Stretch, but not until your limbs fall off...

All of us need to stretch more.  Our sedentary lives stick our muscles together.  Our bursts of activity create strength that could use a bit more looseness.

Of course, we could just do it.  We could put stretching on our lists of things to do and tick it off every day.  If that works, great!

However, most of us don’t.  We finish a workout and we’re tired and stretching seems like one thing too many.  We promise ourselves we’ll do it later.  And then we get distracted by the hot shower and the commute home and it doesn’t happen.  Here are two things we can do to get the stretching in:

1.     Get someone else to make you do it.  Maybe that means taking a yoga class or Pilates.  Maybe you work out with a trainer who plans it in at the end for you.  We are good and obedient people, most of the time.  If someone is standing there telling us to do it, we will.

2.     Tie it to something else.  I, for example, call my parents every Saturday morning.  If I promise myself that I will stretch while I am chatting about what Peanut (their dog) did, I get off the phone with longer muscles and Good Daughter Points (not to be sneezed at!).  It might work to tie stretching to doing the dishes (hi there, calves!) or checking email (piriformis stretch anyone?).  We can find something we do anyway and let stretching piggyback on it.

Monday Workout: Dead (or alive!)

Because I love squats so much, I sometimes forget about deadlifts.  I am fixing that this week.  Choose a heavy weight for the deadlifts and rows and go lighter on the curls than you might otherwise because of the lunge part.  Four rounds.

1 min cardio
deadlifts	20
lunge to curl	20
plyojacks/jacks/mod jacks	20
rows	20
plank	max time
side plank	max time

Friday Book Report: Two Books! One with Pictures!

As I’ve said every month since Andrew Luck started his book club, I love it that he chooses a “rookie” book for his younger fans every month.  That is being a good role model, encouraging the use of brains as well as body.  As luck would have it (pun!), his March selection, Zen Shorts by Jon J. Muth is about mindfulness.  This Caldecott Award-winning book obviously has lovely pictures, but also three lovely little stories a panda neighbor tells to the children next door.  Kids or adults who want some gentle ways to think about mindfulness will enjoy the stories and the panda-human friendship.

Luck’s April selection is a book I happen to have read when my kids were younger, the first in T.A. Barron’s Merlin saga, The Lost Years.  I have a weakness for Arthurian stories.  This reinterpretation asks how Merlin became the wizard we all know so well.  Young Merlin faces all kinds of challenges in a well-paced and interesting adventure.  Barron has written in other places about how story shapes our characters in real life.  This is a book that lives up to his own standard.

Read these books to yourself or to a kid and enjoy!

No bump on the head required

Where am I?  Fitness helps us answer this question, if not always the more existential Who Am I?  As we move our bodies mindfully, we build up the neural capacity to know where our bodies are in space.  The fancy word for this is proprioception.

We see it at work when we try to learn a new sport.  Our coach or teacher or friend keeps telling us to drop our shoulders or swing our legs or move our knees out and we react with surprise; weren’t we already doing that?  We had no idea what our body parts were doing.

One of the things that I like about Pilates is that most of the movements are slow.  This gives the body time to coordinate with the brain to build up a fuller picture of where all the parts are.  Yoga does the same kind of thing.  Of course, we can bring mindfulness to whatever we are doing, but sometimes it is useful to choose a practice that makes it easier.

Lift, but don't separate

Sometimes I talk about weight training and cardio like they are separate things.  They are, sort of.  But most cardio exercise works out to, at base, body weight exercise and anyone who has done heavy lifting can tell you that it will elevate the heart rate right quick.

This is good news for the time-pressed.  We don’t have to find an hour for cardio and an hour for weight training.  A weight workout with cardio intervals can do it all.  Do the heavy squats and the big bench presses.  Mix in some plyojacks or some sprints.  Go home tired and happy.

Listen!

I was talking with a friend over the weekend who has changed direction with her fitness.  The kinds of exercise she was doing before stopped appealing; meanwhile, her body let her know that it had other kinds of work in mind.  She actually listened to her body.  It’s working wonderfully well for her and the change shows not only physically, but psychically as the stress decreases.

Oddly enough, in the same conversation, I was saying that I was getting back to my usual exercise and that it felt great.  My body wants what it usually has and is somewhat politely requesting a return to the status quo.

What does your body want?  Does it want something new?  Does it want what it always wants?  The most important thing we can do in fitness is to listen to what the body says.

Monday Workout: With a Kettlebell!

This week we’re continuing to work with significant weight and cardio in combination.  The goal is to get our metabolisms moving!  If you have knee issues, please use good judgment in choosing whether to jump the lunges and in deciding between the overyets and high knees.

1 min cardio
(jump) lunges	20
fly	20
kb swings	20
kb overyets or high knees	20
barbell twist or Russian	20
pushups	10