Five!

Some days we need a little nudge to get us moving.  Here are five good reasons to move today:

It helps us maintain our body weight.  I am not into fat-shaming, even a little bit.  I believe that healthy bodies come in many sizes and all are amazing and beautiful.  However, we all know that everything we do would be harder if we had to carry around a 25-pound backpack all day.  Let’s make it easier on ourselves and ditch the built-in backpack if we need to.

It gives us more energy.  In our sleep-deprived, caffeine-fueled culture, we can all use a little boost.  Walks are free and can jump up our physical and mental batteries.

We can have better sex.  Or whatever we want to do.  Pretty much everything is easier when we are in better shape.  We can do the things we love for longer and with greater coordination.  Flexibility is also a plus in most contexts.

We get empowered.  It may be as simple as opening our own jars or as complex as getting the confidence to start a business, confront a bully, or write a novel.  What we learn in our workouts transfers to our lives.

It’s fun.  Maybe not all exercise is fun, but an awful lot of exercise things are.  We can splash, roll, dance, wiggle, and chase our way to fitness.  Anything that makes us laugh gets us bonus points for working our abs.

Let’s do it!

In Out Repeat

We all have to breathe or die.  The quality of that breathing makes a difference to our quality of life.

Workouts, whether they are cardio, strength, Pilates, or flexibility, can help us learn to improve our breathing.

Cardio works to make our breathing more efficient.  When we practice getting our heart rate up and letting it recover, we improve the function of our heart and lungs.  Our bodies process oxygen better.  We also learn to stay calm when we have stress because we know what to do when our hearts start beating faster:  we breathe more.

The other kinds of exercise all help us to coordinate our breath with our movements.  We learn that some movements work better when we do them with an exhale; others flow better from an inhalation.  We practice breathing with awareness, taking control of our breathing when necessary and letting our autonomic system handle it the rest of the time.

The workouts at the most obviously mindful end of the spectrum (Pilates, yoga, etc.) specifically train the breath with the movement.  We learn to turn our focus inward by noticing the breath and then working with it.

We all have to breathe, but we can all do it better.

Formal

I get kind of picky about form.  I do it not because I’m a control freak, but because I love my clients and want their bodies to last a long time.

Form makes the difference between effective, sustainable workouts and excessive wear on susceptible joints.  When we are careful to maintain our bodies with good alignment, we enable ourselves to lift more, go harder, and get better.

We all need to watch where our knees go when we squat, engage our abdominals, align our shoulders properly, and know what our pelvises are doing.  (Knowing what our pelvises are doing is not actually a bad idea in all of life…)

Of course, we all have our own personal quirks and issues.  We all have places where our form could get better.  We strive to improve.  I’m here to help approximate our way to greatness.