Ab-solutely

Every single workout I plan involves at least one abdominal exercise.  Here are five reasons why:

• Strong abdominals help prevent lower back pain.  When our abs aren’t doing their job, the lower back has to take up the slack.

• Abdominal work improves posture.  Good posture makes us look and feel better.

• Strong abs help us balance.  Balance keeps us from falls.  Falls are at best embarrassing and at worst dangerous, so the fewer falls the better!

• Abdominal control improves our breathing.  Do I need to explain why breathing is important?

• Lovely abdominals make us look good, which may be petty, but hey, we get all those other good things, too.

Kiss kiss!

We all have our favorite pieces of fitness equipment—everyone wants a spin bike as a decorative element in their living room, right?  Or not.  Despite what the Fitness Industrial Complex says, we don’t really need a lot of stuff to get fit.  In fact, plenty of fitness happens with just a body!

I am a big fan of the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Silly).  I don’t like to go through a lot of rigmarole before I even get to start working out.  However, what simple looks like can in fact vary from person to person.  For me, it is, in fact, simple to have a spin bike in the living room.  Other people might find it dreadfully inconvenient.

We want to figure out what we really need to make our workouts fun and effective and easy to get started.  For some of us, that means a gym membership and some exercise clothes, or a pool and swimsuit.  Others of us live for running and can’t do without our running shoes.  Still others are happiest with a yoga mat.

Sometimes we have to be a little more complicated.  As I’ve said before, I need to wear my elbow and wrist supports when I bike or spin nowadays, but I make it as easy as possible to do it by leaving them on the handlebars between workouts.  Maybe someone else’s thing is a really good pair of shoes or goggles, or a knee brace, or headphones that make the difference between happiness and mind-numbing boredom.

We all need to find our right balance between simple and elaborate to stay happy and healthy.

Who is the boss?

I wrote a little bit ago about my Apple Watch and I’ve written before about my Fitbit when I had one.  I am the very last person to get in the way of anything that brings any of us success in our fitness journeys.  But.

We are more than a collection of steps or a complete or incomplete circle.  Our worth as humans is not less on a day when we only stand up in 11 of 12 hours (or 6, or 3).  We are not going to be significantly less fit if we get 9,999 steps in a day instead of 10,000.

Furthermore, the technology is not perfect.  Sometimes it doesn’t accurately capture our heart rate.  Sometimes we forget to tell our devices we are working out, so they don’t count them.  Even if the devices were perfect in their ability to capture the body data, they can’t perceive our inner state; some days, just showing up is plenty of workout given what the rest of life is like.

Here’s the deal:  the devices are there to help us, not to rule us.  Use them if they help, but feel free to tell them to go pound sand when they get in the way of overall wellbeing.