Storage Systems

I have never changed a tire.  I could, probably, figure out how and I expect I would muddle through if I had to, but I’ve never actually done it.  I keep that knowledge and experience in someone else’s head.

For some people, trainers are the someone else who keep the knowledge and experience for them.  Clients show up and trainers direct them.  It’s a workable system.

However, it is possible to learn from trainers.  A good trainer should be able to tell clients what a particular exercise is good for, what pitfalls to expect, and how to avoid them.  Sometimes trainers will tell you the muscles working, by name, and may even go into exhaustive detail about insertion points, eccentric contractions, and time-under-tension.  Take what you want, or let the trainer keep it for you.

"Too Much of Everything Is Just Enough" or not...

I first encountered the idea of just enough effort in Pilates, but it is a concept that also occurs in yoga and one that deserves wider acceptance.

Some of us try to skate by on no effort at all.  Good luck!  If we’re hanging out on the stationary bike and reading, if we aren’t sweating or breathless, we’re pretty much wasting time.  If we have been lifting the same five-pound dumbbells for the last ten years, ditto:  our bodies figured out how to do that a long time ago.

Then there are those of us who behave as though every workout is a fight to the death.  We must go farther, faster, heavier than ever before at all costs!  And then we wonder why we are always tired, sore, and injured.

We should aim for the sweet spot.  Yes, we want to get our heart rate up.  We want to increase the weight we lift.  We want to get more flexible, more toned, and more balanced.  But we want to use our big brains (an important muscle!) to calibrate our effort for maximum efficiency.  We want to be a little sore, but not impaired.  We want to have a good time, but still struggle just a little to finish.

Enough is the right amount.

As Alice said to the Caterpillar...

When we approach fitness, unexpected qualities can turn out to be useful.  We know that strength and speed and flexibility and balance come in handy.  A certain amount of grit gives us the traction we need to succeed.  And then there is… curiosity.

Curiosity leads us into that Zumba class.  It encourages us to find out how to keep our hamstrings from cramping or what to do to get definition in our arm muscles.

At a deeper level, it helps us explore what is happening while we move.  What does it feel like to keep our knees aligned over our toes in squats?  How do we breathe when we are contracting our abdominals in a plank?  What the heck do we need to do to relax those neck and shoulder muscles, whatever we are doing?

That curious attitude can also help when we get hung up on a particular kind of success.  Rather than obsessing about our limited range of motion in a yoga pose, we can explore what feels loose and what feels tight, what feels challenging and what feels easy.

Experiment!