Monday Workout: Core!

This week we get a little core-focused.  When using kettle bells, we have to keep our core engaged to protect our backs.  Roll-out abs use our core from the moment we start the roll out; the part where we pull our knees to our chest is almost secondary to the work we do just to keep balanced on the ball!  Three rounds.

kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s	10
(jump) squats	30
upright rows	20
curls	10
barbell clean and press	30
lunges	20
roll out abs	10

Friday Book Report: Half a book

So today’s book report is, in theory, about Walker Percy’s book The Message in the Bottle.  It’s a collection of essays with the subtitle “How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other.”  I read a little more than half of it.

It’s not that I’m uninterested in language, cognition, and philosophy.  It’s not that I find semiotics boring.  I can be fascinated by all of those things.  This particular version of the discussion just isn’t capturing my attention.  Some of it has to do with the age of the essays.  The voice is very White and very Male.  I forget that I used to swim in that water without noticing it (hmm… a reflection about language in a book about language…).  The kind of alienation Percy speaks about in his man on the subway is not the Zeitgeist of this era; we have our own brand of alienation and apparently flavors of despair look more dated than the glasses our fathers wore for twenty years.

I should have stopped reading after the first forty pages or so.  Maybe even earlier.  I stuck it out for 176 out of a mistaken sense of duty.  Some books are not my books.  Some teachers are not my teachers.  I can remain engaged in how language works, what makes humans conscious, how brains work, where the path of evolution takes us, and other mind/body issues without reading this particular book.  I choose to spend my time with some other book.

Some of fitness is about making good choices.  Choose a book you love.

Do it anyway

We all have exercises we feel good doing (yes, all of us, even if we have to search deep…) and ones that we dread.  Usually, the ones we dread are the hard ones.  Here are some reasons to do them anyway.

1.     You don’t want to look like Popeye.  If you only do the exercises you like, you only develop certain muscles (“muskles?”).  We don’t want to have enormous forearms and no chest to speak of.  We suck up the exercises we don’t like to bring balance to our bodies.

2.     You want to age well.  Many of the exercises we avoid target the back of the body.  We need those hamstrings for walking and running and squatting.  We need those glutes and spinal muscles to keep us from hunching forward.  We need those rhomboids to keep our shoulders back so we can have lovely posture no matter what our age.

3.    You want bragging rights.  Almost all of us hate burpees.  But I notice that when someone wants to emphasize that it was a killer workout, that’s what they mention.

4.     You offer yourself a reward for doing them.  I believe in self-bribery, although I think it is best if the bribes have no calories.  If you do those over-yets, you definitely deserve that bubble bath.

Who are you? It helps to know!

How do you learn?  This is an important question for anyone seeking positive changes, especially in fitness.  A similar, but related question, is what are your particular kinds of intelligence?

One way to answer the first question comes from David Kolb’s learning styles.  (A quick web search can find you an assessment to test yourself!)  He found four:  diverging, assimilating, converging, and accommodating.  I don’t think the names describe the states all that well.  Essentially, he places people along one axis from thinking to feeling and another from doing to watching.  Divergers learn by feeling and watching; assimilators learn by thinking and watching; convergers learn by thinking and doing; and accommodators learn by feeling and doing.  When you know how you work best, you can maximize those kinds of experiences in your learning process.  In fitness, this might mean an assimilator would want to watch a demonstration of a new exercise and think through exactly what the body is doing, what muscles are working, and how to progress through each step.

Howard Gardner provides a way to answer the second question.  He proposes seven types of intelligence:  linguistic, logical/mathematical, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.  (Again, a quick web search can help you test yourself!)  When you attack a new task, if you do it from a position of strength, you are likely to have more success.  A person with strong musical intelligence, say, might use the music of an exercise class to imprint the motions into her or his brain and body, while a linguistic person might need to talk him- or  herself through the steps.

There are so many great tools out there!  Let’s use them!

I met my goal; can I help you with yours?

I did it!  I finished my NASM Behavior Change Specialization!  I have new tools that I can use to help clients meet their goals.  Heck, I have new skills to help them set those goals in the first place!

If you’re already working with me, let’s take the opportunity to check in on where you are and where you want to go.  If you are just considering what you might like to do, let’s talk and see if I can help you along your journey!

Monday Workout: Holiday? What holiday?

We’ve been doing a lot of short circuits, so it was time to get back to the 30/20/10 model.  I made the squats a 10, so if you want to continue working heavy after last week, it will work.  We can all benefit from some shoulder stability, so we get to do YTA, too.  It’s a surprisingly difficult exercise with great benefits!  Three rounds.

plyojacks	30
bench press	20
squats (can go heavy)	10
jump lunges	30
flies	20
YTA	10
ball woodchoppers	30
ball slams	20
ball rescues	10

Friday Book Report: A Leg to Stand On

Oliver Sacks’s book A Leg To Stand On tells a great story.  It’s a story of personal triumph over adversity, including a near-death adventure, a giant bull, and swelling classical music.  And it is a great exploration of proprioception at the same time.  Sacks, as a neuropsychologist and doctor, brought unique skills to bear on an exploration of his own major injury and the resulting loss of recognition of his leg.  The surgical repair went well, but somehow he could not feel his leg at all.  It vanished from his sense of his body.  He does, eventually recover both full use of his leg and his leg does rejoin his body-concept, but it is a fascinating and frustrating process.

What he learns, among other things, is that our bodies define themselves in action.  Our movements make ourselves.

Even if I hadn’t been interested in the subject itself, I think I would have enjoyed the book because he is a smart, literate person with a flair for language and a poetic sense of the world.  I recommend the book!