Friday Reading Report: Yes, I am doing my homework

“These expenditures [for chronic health condition care for seniors] totaled $362 billion and averaged $12,566 for every older adult [in 2006}… It is naïve to expect that Medicare can handle these costs, particularly considering the working population who contribute to Medicare is decreasing.” NASM Senior Fitness Specialist, p. 2

When my kids were in middle school and maybe even high school, they occasionally had to do an assignment for English called something like “Talking to the Text.”  I remember it because they hated doing it, which meant it was torture for me, too.  That said, I talk to texts all the time myself.  In the case of the above passage from my current text, “talking” is a euphemism for “screaming in furious anger.”

I know.  I’m taking a fitness course, not economics or politics or sociology.  The people who wrote it are working in a context in which we are supposed to justify why personal training is beneficial to society and cost-effective.  It is beyond the scope of my course to discuss why the currents of our society actively promote individual solutions to systemic problems, why the pressures of capitalism create unhealthy patterns in the first place, and how to do anything besides accept the system as it is and try to work within it.  Still, I found myself yelling.

Health care doesn’t have to cost as much as it does.  Ask literally any other developed country in the world.  Good health should not be the purview of the privileged few, but the expected birthright of all humans.  It should be easier to eat healthy food than junk food, to get exercise than to be sedentary, to relax than to stress out.

We need a paradigm shift.  This one is killing us.

If you don't like my reasons, you can make up your own!

I find Thursdays to be the hardest day of the week.  I don’t know why.  Why doesn’t matter.  In case this problem pertains to people who are not me as well, here are four goofy and possibly compelling reasons to get it together enough to exercise today:

1.     It’s better than being bored.  We’ve all been stuck at home forever at this point.  We could bake yet another loaf of bread or start learning underwater macramé, but doesn’t a nice bike ride sound better?  How about a walk or run along some slightly different streets?

2.     We baked another loaf of bread.  And ate it.  Let me be clear:  exercise is NEVER a punishment.  However, if we’re taking in a lot more calories, we had better figure out a way to burn off a lot more, too.

3.     If we exercise, we can soak in the tub later.  We earned that good-smelling bath soap with our sweat.  We NEED that muscle relaxing water.  Besides, when we cleaned out all those closets, we discovered that we have a lifetime supply of fancy candles to add ambience to our at-home spa experience.

4.     Better sex.  When we build endurance and strength and flexibility, we can use those skills for anything we want!

Go play.

How to shop...

As a result of the Pilates workshops I took recently, I bought a couple of new toys for the studio.  I don’t do that very often for two reasons:  I already have a lot of toys and most toys I don’t have don’t seem to justify the money I’d spend on them.  However, I am now the proud possessor of two matching swivel discs.

I know that most people don’t have the kind of space or enthusiasm for exercise equipment that I have.  In these times when we’re all stuck home, though, it might be useful to know how I evaluate what deserves space in the studio to help other people’s decision processes.

The first important criterion for something that gets to live in my studio is that whatever it is can be used in multiple ways.  (This also works for kitchen gadgets—I don’t have a quesadilla maker because I have a regular pan that makes other stuff, too!)  Dumbbells, barbells, bench, stability balls, and the like all meet that criterion.

Another important criterion is that whatever it is doesn’t take up an undue amount of space.  I don’t have big cardio equipment in my studio, but I do have an Xiser, a jump rope, and a repertoire of exercises that can get the heart rate up without a bunch of stuff.  There is an exception:  I have a spin bike in the studio at Christmas time because the space in the living room where the spin bike lives the rest of the year gets preempted by the Christmas tree.  And yes, I do have a spin bike in my living room because that is the best and most efficient place for it to live and the spin bike has earned its place in my exercise equipment necessities many times over; other people might not make the same calculation.

How much does the new gizmo cost?  I’m more likely to try out something that doesn’t cost zillions of dollars.  The relatively few dollars I have spent on rollers, yoga tune up balls, Daiso ducks, and other SMR equipment, for example, have all been well spent.  TRX is good value for the money. 

Then there is the use test.  Sometimes I get excited about a piece of equipment and think I’m going to use it All The Time and I’m just wrong.  Clients don’t like it, it doesn’t do what I think it’s going to do, or whatever.  When that happens, I try to notice and get rid of the offending item before the burden of its guilt gets too heavy.

