Sometimes I get lucky...

I have a dog with a bad habit.  She is an early riser.  For the most part, I am, too, but she and I have slightly different definitions of “early.”  If I am very, very lucky, she lets me sleep in until 6.

Because I strive to be a make-lemonade kind of person, my dog’s bad habit has led to my personal daily minimum exercise.  She and I have to go for a walk.  We spend about half an hour trekking to 7-Eleven to buy a newspaper and coming back.  It gets me close to the recommended 30 minutes per day of moderate cardio and my normal running around takes care of any minutes that I miss.

We all have ways we can essentially automate our lowest bar for exercise.  Those of us who are not blessed with an early-rising dog may have to make a rule about having to walk to get that special coffee in the morning or about which parking place to choose or maybe even how many items we carry up and down the stairs at a time.

This makes it possible to focus our dedicated exercise time on the stuff that is harder to automate, like lifting weights or working flexibility and balance.

We can do this.  Also, I am happy to lend out my dog.

Monday workout: Maybe we'd rather have lords a-leaping?

This is the week before Christmas.  Technically, the twelve days of Christmas don’t start until Christmas itself, continuing until January 6, but we are not strict theologians around the studio.  Heck, we also do this workout once sometime in the summer, just for fun.

Here’s how it works.  We begin with day one and do one push press.  Not so bad.  Then, even though about ten seconds have passed, it is magically day two and we do two goblet squats and one push press.  Then three overhead presses, two goblet squats, and one push press.  And so on.

Most of us need a rest for the first time after day 5.  We try to keep the rests to the between-day periods, but, as always, we need to use our good judgement about what we need.

Yes, I do know that we end up doing 42 burpees before the workout is over.  Thank me later.  Or put coal in my stocking.  Your choice.

The good news is that once we finish day twelve, we are done.

1 push press

2 goblet squats

3 Overhead press

4 1 leg squats each leg

5 deadlifts

6 burpees

7 pushups

8 renegade rows

9 mountain climbers

10 jump lunges

11 kb swings

12 plyojacks

Friday Reading Report: More on Metabolism

I am continuing to read about metabolism.  At the cellular level, I do not find it to be a page-turning subject.  That said, I am learning things.

As I have been reading about the various chemical reactions involved in turning food energy into energy the body can use, I am reminded about why we need to meet our micronutrient requirements.  (Micronutrients, for those of us who are not currently reading our brains out in nutrition, are vitamins and minerals and anything else the body needs for purposes other than straight caloric content.)  A whole bunch of the enzymes that make our cells work are derived from vitamins.  The reactions that fuel our bodies stop when we run out.

(Enzymes, by nature, are not used up while working.  They catalyze a reaction and then get out.  However, they can be broken down for spare parts if the body needs to use their components for biosynthesis.)

At this busy time of year, we all need all the energy we can get.  Fueling our bodies with a wide variety of foods, particularly our vegetable and fruit friends, can help ensure that we have enough.