Monday Workout: Toys!

This week’s workout features two of my favorite toys:  kettle bells and the BOSU.  If you don’t have access to either, do the kettle bell exercises with a dumbbell and the BOSU exercises on the ground; they’ll still work!  Three rounds.

mountain climbers	30
deadlifts	20
dips	10
kb swings	30
kb 1 leg pass	20
kb 8s	10
Bosu/TRX squats	30
Bosu curls	20
Bosu pushups	10

Friday Book Report: Somatics

Mindful movement is something I believe in.  Thomas Hanna’s book, Somatics: Reawakening the Mind’s Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health, explores the impact of mindful movement on aging.  Hanna, in fact, contends that aging as we understand it is actually the result of unconscious patterns we build up in response to the stresses of life and that mindful movement can restore our bodies to full function.

His somatic exercises build on and complement Feldenkrais exercises.  They are simple and non-time-consuming (I was going to say “quick,” but the goal is to move slowly and mindfully.).  Whether or not the exercises are as transformative as he claims, I cannot say, but they do seem both safe and useful.

Amazing!

Last weekend, I watched some amazing dancers.  It was inspiring to see how beautifully bodies can move.

Most of us don’t move quite so beautifully.  Know what?  That’s okay.  Dancers, like other professional athletes, train at levels the rest of us can’t sustain.  Their normal is our recipe for injury.

What we can do is emulate their attention to detail and form and their joy in their craft.  We can all find a movement we love and work to be our best at it.