The Small Stuff...

Sure, a lot of fitness is about the big stuff—getting in the cardio and the lifting.  But little stuff can make a big difference, too.  Here are some small things that don’t take a long time that can help us without using up a lot of time.  We tend to skip them, but it’s really worth the few minutes of investment.

• Floss.  Yeah, it’s not fun at first with the bleeding and all, but life is better with teeth.  It takes less than five minutes to do.

• Roll.  At the end of the workout, we often want to head straight for the shower.  We don’t want to take any extra steps or get down on the floor one more time.  Until we get used to it, rolling hurts as we untangle the knots in our muscles.  Then, after we’re used to it, we feel a little guilty “wasting” time on something that feels so good.  Less tightness in our muscles and greater range of motion are worth the few minutes of investment.

• Pack a lunch.  A few minutes of organizational work in the morning can make the difference between getting our healthy veggies in and a face full of fries.  It’s also cheaper, which is better for our financial fitness.  For bonus points, weather permitting, we can eat our lunch outside in the fresh air.

• Breathe.  Fine.  I know we actually do this all the time.  But pausing to focus on our breath for a few minutes a few times a day can help reduce our stress and calm our minds.

• Hug.  Contact is essential for healthy humans.  (Get consent first, of course!)  Wrap your arms around your spouse or kid or dog or buddy and hang out for thirty seconds.  Everyone will feel better afterwards.

We Can Dance If We Want To...

I am 51 years old.  This explains why I had a fabulous time over the weekend seeing Men Without Hats and Howard Jones.  I am not ashamed of my enthusiasms, or of the fact that I was once a 15-year-old girl.  No matter what age we happen to be, we have music that speaks to us because it spoke to us when we were young (unless we are young right now, in which case we are collecting music that will evoke this time later!).  This is a good and useful thing.

For one thing, we can dance.  Sure, we might look silly.  That’s not bad.  Most of us can use an opportunity to lighten up, especially in these dark days.  If we want to be able to jump around into our old age, we had better keep it up in the present.  Dancing is fun, aerobic, and social.  Sing along and you add another level of challenge.

If those old guys up on stage can still rock their leather pants and crazy pleated suits by keeping up the dancing, we can too.

Hut, hut, hike...

We all get into fitness ruts.  Maybe everybody doesn’t have a spin bike in their living room like I do (it’s decorative, right???), but we all have an exercise of least resistance that is the easiest thing for us to do to hit our fitness goals of the day.  We should have that thing that is really easy to get done because we want good habits to be simple and automatic.  That said, we do need to shake things up a bit from time to time.

Last week, I went hiking for the first time in a long time.  I took my fancy camera and my kid and some water and my ridiculous sun hat.  (Next time I’m also taking snacks and bug spray.)  Five miles later, having climbed, according to my kid’s phone, 42 floors, we were both sweaty and tired and exhilarated.  I was sore in different places than usual.  My brain was refreshed both from the presence of trees and the kind of conversations that occur when walking on dirt under a canopy of leaves.

I am not abandoning my spin bike.  I don’t always have the time to drive somewhere to hike.  But an awful lot of stuff shifted when I did something out of the ordinary.

What needs shaking in your workout this week?