More Fresh!

Maybe we don’t need to start from scratch with a whole new workout program, but we could use a bit of a nudge to make things fresh and challenging.  Here are five things that we can try:

1.     Add some intervals to the cardio routine.  Even if we bump up the intensity for one minute out of the however many we squeeze in, we are doing ourselves a favor.  We can survive at our fastest for a minute and then drop back to our regular pace until our heart rate returns closer to normal.  Bonus points for getting more than five intervals in during the workout.

2.     Add a pound or two or five to that exercise.  How much to add depends on your fitness level, age, and genetics.  Fitter people, younger people, and boys will generally be able to add more weight at once, but there are many exceptions to this.  The caveat:  we can’t use bad form.  When our reps are no longer things of beauty, we need to drop down to the usual weight and/or rest.

3.     Change the tempo.  Our basic body weight squat is a whole different critter when we hold at the bottom for 30 seconds and come up slowly.  It is also a different critter when we go for speed and jump squat.  We each tend to prefer a particular rate and shifting to another pace is good for our brains and bodies.

4.     Go backwards.  If we normally do our cardio first, we can try doing the weights first and the cardio afterward.  Or vice versa.

5.     Go sideways.  We tend to do most of our exercises going forward and back (“in the sagittal plane,” in fancy trainer-speak).  Take those lunges to the side for a change (to work in the oddly named “frontal plane”)  Or, for bonus points, twist them a little (“transverse plane”).

Little tweaks help.

Fresh!

Happy New Year!  By the time this is posted, I will be heading off on vacation.  BUT.  I can talk about goals before I go!

Yesterday I wrote about taking a snapshot of where we are now.  Today, we are going to ask ourselves the important question:  where do we want to go next?  This can be a difficult question, fraught with even more Big Feelings than the snapshot process.  More important stuff to remember:  it does not matter how we arrived in this place; we are not here as punishment, or even as reward.  We are not better or worse people for being in this particular state of health or fitness or whatever.  It may help to imagine that we suddenly woke up on this very strange planet and all we need to do is decide whether we like it here or not.  If we do, great!  Nothing to worry about:  carry on.  If not, we have to decide what would help.

Of all the ways there are to structure goals, there are two that I find particularly useful, especially if we use them together.  One is the results-focused goal.  Most of us think of this kind when we consider goals.  An example:  I want to lose 20 pounds over the next three months.  This is a pretty good-looking goal.  It is measurable.  It has a time-frame.  It is reasonable (weight loss, to be healthy, should be about 1-2 pounds per week, so 20 pounds in 12 weeks is on the aggressive end, but still doable).  What it lacks is a how.  This is where the other kind of goal comes in.  It is called a process goal.  Losing weight, as we all know by now, requires a calorie deficit—we have to burn more than we eat.  A process goal that would work with the above results goal might be:  I am going to get 30 to 60 minutes of cardio exercise five days a week, stop eating dessert after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and lift weights twice a week to create a 500-calorie per day deficit.  This is also a pretty good goal, although some tracking would be useful to figure out if the processes chosen will result in the deficit and/or weight loss we’re looking for.

What I like about results goals is that we know what we’re aiming for in the big picture.  Because they measure big picture things, though, not hitting results-goals can be anything from demoralizing to downright depressing, no matter how much we talk to ourselves about refining the process and working some more.  This is where process goals have our back.  We can tell if we’ve been doing that cardio or not.  If we’re not getting the results we want, we haven’t failed at the task, just at figuring out the right process to use.

No matter what, we have to remember that we are valuable right now, without a single goal in sight.  If we knock our goals out of the park, good on us, but we’re not suddenly much more valuable.  If we crash and burn—good news!—we are still miraculous human beings.

As always, I am here to help set goals and go through the process with anyone interested.  We can get where we want to go.

You are here...

We made it!  After today, we don’t have to deal with 2019 any longer.  If it has been a great year, we get to take that momentum into 2020; if not, we can shake the dust of it off our feet and burst into the future.

However, before we blow this joint, we need to take a look at what we did.  This is a great time to evaluate how our workouts have been working for us.  Do we feel stronger?  Leaner?  More energetic?  More flexible?  Do we want to continue as we have been, or change things up?

Some of us are happiest with a fuzzy, general sense of How Things Are Going.  This is a totally valid way of being in the world, especially if we like the results we are getting.

For those of us who like statistics and measurements and close tabs on things, we can review our data, because those of us who like this stuff have the data.  Were two workouts a week enough, or would we do better with three?  Are we taking too long to recover, so we really should lighten things up?  I will simply suggest that now would be a good time to take a data snapshot, which might include current weight, current measurements, current body fat percentage, current times for distance (if tracking a cardio-type thing like running/swimming/biking), current max weights (if working on strength, or any other piece of data that we want to be able to evaluate next year.  We start from where we are; these measurements are like body GPS.  (And, yes, I would be happy to help with the measuring.)

All this stuff can bring up a lot of Big Feelings.  This is important:  we are not our measurements, not our weight or height or IQ or net worth or shoe size.  We are so much more than some collection of numbers.  If the numbers are too stressful, we can skip them and go back to thinking about things like how we feel after we’ve done a workout, how our breath moves in our bodies after yoga, how hard things get easier when we practice.

Whether we measure or not (or have a trusty someone else measure and keep the numbers secret from us in a sealed location away from all eyes until it is time to see how far we’ve come), we are here now.  Where we go next is up to us, and I’ll share some thoughts about that in the next post.