Monday Workout: Improvise!

This week’s workout has a couple exercises that would be improved by a little bit of stuff, but it should be stuff that is relatively easy to find around the house.  For the woodchoppers and Russian twists, find something that weights a couple of pounds (if you have a dumbbell that is less than 10 pounds, that’s perfect, but even a quart bottle of water would work; hold the ends.)  For the hop or jump ups, a sturdy box, stool, bench, chair, or step works.  Lower things are easier, obviously, and use appropriate care!  If hopping and jumping are not appropriate for your body, step up instead.  Do three or four rounds of the top exercises and finish with a set or two of the ab exercises.

woodchoppers	30
squats	30
good mornings	20
lunges	30
jump or hop ups	30
punches	30
Russian twist	10
femur arcs	10

What is worse????

In general, I like to keep things positive, but just for fun, here are four terrible reasons to exercise:

 

1.     As punishment.  No one should be sentenced to exercise.  Not for eating cake, not for bad behavior, not for nonconformity to the current fashionable body type.

2.     To satisfy someone else.  We do not exist to please other people.  If our partner or parent or other significant person in our life demands that we exercise as a condition for their love and acceptance, we have a big problem, and it isn’t that we need to hit the gym.  (Please note:  I’m not saying that our loved ones can’t suggest in a loving, kind way that they enjoy having us around and they want us to build healthy habits.  It’s the part where love is withheld because we don’t measure up or obey that is the problem.)

3.     To try to achieve the impossible.  Not all of us can be (or should be) supermodels.  Some of us can be sprinters.  Some of us can lift really heavy objects.  Some of us can lift people’s hearts with their dancing.  We can certainly improve at whatever we practice, but we need to recognize that some goals are going to remain unattained.

4.     To be virtuous.  Exercise is good for us, but it does not make us good humans all by itself.  There is nothing inherently more saintly about exercising than about lying on the couch.   Exercising for a positive mark in the great gradebook in the sky is silly.

 

Anybody got any worse ones????

Joe tells it like it is...

A couple of careers ago, I came across this quote from Angeles Arrien about four rules for life:  “Show up. Pay attention. Tell the truth. Don't be attached to the results.”  These rules apply in lots of places (that would be the “for life” part), but lately I’ve been thinking about how that third rule relates to Pilates.

 

Pilates is a practice that can expose our weaknesses.  We find out that we’re not even close to symmetrical, that we’ve built a lifetime of questionable movement habits, and that it’s a wonder we can move at all, really.  This is not comfortable.

 

It is, however, useful.  Pilates puts us in a position where we have to tell the truth about what our bodies can do and what is really challenging.  We will find out exactly which portion of our spines like to move and which appear to be cast in cement.  We will discover that we’ve been cheating on our ab exercises for years and so our abs are not as powerful as we thought.  Also, balance is hard, our left side is less flexible than our right, and really, who decided we should have so many body parts that are supposed to move in sync with each other anyway.

 

The good news is that Pilates also shows us how to change.  Today’s truth is just a place to start.  When we tune in (hey, that would be the pay attention part!), we can begin to shift our movement patterns, train our brains to new motor pathways, and grow our skills.  The next batch of truth might find us stronger and longer and more centered.

 

Let’s do it!

No, motivation is not included with the certification...

When I meet people and tell them what I do for a living, they assume, naturally, that I love to exercise and that I don’t struggle to get in my own workouts.  I mean, I’m a trained professional!  They aren’t entirely wrong, but they’re not one hundred percent right either.

I don’t usually have to chivvy myself into going for a bike ride—it makes me feel like I’m about nine, without a care in the world.  As long as it’s not rainy and cold, I’m ready to hike, especially if I can bring my camera.  When it’s easy to jump in a pool, I’m there.

However, there are plenty of kinds of exercise I do because they are good for me, or because they make me feel better when I’m done.  I have been known to refer to my spin bike as the magic mood improvement machine.  Yoga and Pilates are not always fun in the moment, but I always feel more relaxed and centered for having done them.  Weight lifting bores the pants off me, but since I want my pants to fit and I want to be strong and powerful, I do it.

