Execution (or just vintage handcuffs)

I love planning.  And office supplies.  What’s not to like about a lovely color-coded list, cross-referenced with a calendar, with boxes to tick with a special pen?  Whatever motivates me (or us) is fine.

The catch is:  we have to do the things.  The best plan won’t work if we don’t actually get off our behinds and get stuff done.  So yes, let’s plan, but let’s also execute.

Then we can cross items off and experience progress.

A wave made of sticks in the rain...

Go outside and play.  I know.  It might be wet out there, or cold, or windy.  Find your jacket.  Buy one, if you don’t have a decent one.

Working out in the gym is awesome.  I love it.  But we need to get out into the world from time to time.  We have to take advantage of what natural light we can find at this time of year.  We have to breathe real air that hasn’t been processed and recirculated.

It’s good for the body and better for the brain.  Also, outside has puddles for splashing.

Monday workout: body weight

This week’s workout is all body weight exercises!  Hooray!  Do three rounds.

40 opposite knees

20 squats

20 punches

side plank (w/rotation)

plank

20 deep lunges

10 pushups

10 femur arcs

10 chest lifts

10 obliques

Friday Book Report: Papillon

The latest selection in Andrew Luck’s book club for adults is Papillon by Henri Charriere.  (Andrew Luck makes this qualify as fitness reading.  Also, extreme endurance events in the plot.)  The book is a memoir written by a man sentenced to life imprisonment in French Guyana.  He attempts multiple escapes, eventually succeeding and going on to live out his life in Venezuela.

This was not my favorite book.  Much of it reads too much like fiction, and some of it like the kind of fantasy a horny con would come up with.  The exploits are exciting, the prisons are horrible, and the characters are colorful.  They just don’t seem all that real and thus are less compelling.  Maybe I would like it better if I were a male.  Or if I saw the movie with Steve McQueen.

Verdict:  Give this one a miss.

Thursday Book Report: Indestructible

Full disclosure:  I went to high school with John Bruning and I think he is smart, funny, talented, and generally awesome.  Now go buy his book, Indestructible.

John tells the story of Pappy Gunn, a Naval pilot turned airline pilot turned Army Airforce Captain, who, by dint of extreme endurance and remarkable ingenuity, works to rescue his family in the Philippines during World War II.  It is all true; it has to be, because otherwise it would be absolutely unbelievable.  With deft prose, John unfolds the tale of remarkable characters in an indomitable family.

I don’t want to spoil the story by revealing the twists, but there are many, as well as a flying lizard, episodes of radical shoe-shopping, and enough airplane details to satisfy the aficionado in your family (my family has one; doesn’t everyone’s?).

Also, Pappy painted his airplanes red and therefore was a man after my own heart.

Unicycles use lots of core muscles, too

More is not necessarily better when it comes to cardio.  This is good news for those of us who are easily bored.

Unless we are training for a century ride, a marathon, or something similarly long and endurance-based, we do not need to spend hours and hours on steady-state cardio.  In fact, the data suggests we get more benefit from shorter workouts with high-intensity intervals.

What does that mean in practical terms?  No more hour-long walks on the treadmill.  Spend twenty minutes or half an hour.  Warm up for five minutes, then alternate bursts of speed of about a minute with recovery periods of one to two minutes.  This works with all the cardio equipment in the gym or out in the real world if you are running, biking, swimming, or pogo-sticking.  Then cool down for five minutes.

Not only does this form of training help our cardiovascular systems learn to recover more quickly, it also motivates our metabolisms to burn more calories.  Win!

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...)