Balance is one of my favorite words.

When it comes to working out, we need to balance patience and impatience.  Patience comes in useful often.  We have to rest between sets for better performance.  It takes more than one workout for the numbers on the dumbbells to go up or the numbers on the scale to go down.  Sometimes we even have to slow down and learn things to improve our form.

Impatience, however, is what pushes us along.  When we start working intervals in our cardio to amp things up, it is impatience at work.  Choosing short, intense, efficient workouts can be another symptom/benefit of impatience. 

As usual, I am in favor of both.  We need to take the time we need, but we don’t need to take extra.  We can do this.

Monday Workout: Ropes (the balls are just a nice picture)

It seemed like a good week for ropes.  They work the body hard without overtaxing knees or requiring a lot of impact.  Three rounds.

rope double slams	30
bench press	20
reverse flies	10
rope alternating slams	30
flies	20
pushups	10
rope double dutch	30
kickbacks	20
Russian twist	10

Friday Reading Report: NEAT

We do not spend most of our time exercising.  That does somewhat cramp our style in terms of keeping the calorie burn going.  NEAT to the rescue!

NEAT, or nonexercise activity thermogenesis, is, as the name suggests, the energy we burn doing stuff that is neither exercise nor maintenance of bodily functions (heartbeat, breathing, digestion, circulation, etc.).  On the low end, this is where fidgeting is our friend.  We can, in fact, make all that reading or television slightly better for us by wiggling around.

This is also where all that advice about parking in the remotest part of the lot comes in.  That stroll into the store isn’t really exercise, but it is definitely activity.  Gardening that is heavy on the weeding and light on the raking probably falls into activity rather than exercise.  Cooking an elaborate dinner with hours of standing and chopping would also count.

We still need to do real exercise, but for all the time when we aren’t exercising or sleeping, we can use NEAT to keep the metabolism fires burning.