Zzzzzz

I’m tired today, so here is a self-serving list of five reasons to take a nap:

1.     We are, as a group, underslept.  More than a third of us get fewer than 7 hours of sleep per night.  Catching up is not bad.

2.     It reduces stress.

3.     It keeps us from overeating.  Seriously.  Tired people eat more.

4.     It makes us more productive later.

5.     It feels good.  Yes, this is a totally valid reason.

As we say around my house, don’t bite the bedbugs; they hate that.

You Don't Have To Like It, But You Do Have To Do It

Let me get this out of the way first:  I have nothing against gratitude or positivity or cheerfulness.  Well, not much, anyway.  I even have a gratitude practice in my daily journaling.  It has documented benefits and increases joy and all that important stuff.

It can also be annoying as hell.  And sometimes counterproductive (check out Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich if you’re interested.)

There are times when the best thing we can do is to acknowledge how we really feel, even if it is not the socially acceptable positive emotion other people would like us to experience.  In other words, sometimes whining is good for the soul.

What whining is not is an excuse to avoid doing the unpleasant whatever it is.  Those lunges aren’t going to do themselves.  If bitching about them the whole time gets us through, that’s awesome.  The lunges are done and we might even have come up with some creative new ways to describe how much we hate them.

The best part?  Afterwards we get to feel extra virtuous because we’ve done something we have admitted is hard and terrible.

Two questions and a disclaimer

Some weeks go better than others.  We all know this, but we could consider planning for it.  (No, this does not mean that we pencil in three days of hiding under the covers, or at least not necessarily.)  I find that there are two questions to ask and that there is one important disclaimer when it is time to figure out what we’re going to do for fitness when things go wrong.

One question is:  what’s the minimum I need to do to maintain my health?  For most of us, half an hour of walking per day at a moderate pace is about right as a minimum, whether we do it all at once or in two or three chunks.  We cope better with whatever the heck life is throwing us when we are healthy, so finding that half hour is worth the trouble.  And then don’t think about it anymore.

The other question is:  what part of my fitness activities makes me feel good?  When stuff gets hard, some of us find that we need the mood-lift of cardio or the stress relief of yoga.  Doing the things that help us manage our emotions and our stress when stuff gets hard is not selfish.  We are giving ourselves coping tools so that we can do what needs to be done.

And the disclaimer:  There are times when we don’t need to do any fitness activities at all.  If we can’t find a half hour, if we don’t want to face exercise, if we just can’t do one more thing, that is all right.  Fitness is not another thing to beat ourselves up with—it is there to make us happier and healthier and it will still be there when we have enough spoons to get back to it.

Monday Workout: Body Weight or More

This week we’re back to body weight workouts.  Of course, if weights are available, add them as desired.  Do as many rounds as feel good or as time allows (try for at least 3).

squats	20
1 leg squats	10
lunges	20
pushups	10
punches	20
pretty princesses	10
brains	10

Ideas for balancing...

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about balance, here are five balance exercises to try.  If your balance is poor, make sure that there is something close by that will help you stabilize (chair, wall, sturdy friend).

1.     Brush your teeth standing on one foot.  We have to stand there anyway; we might as well practice balancing.  One side will be much easier than the other.  Do that side first.

2.     Play 1 leg catch.  This is best with a friend, but it is also possible to use a wall to “throw” the ball back to yourself.  Again, do the hard side first.

3.     Do 1 leg weight passes.  I use a kettle bell for this, but any weight you can comfortably hold in one hand will work.  Stand on one leg and hold the weight in one hand.  Pass the weight across your body in the front and transfer it to your other hand.  Pass the weight around behind you and give it back to the first hand.  Repeat five times, then reverse directions.  Then do both directions while standing on the other foot.

4.     Do round lunges.  Changes of direction challenge our balance.

5.     Do any of the exercises you do normally on a BOSU or any other unstable surface.  For safety, use less weight than you do when you do the exercise on the ground.

Have fun!

Practice helps...

After flexibility, I think the most neglected portion of fitness training might be balance work.  We notice when we get out of breath and when we can’t schlepp the groceries as easily as we’d like, but we don’t notice balance until we lose it.

The thing is, balance training helps with that whole strength business.  When we improve our balance, we are doing at least two things:  building our proprioception and strengthening our stabilizing muscles.

Proprioception is a fancy word for knowing where our bodies are in space.  When we don’t have much of it, we bump into things (most of us have enough to avoid bumping into things most of the time).  When we have more of it, we can notice that when we squat, our left leg works harder than the right, or that our right shoulder tends to be lower.  This is the first step toward getting better alignment and alignment is what helps us get strong safely.  We build proprioception when we work on balance because we need to keep track of all those (hey, where did we get so many?) arms and legs that suddenly want to wheel around through space instead of helping us stay over our center of gravity.

Which brings me to that second part:  strengthening the stabilizers.  Balance is about finding stability in a precarious world.  We use the muscles closest to the center of our bodies to stabilize ourselves.  Putting ourselves in (controlled) unstable environments helps us practice stabilizing for those times when we are not in control of how unstable the environment is.  We adapt to what we practice.  Strong stabilizers free up our more peripheral muscles to move us around and lift heavy stuff.

What to do?  Practice standing on one foot.  Use dumbbells instead of barbells.  Work asymmetrically.  Use the BOSU or any of the many kinds of wobbly surfaces available.  Do some yoga or Pilates.

We can’t make the world more stable, so we have to learn to adapt!

A Workout for Every Kind of Stress...

We are all experiencing the current times in different ways, but I think it is pretty safe to say that we’re all finding new and exciting sources of stress.  I say all the time (and it’s a pretty prevalent idea in the culture) that exercise is good for stress, but different kinds of exercise, having slightly different flavors, work in different ways.

If stress is causing depression-like symptoms, what we need to do is cardio.  We need the extra energy and the mood-boosting power of heart pumping to help with that particular kind of stress.  (Note:  exercise is no substitute for actual mental health treatment.  Talk to your therapist/psychologist/psychiatrist and take your meds.  You are important and valuable and I’m always here to listen if you need a friend.)

If we find that stress is spiking our anxiety or that our entire bodies have seized up with tension, what we need is something on the yoga/Pilates order.  We practice our breathing and we move gently in ways that help our muscles lengthen.

And, finally, if our stress springs from feeling like we have lost all power in the world because random or not-random things keep happening to us, we need to lift weights.  The weights do not mind if we express our anger at them.  We can burn our rage and calories at the same time.  And at the end, we will be stronger.

Repeating it one more time:  If you need a friend, call/text/message me.  I’m here for you.