Four things

Fitness does not happen just in the gym or just with a trainer.  This should not be big news.  Here are some things we can all do in our regular lives to increase our fitness:

• Stand on one foot.  Balance is a skill that pays off in the long run.  It helps us avoid injury, or worse, embarrassment!  Practice while doing the dishes, brushing teeth, in line at the store.

• Squat.  I love chairs, but they steal strength and range of motion from us.  Those of us who would like to avoid ending up in a nursing home need to practice squatting and getting up and down from chairs and the floor without using our hands.  Need to pick up the dirty socks from the floor?  Squat to do it.  Package on the porch?  Squat to lift.  Or we can challenge ourselves to squat for time:  can we make it through the commercials during the game in a squat?

• Cut the added sugar.  It is just extra calories.  It’s addictive, inflammatory, and bad for the environment.

• Sleep.  We are not robots.  We need to rest.  Those of us who struggle with the whole productivity thing can justify it by noting that we work better afterwards; the rest of us can just luxuriate knowing that our bodies and minds will be healthier for it.

Change is good

When I plan workouts, I think about what muscle groups are working in each exercise, how much an exercise challenges cardio fitness, how to adapt for injury, and a whole bunch of other things.  Even so, workouts often need to be changed in the moment for any number of reasons.

Sometimes, as I am taking a client through what I planned, my client wants to try a different order of exercises.  So we try it and find out what happens.  Sometimes the new order is better.  Sometimes it turns out that I had good reasons for ordering things the way I did.  Either way, we’ve learned something.

I am not the boss of the workouts I do with my clients.  I have several jobs when we work together:  keeping the client safe, providing appropriate challenge, watching and assisting with form, encouraging, and, of course, counting reps.   We work together to make the workout work.

We can do this.

Harder to measure...

There is a rule, I think, that fitness people have to believe in goals.  This may just be commodification in action, in that goals provide ways to measure what we are accomplishing, allowing those of us who work in fitness to help clients justify the cost of our services.  I do believe in goals, but not always in the kind of measurable goals that my industry promotes.

I am not knocking measurements.  I am not criticizing anyone for choosing to set a goal about losing five pounds (or seventeen, or fifty two) or running a mile or a marathon.  If a client has that kind of goal, I certainly have the tools to help get there.

It’s just that I believe in the goals that are harder to measure.  Does the workout we are doing make us feel better?  Does it help us really enjoy that travel adventure to the fullest?  Are we building the flexibility we need to squat down and check out ladybugs with our kids or grandkids?  Do we have the breath to climb up that hill to get the view that takes our breath away?

We are so much more than a number on a scale or a dumbbell or a stopwatch.  Let’s work out to make our ineffable selves more awesome.