For me, there are a couple of key things that keep me showing up.  One is habit.  I get up in the morning, use the bathroom, brush my teeth, write my morning pages, and go walk the dog.  When I get back from walking the dog, I stick some food in my face and do whatever the workout of the day is.  Then I shower and get down to the rest of my life tasks.  If I somehow get off track before my shower, I’m likely to skip the workout entirely.  It has its place and I have to let the habit carry me along.

The other thing is to make it as much fun as possible.  If my cardio had to be running, I would not do it.  I don’t like running.  But give me something with pedals and some loud music and I’m golden.  I have the prettiest weight plates in existence—they’re brightly colored and fun.  This makes me more inclined to play with my toys.

If all else fails, I have to remind myself that I am a grown up and I need to do the things that keep me happy and healthy.  I don’t like it when I have to do that, because I prefer to pretend that I can be a kid forever.  However, somebody has to be the mama around here and I guess that would be me.

What works for me may not work for anyone else.  However, we all need to spend a little time thinking about what does work for us so we can live long and happy lives.

Monday Workout: Still no excuse...

I’m still focusing on body weight workouts for those of us who don’t happen to have a gym at home.  Do two or three or four rounds of the first six exercises and finish with the ab exercises at the end.  Use a soft ball (tennis ball, Koosh ball, etc.) and a wall with no valuable stuff on it for the one leg ball wall toss.

jump lunges	30
1 leg squats	30
pushup to side plank	10
jump squats	30
transverse punches	30
1 leg ball wall toss	10
plank	hold
superman	hold

Friday Reading Report: Fighting with Texts

I tend to get into philosophical arguments with my textbooks.  I spent a lot of my childhood getting sat on by the dominant paradigm and it only slowly occurred to me that it didn’t have to be like that.  When I end up butting heads with the Fitness Industrial Complex in the course of my continuing education, I get grumpy.

The specialization I just completed was in women’s fitness.  Most of my clients are women and, shockingly enough, I am one, too!  I hope someone gets around to alerting the patriarchy that about half the population are, in fact, female.  They don’t seem to have figured it out yet.

The breathless prose of my text announces that women and men are different!  Who knew?  There is a way to describe the differences between men and women that is respectful and neutral.  The text does not find it.  Women are not only different, but also weird, lesser, and mysterious.  It is entirely true that in general women do not build as much muscle mass as men.  Describing this as some kind of failing is as silly as describing men’s inability to have a baby that way.

Basically, there is no need to belabor the differences between men and women.  Men are not the norm and women some kind of aberration.  The issues of women’s fitness pretty much come down to modifications that are needed for pregnancy, postpartum, and lactation and some specific issues that affect older women.  Healthy people of all sexes, genders, and identifications require respectful, careful, safe, and individualized workouts.  This is what I work to provide to all my clients.  And maybe some smashing of the white imperialist capitalist heteronormative patriarchy—it’s good exercise.

End of rant.

So many body parts!

We all have exercises we love and ones we hate.  That’s normal and totally fine.  The thing is, we need to make sure that our workouts don’t ignore muscle groups.  Here are the kinds of exercises that need to be in every workout:

1.     Multi-joint.  The more joints we involve in an exercise, the more work it is.  This translates to more calories burned.  It also forces us to coordinate all those various body parts.  Example:  overhead squat

2.     Lower body flex and lower body extend.  Getting these together is easy when working with free weights because in general, what bends has to straighten.  Circuit machines often break things up, so if we do an exercise that makes us work to bend our knees or hips, we have to make sure we do one that makes us work to extend them, too.  Example:  lunges

3.     Upper body push and upper body pull.  Hey!  The upper body works like the lower body, but up higher!  Examples:  pushups and pull-ups/rows.

4.     Front and back of the body. By now the principle should be pretty clear.  Examples:  deadlifts and crunches.

5.     Core.  In theory, we work our core with every exercise because we are paying attention to balance and posture, but it’s always good to focus in.  Example:  pretty princesses.

For bonus points, we can also think about working in multiple planes (forward/back, left/right, and twisting), with jumping, and with balance.