The philosophy of form...

Emerson wrote that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.  I will use this in my defense should anyone point out that I contradict myself.  Then I will pull out other rhetoric, winning by boring my critics to death and enjoying the glazing over of their eyes.  Just kidding.  Mostly.

I often write that anything we do is better than nothing.  Today I am going to suggest that we actually have to try to do things well.  This would be that place where I appear to be inconsistent.  Both things are true.  Any work we do toward fitness is good.  I will almost always advocate for getting off the couch, the exceptions being times when we are sick or injured.  Do a little if doing a lot is more than we can handle.

That said, we have to pay attention to form.  It is better to do nothing than to do things that will hurt us in the long run.  If we consistently (hey, there’s that word again!) work out without paying attention to our body mechanics, we are setting ourselves up for future pain and suffering.  In that spirit, I offer these suggestions:

Make friends.  A workout buddy or trainer can help us see things we would otherwise miss.  A little reminder that we have to go through the whole range of motion, or that our elbows are sticking out too far, or that maybe we should use a lighter weight since we are compensating can save us from weeks of rehabilitation.

Make friends with the mirror.  When we work out alone, the mirror can help us correct errors in our proprioception (remember that fancy word?  It means our sense of where our bodies are in space.) that can lead to bad form.

Use abs.  I say some variation of “engage your abs” to clients more often than anything else.  Core strength might be the very best way to ensure proper form.

(The photo is me making friends with a warped mirror...)

Monday Workout: October Push

This month’s push workout includes one Pilates reformer exercise.  If you don’t have a reformer (like everyone does, right?), you get bonus cardio:  squat jumps.  It’s all about choosing weights that are heavy enough that ten repetitions are as much as we can do at once.  Two to three rounds.  Let’s be super strong!

1 min cardio
bar pullup	10
barbell squat	10
reformer jumping	10
barbell bench press	10
barbell row	10
bulgarian split squat	10
lateral raise	10
dumbbell walking lunge	10
deadlift	10

Rolling Rock, not the beer

In high school, I had several great teachers.  One of them made me go look up Sisyphus, which back then meant going to the library, not just whipping out my phone and asking Google, which is probably why I still remember it.  Sisyphus, according to the myth, was a jerk.  The gods punished him by making him roll a giant rock to the top of a hill only to have it roll back down for eternity.  Pretty frustrating.  He must have been a really serious jerk for that to seem at all appropriate.

There is one way that Sisyphus can lift his own punishment.  He can like rolling rocks.

So at first glance, I appear to be advocating some kind of Stockholm syndrome.  Rolling rocks uphill is hard work.  Being compelled to do it over and over again doesn’t make it better.  But shifting perspective, choosing to love the strain of the muscles and the roughness of the boulder and the moment of success at the top and the careening excitement of the rock falling back down, can turn hell into something else.

Workouts, I hope, are not hell, but for those hellish moments, maybe we can try loving rolling rocks.

Everything on the list...

I am a stress eater.  Rough day?  Bring on the mac and cheese and probably the ice cream, too.  I can drown my sorrows in spaghetti, no problem.  The actual foods involved might be different, but I know I’m not the only person with this problem.

So:  one thing we can do about it is make a list of things that make us feel better that don’t have any calories in them.  Here are ten of mine:

1.     Exercise.

2.     Sleep.

3.    Music.

4.     Dancing.

5.     Cuddling.

6.    Bath.

7.     Car wash.

8.     Pedicure.

9.     Knitting/sewing/crafts.

1. Bubbles.

What’s on yours?

Routine Non-Procedure

Routine, like everything else, has advantages and disadvantages.  If I routinely eat a pint of ice cream every night, I probably won’t like the results.  If I routinely hop out of bed and get to my workout, I am more likely to enjoy what happens.  So far:  duh, right?

What happens when routine is disrupted?  Besides total chaos and the end of the world.  At the point when we can’t fall into our routine, we get to make choices.  Do we step up and find a way to take care of our fitness or dietary needs without the comfort of routine around us, or do we assume we can’t do anything because we didn’t do it when we were expecting to?

Here’s my plan for when plans don’t go as planned:  find a way.  Yes, I rely on my habits to get me to do things automatically that I would ordinarily find a way to get out of doing.  But when something happens in the morning, an unusual appointment, a missed alarm, I can figure out some way to fit the workout into another part of the day.

Let’s Get Things Done.

Monday Workout: Hey, no burpees this week!

This week’s workout uses a stability ball for three exercises:  YTA, fly, and roll-out abs.  If you don’t have one, you can do the first two exercises on a bench and substitute your favorite ab exercise for the third.  The other special piece of equipment is the Xiser, which is kind of like a very low-tech elliptical trainer; you can substitute a minute on an elliptical or stepping on a bench.  As usual, do three rounds.

mountain climbers	30
squats	20
YTA	10
plyojacks	30
ball fly	20
curls	10
Xiser	30
1 arm snatch	20
roll out abs	10

Friday Book Report: Out of Their League

I haven’t watched any football this season.  It’s not just because my team—how do I say this delicately—sucks.  I’ve been having qualms about watching for years as a result of books like Jeff Benedict and Don Yaeger’s Pros and Cons and Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru’s League of Denial.  The whole circus around Colin Kaepernick and his peaceful protest strengthened my conviction that really this was all about hypocrisy.  Then I read (and wrote about) Harry Edwards’s Sociology of Sport, which led me to today’s book, Dave Meggyesy’s Out of Their League.

Essentially, Meggyesy’s account points out that none of the stuff that is hitting the news recently is new (the book was published in 1970).  The issues with player health, drugs, concussions, violence against women, racism, and pseudo-patriotism have been there all along.

In the Foreward, he writes about why he quit football:

“It’s hard for me to count the reasons why. But I can begin by telling you about an image that is etched deep into my memory.  The Cardinals were playing the Pittsburgh Steelers in St. Louis one rainy, cold Sunday afternoon.  We were beating them easily and then, with a minute or so to go, they scored.  I was playing end on the kickoff return team and my assignment was to swing more than halfway across field and block the third man from the kicker on the Pittsburgh team.  I watched the flight of the ball as it went straight down the middle.  Then I dropped back a few steps and began the sprint across field.  My man must have thought someone had blown their blocking assignment or maybe it was because he was a rookie, but whatever the reason, he was making a bad mistake:  running full speed and not looking to either side.  I knew he didn’t see me and I decided to take him low.  I gathered all my force and hit him.  As I did, I heard his knee explode in my ear, a jagged, tearing sound of muscles and ligaments separating.  The next thing I knew, time was called and he was writhing in pain on the field.  They carried him off on a stretcher and I felt sorry—but at the same time, I knew it was a tremendous block and that was what I got paid for.

“During the rest of my years in the pros, this image would occasionally surface in my mind.  This sort of thing happened all the time; it was part of a typical Sunday afternoon in big-time football.  But the conditions that made me feel a confused joy at breaking up another man’s body gradually became just one of many reasons why I decided to quit the game.

“After playing the sport most of my life, I’ve come to see that football is one of the most dehumanizing experiences a person can face…” (p.  3-4)

I quoted at length, I know, but I wanted to give the full force of his writing, of the conflict between the amazing athletic enterprise and the inherent violence, of getting paid to do a job well, except that job is to wreck people.

The book is engaging throughout and often funny, intentionally or through the passage of time and its effect on colloquial speech.  The whole experience is thought-provoking and produced change in my behavior.