves efficiency, because it leaves more room for sleeping in and reading and cuddling.

Fitness saves time.  Time spent exercising is an investment.  It makes us healthier, which gives us more years to live in and a better quality of life during those years.  We get to spend fewer hours in doctors’ offices.  We don’t waste hours staring at the ceiling trying to fall asleep.

Fitness saves money.  Many fitness pursuits are cheap in themselves.  Almost all of them are cheaper than therapy and doctors.  When we maintain our weight, we don’t have to spend money on bigger clothes.  When we maintain our moods through fitness, we don’t have to do retail therapy.

Fitness can save our lives.  Sometimes this is literal.  Fitness correlates with reduced risk of all kinds of nasty diseases.  In a more figurative sense, it can save our lives from stress, boredom, and depression.

Work out so you can be lazy!

Bonus points for carrying up and down stairs

While lifting more weight in the gym is, in itself, a goal for some of us, it isn’t really supposed to be an end in itself.  The point of the exercise lies in what happens the rest of the time.

Over the weekend, I ended up doing some recreational furniture moving with some friends.  It is good to be able to lift and carry what seemed like endless boxes of books.  It is interesting (and sometimes frustrating!) to apply the mechanics of lifting to something like a filing cabinet instead of a barbell.  Yes, I like having a nice, tidy number next to the amount I can lift.  I like it better when the amount I can lift becomes a practical asset in daily life.

By all means we should take joy in our gym time and in all our times.  But let’s remember that life happens in other places, too.

Friday Exercise: Mountain Climbers

The Amazing Stickie works hard to ensure that she has strong abdominals and excellent cardiovascular condition.  One way she does this is by doing mountain climbers.

The starting position is more or less a pushup position, but with a slight pike to the body.  In other words, Stickie sticks her bootie in the air.  Then she brings one foot forward into a modified lunge position.  She jumps her legs up and switches which foot is forward, repeating rapidly until she is good and breathless, keeping her abdominals lifted the whole time.  A minute is a good amount of time to spend on this exercise.

It is also possible to do this exercise with the hands on a bench or on a BOSU.  Standing mountain climbers are also good; in that case, Stickie pretends she is Spiderman climbing a building, side bending as she lifts her knee toward her elbow on the same side of her body.