Monday Workout: Build your own!

To help out my clients and friends who are trying to work out at home, I offer the choice workout template to plug into my usual 30-20-10 format:

Choice Workout: Choose three from each column
30	20	10
woodchoppers	squats	med ball rescues
mountain climbers	lunges	round lunges
jacks	deadlifts	lateral raise
plank jacks	bench press	skullcrushers
jump squats	fly	YTA
jump lunges	row	pushups
ball slams	kickback	burpees
overhead high knees	curls
opposite knees	reverse fly
clean and press
1 arm clean and press		Russian twist
		pretty princesses
		brains
		femur arcs
		quadruped
		roll out abs

Here is how it works:  Choose three exercises from each column, making sure the third choice from the 10 column is below the break.  Plug them into the format.  For example, you could choose:

from the 30's	woodchoppers, mountain climbers, jacks
from the 20's	squats, bench press, rows
from the 10s	round lunges, lateral raises, pretty princesses

Your workout, then, would be three rounds of this:

woodchoppers	30
squats	20
round lunges	10
mountain climbers	30
bench press	20
lateral raises	10
jacks	30
rows	20
pretty princesses	10

What you choose should depend on what is appropriate for your body and what you have space/equipment to do.  Some exercises, like squats, work with body weight as well as with bar- or dumbbells.  Bench press, on the other hand, works best with weights (If you don’t have weights, do pushups!  It works similar muscle groups, gives an ab bonus, and requires no equipment!).  Modify, get creative, and get moving!

Fun with SMR

When we can’t get as many massages as we’d like (and really, does anyone get that many?), we can get some of the benefits from doing self-myofascial release (SMR).  This is all that stuff that people do with foam rollers, various kinds of balls, and, my favorite, the Daiso store duck hook.  Here are my five favorite SMR exercises.

1.     The duck.  This is basically a hook with a handle that fits over the shoulder.  The head of the duck rests more or less on that place where we put our thumbs when we rub someone else’s shoulders.  The handle ends up at chest level on the front of our body and pulling down creates pressure.  Almost all of us have tight upper trapezius muscles and this helps.  The Daiso tool costs $1.50, so it is cheap enough to have one at the desk, in the car, and anywhere else we end up sitting for any length of time.

2.     The ball under the behind.  The various small balls that can be used for SMR have different hardnesses.  The softer the ball, the gentler the release.  Many people who start out with SMR might want to choose a tennis ball.  A kid’s pinkie ball is a little firmer.  Yoga Tune-Up Balls are the next level of firm and come in handy sets of two in a mesh bag.  Lacrosse balls are the firmest (although if you do this while driving, the softness of the car seat will mitigate this a bit).  To do the exercise, sit down with the ball under one cheek on a relatively firm surface (i.e., the couch is not a good place for this, but a kitchen chair is great.).  I know when someone has found the right spot because they make a face.  It should be the good kind of pain, though, and it should lessen over time.

3.     The chest opening on the foam roller.  To do this one, we lie with the foam roller supporting our spine from our behinds to the back of our heads (note:  some foam rollers are not long enough for this—choose carefully!).  We can bend our knees to put our feet flat on the floor for stability.  We stretch our arms out to the sides until our hands touch the floor on either side.  This should provide a nice big stretch across the chest.  Leaving the hands on the ground and leaning to one side or the other will stretch the opposite side a little more.

4.     Floor angels.  This one builds on the previous exercise.  Lying on the floor with the roller along our spines, we take our hands into prayer position at our breastbones.  We move the hands up across our faces and over our heads, then open them out like we are making a snow angel all the way down to our hips.  The hands come back together and move up to the breastbone again.  Repeat five times and then go the other direction.  This will loosen up all the muscles around our shoulder blades and is great after a day stuck in a chair or a long drive.

5.     Rolling across the back.  I like two ways of doing this.  When I want a quick fix, I use the foam roller perpendicular to my spine and roll from my sacrum to my neck, stopping at any particularly tender spot to work it out.  If I have more time, I take the Yoga Tune-Up balls in the mesh bag and put one on either side of my spine for some deeper, more directed work.

We all need to do some things to make our bodies feel good.  Go play!

Leave feeling better...

In my own Pilates practice, my workouts have two parts.  One part is made up of exercises I need to do all the time to keep my body functioning as it should.  It is familiar and warms me up for the other part.  Sometimes it gets a little boring because it rarely shifts.

The second part is where I push myself a little, revisit exercises I don’t do as often, work on movements that really challenge me.  I might whine a little (or a lot…  I’m there by myself and there is no one to be annoyed by it!).  I might have to go slower than I’d like.  It gets hard.

What I find is that I need both halves.  If I spend too much time on the foundation stuff, I don’t make progress.  If I only do the hard stuff, I get frustrated and sore.  What works best is to approach both halves with patience and curiosity and openness—what is happening in my body today? 

This is the same approach I use with my clients.  The early parts of their workouts are routine and we both get to check in with where their bodies are in the moment.  From there, we can choose exercises to address whatever is going on.

At the end, we want to leave feeling better.