Moving through life

Fitness has many components.  As a trainer, obviously, my focus with clients is on movement as a way toward fitness.

We are embedded in time, which means that we live in a world of change.  We are always moving.  Training the body is just one way to direct our movement.

Let’s go in good directions.

Friday Exercise: Bent-Over Row

The Amazing Stickie loves having strong arms.  The bent-over row helps her achieve this goal.

She begins by standing with excellent posture.  (Reminder:  excellent posture consists of standing up straight with ears, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles in a continuous line.)  She bends her knees slightly and hinges at the hips to get into the bent over position.  In her hands, she holds dumbbells or a barbell.  On an exhale, she lifts the weights toward her armpits, elbows pointing behind her.  Then she lowers them back toward the floor on an inhale.

Stickie loves her shoulders and wants them to work forever, so she is particularly careful, when lowering the weights, not to let the weight pull her arms so far down that the head of her humerus is no longer centered in the socket.  She knows that if she cannot maintain her humeral head in the socket the weight is too heavy and she will need to work up to it.

Most of the time Stickie chooses a weight that she can lift 10 to 12 times for two or three sets for this exercise, but occasionally she does shorter sets of heavy weights until she can only complete a single, beautiful repetition.

Thursday Book Report: Looking Deep

When one goes on vacation and severely underestimates how much reading material is required, one might end up browsing the 99-cent used books at the closest bookstore.  This is how I ended up reading Looking Deep by Terry Bradshaw with Buddy Martin.

I love football.  I wasn’t paying attention much at the time that Bradshaw was an active player, but I enjoy his commentary nowadays.  He’s likeable, funny, and generous in spirit and he has good stories to tell about his remarkable achievements.

While he is certainly not perfect, he is disarmingly honest about his own shortcomings.  He describes coming to terms with his own racism and overcoming the biases he grew up with.  He owns his part in the professional and personal relationships that didn’t work out for him.

He’s also humble, crediting his success to hard work above all.  He addressed his struggles with intelligence, persistence, and humor.  May we all do likewise!

Finally, the book was entirely worth the under-a-buck I paid for it just to learn that the fake name he used when he had elbow surgery was… Thomas Brady.  There has to be a conspiracy theory waiting to happen there.

Rockin' the hard place

So I might be slightly obsessed with healing right now.  I’m sure that the obsession will pass as soon as the fascia in my foot allows me to bike again.  In the meantime, more thoughts.

Sometimes healing is a totally passive process.  I read seven books while I was on vacation because I had to sit still and heal.  My contribution to the process was negligible.  Sometimes I needed to add ice.  Patience becomes the exercised skill.

The active parts of healing, I think, are often about the bodily equivalent of housework.  Clean out the refrigerator and get fresh vegetables.  Toss out the worn out shoes.  Do the maintenance.  In other words, eat decently, stretch, plan, strategize for the future.

Laughing is also good.

Physical forms come in all... well... forms

I am not one of those people who obsess about the Olympics.  I don’t have a favorite Olympic athlete.  I don’t even know what events are on and when.  When I do see news about the Olympics, one of the things I find most shocking is the amount of negativity directed toward athletes’ bodies.

I probably shouldn’t be shocked.  Our culture likes to say negative things about bodies, especially women’s bodies.  I object.

Today’s message for the purpose of subverting the dominant paradigm:  YOUR BODY IS AWESOME.  Yes, I typed it in all caps.  Yes, I am shouting it out loud.  Do not argue with me.  I am right.

Your body (mine, too, for that matter) does magic every day.  It sees, hears, smells, tastes, and senses the world around it.  It moves you around.  It transforms energy into matter and vice versa.  Because of your body, you can laugh and dance and hug people and eat melon and play football and sleep late.

Do not tell me that you do not like your thighs or your belly or that weird spot by your left elbow.  Your body is awesome just the way it is.

Give your body some love today.  (With consent, you can also give somebody else’s body some love today!)  You have officially earned a gold medal in miracles.

Fit to fly...

I thought about fitness while I was on vacation.  This is one way I know that I have the right vocation; my work blends in with my regular life in good and inspiring ways.  Fitness changes our lives at a fundamental level.

Because I am still healing from injury, I am, at the moment, considerably less “fit” than usual.  My top crutch speed is not even close to the normal walking pace of my kids.  The demands of a healing body produced fatigue much faster than usual.  Stairs, inclines, doors, and non-paved pathways proved challenging.  My point here is not to complain (although I am an expert complainer!), but to notice the fitness I, and perhaps others of us, take for granted.  I missed out on some fun things because my body couldn’t do them.  At the same time, I was grateful for the fact that I am strong and fit enough to cope with my injury.

What fun things do I miss out on when I am not injured?  What could I do if I were more fit?  Fitness is not an end in itself, but a means to a better quality of life.  Let’s get stronger, faster, fitter, better, so we can have more good times.

Friday Exercise: Vacation

No picture today.  No real post!  The blog is on vacation because the blogger is on vacation!  Back in a little over a week!