The short version is:  it is important to engage the brain when buying gym stuff or else you end up with a shake weight and other stuff they sell on infomercials gathering dust.

Not the same...

Anyone who has been reading along with me since I started posting this blog knows that I post a workout on Mondays that is the one I use with clients for the week (or did when I got to see my clients and will again when it is safe to do so!).  How is that personal training?  I mean, one workout for everyone?

Why yes, I am going to answer my own rhetorical questions that I put in the mouths of my theoretical readers!  The workout never turns out to be the same.

For example, squats are my favorite exercise.  I put them in lots and lots of workouts.  However, not every client gets the same squats.  If I have someone who needs to work on core and balance, that client may do squats on the BOSU.  Someone who needs a bit more support might get to do squats with a stability ball against a wall or using the TRX or the springs from the trap table.  A client working on increasing their max weight is going to use heavier dumbbells or maybe even the power rack and Olympic bar.  Yes, all those workouts have squats on them, but every individual is going to have a much different experience of those squats.

Or perhaps I write down skullcrushers on the weekly workout.  I like to write skullcrushers: it’s a fun word.  If I have a client with borderline high blood pressure (who is cleared by a doctor to work out!), I am not going to have that person moving from standing to lying to standing a lot, so unless I have them lying down already, I may substitute a different triceps exercise, like kickbacks, dips, or even standing skullcrushers.  I want to work muscle groups in different ways, but the overarching principle is keeping clients safe while making them strong.

Or maybe I put burpees on the list… In that case, it’s time to suck it up because no one is negotiating me out of that one.

Monday Workout: Still No Excuses!

Body weight workouts continue!  No excuses!  Do as many rounds as you have energy for of the top exercises and finish off with the ab exercises at the bottom!

plank jacks	30
round lunges	10
pushups	10
squats	30
mountain climbers	30
dips	10
pretty princesses	10
brains	10

I did 7; how many more can you find?

Perhaps I am not the only one feeling a little irritable and stressed.  The unfortunate part about being a grown-up is that it is up to us to figure out what to do about it so that we don’t spread that ill-feeling around too much.  Here are some stress-busters:

1.     Go outside.  Do it safely, of course, with appropriate precautions and keeping a good distance from other humans.  Nature and fresh air can shift our perspectives and blow away our inner cobwebs.

2.     Move fast.  As I say all the time, cardio is mood magic.  We may start our workout grumpy, but we’ll end feeling better.

3.     Stretch and breathe.  Yoga, Pilates, plain old meditation, and prayer all help with this one.  Keep the air moving and don’t let the muscles solidify in one position.

4.     Get some contact.  Ideally, we have somebody around to hug or cuddle or convince to give us a massage.  If not, petting the dog or cat or hamster helps (haven’t tried petting fish, but it doesn’t seem likely to do much good to anyone…).  If we are also pet-less, there is this great invention called the phone and we can, in the words of the old ad, reach out and touch someone.  Texts, emails, Zoom sessions, and the like also work.

5.     Do something good for someone else.  It can be as small as picking up some trash or letting someone go ahead in line.  Spreading kindness ripples back over ourselves.

6.     Take a nap.  We almost all need more sleep.

7.     Drink some water.  Dehydrated people are crabby people.

What else works for you???

Cardio is not the sexiest exercise.  A lot of it is repetitive.  Yep… still swimming (or biking or running or walking).  For some of us, this can be a feature as we sink into the rhythm of it (no, not to the bottom of the pool; that would be bad.).  But most cardio is not inherently interesting.

That said, if I have a limited amount of time or energy or both to devote to exercise, I’m going to choose cardio.

Why?  The biggest reason is that cardio provides an energy boost.  This may sound counterintuitive.  However, as the blood gets pumping through our bodies and we have to do a bunch more breathing, we wake up more.  Our brains start firing better and all of a sudden we have more oomph (that is a very special technical term that fitness professionals like myself use…).

That same energy boost accompanies a lift in mood.  We all can use that.  Ditto the calorie burn we get.  If that’s not enough good reasons, we can add in stress relief.

Go play.