That is one funny hat.

Sometimes we get all bogged down in the soup of unhappiness that surrounds us.  It seems wrong somehow to be happy in the face of all the ick.  Except it isn’t.  We can spread a little happiness around if we get some.  (If you need permission to be happy, I’m here to give it to you.  Go forth and laugh!)  Three (fitness) things to increase happiness today:

 

1.     Do something you love.  Or as close to it as you can.  Maybe I can’t go skiing right now, but since one of the things I love about skiing is going fast, I can hop on my bike and see how fast I can go.

2.     Do something new.  Curiosity and exploration wake up our brains and awake brains tend to be happy brains.  Try a new route.  Take a different class.  Do the workout backward.  Even if it goes wrong, it will give us a chance to laugh at ourselves.

3.     Do something that makes your heart pound.  In a good way.  Which is to say, some cardio.  It makes us happier and smarter.  Really.  Science says so.

 

Go play!

Let's dance...

I called my business Recess on purpose.  While it is true that one way to describe my work is that people pay me to make them do things they don’t want to do, that’s not the whole story.  I do my best to help people like doing stuff that is good for them.  I try to bring a sense of play to fitness because we tend to do more of what brings us joy.

 

It is absolutely true that some things are joyful in themselves and others are joyful at one remove.  We need both.  What do I mean?  Take dancing.  Dancing is fun.  Every human culture that I can think of has had some kind of dancing (or else a need to frown upon dancing, which proves my point in a different way).  Kids do it spontaneously.  It plays a part in celebrations, religious ceremonies, and high school rituals.  No one needs to make us dance, at least before we get all self-conscious.  It’s just joyful.

 

Burpees, on the other hand, don’t make very many people joyful in and of themselves.  They are joyful at a remove (no, not because we rejoice when they’re not part of the workout).  We get joy from burpees because of what we get from having done burpees—more energy, strength, stamina for the things that make us happy.  Maybe burpees give us joy by way of chasing our kids around for hours or by helping us find the perfect outfit to knock someone special’s socks off.  We have to wait a little for the burpee kind of joy.

 

So when I design workouts or when I talk about what we all need to do for fitness, I try to include both kinds of joy.  The first kind is easy:  we pick stuff we like to do, like dancing or biking or curling or whatever.  The second kind requires a two-pronged approach.  We keep in mind the secondary kinds of joy we want to achieve by doing the less joyful exercise, and we employ coping techniques.

 

Some of my favorite coping techniques are:  friends, loud music, bribery, and speed.  Other people like classes, fancy workout clothes, or special tools.  Whatever works.

 

Let’s play.

Wear your bathing cap if it helps...

In so many of the conversations I have with people right now, I find that we’re all feeling overwhelmed.  We struggle to sleep.  We are easily distracted and often irritable.  There is too much of everything—disease, distress, ash, heat, noise, laundry.  People tell me that they just can’t.  I hear it.  I feel it.  And yet, somehow we have to cope and do.

 

For some of us, dropping the workout is the obvious way to get a bit more time.  I am not going to blame anybody who makes that choice.  I will, however, tell why that is not my choice, even when I feel like there is too much to bear.  Maybe my experience applies to more than just me; maybe not.

 

I work out for a lot of reasons.  For one, it is wonderful to have something finite that can be checked off the infinite list of things to do.  I show up, I get sweaty, I check it off.  There is no lingering sense of incompletion.  That workout is done forever.  I get to feel an increased sense of my own power because look!  I did one whole thing!  Maybe I can tackle the next thing!

 

Some of the things I do in my workout are plain fun.  I got to go swimming last week (thus the silly photo of little me in my bikini and my grandma’s bathing cap).  I love swimming.  This is a good time to choose the kinds of workout that are joyful rather than the horrible guilt-inducing ones.  Even in these times, it is all right to pick things that make us happy.

 

Speaking of making us happy, cardio exercise boosts mood.  I know I say this all the time, but it bears repeating.  When we have limited energy to spend, we need to choose to spend it on stuff that helps us.  Cardio can be one of those things.  I will never tell anyone to stop taking their antidepressants, but I will say that cardio is an excellent adjunct to medical and therapeutic help.

 

That focus thing?  Working out helps with that, too.  The science shows that our brains work better after exercise.

 

These are my reasons to work out, even when I’m tired, even when the world is full of chaos.  Join me if it seems like working out will help you, too, or rest if you need that more.

Monday Workout: Cardio Poker

This week’s body weight workout is the return of Cardio Poker!  It’s a buddy workout, so grab your partner or your kid (dogs usually can’t read, but if your dog wants to try…) and a couple decks of cards.  Choose a space that is big enough to run back and forth in.  This might be inside or out in the yard if the air allows.  You and your partner will stand at either end of the space, each with your deck of cards.

 

Both players flip over the top card of their decks.  Use the chart below to figure out what exercise to do (or make up your own chart) and do the number of repetitions based on the card (e.g., 9 of hearts means nine jump squats).  Then run to the other end of the space, flip a card, do the exercise.  Continue until both players have a full “hand” of cards to give bragging rights to the best hand, or until you are tired.

 

As always, modify as needed.  If running is not your thing, brisk movement back and forth is totally fine.  If you don’t want the kids running in the house, you can tell them to hop back and forth.  Hate squats?  Swap in jacks or something else.  What I love about this workout is that it is a great template for many workouts.

 

Go play.

 

Suit	Exercise
Hearts	squats/jump squats
Diamonds	lunge punches
Clubs	pretty princesses
Spades	pushups

Keep breathing

Almost every list of mindfulness techniques includes some kind of breathing.  I’m in favor of breathing.  It keeps us alive.  Here are four things to do to make breathing easier.

 

1.     Quit smoking.  If you don’t smoke, you’re already ahead and you can just cross this off the list.  If you do, I encourage you to quit when you’re ready.  It will help.

2.     Stretch.  Breathing uses muscles.  Muscles work better when they have some flexibility.  In the context of breathing, we want to stretch the muscles of our torsos, so do a few side bends, a forward bend or two, and maybe a bit of a backbend every once in a while.

3.     Do my favorite exercise.  Really.  It’s my favorite.  And you get to do it lying down.  Lie on your back on a firm surface (bed is ok, but the floor is better) with your knees bent and your feet flat.  Lift your arms toward the ceiling and put your hands together so that they are directly over your shoulders.  Holding your head still, move your hands from side to side, keeping your arms straight (one shoulder will move off the ground when you go to one side, the other on the other).  Do this ten times.  Now do it again, but this time move your head along with your arms.  After ten repetitions, do a set where you turn your head away from your arms.  That’s it.  It feels good and it loosens up all the tiny little joints in your thoracic spine so that you have more room to expand your ribcage when you breathe.

4.     Practice.  When we get stressed out, we tend to breathe shallowly, using the muscles of our neck to lift our shoulders instead of using our diaphragm and abdominals to breathe lower into our bellies.  When we practice deep breathing, it becomes habitual.

 

If you want, ignore all of these ideas except this one:  keep breathing.  The world needs you.

All Systems Go!

I love systems.  I love them even more if they involve office supplies.  We all have our favorite, most-cherished delusions, and one of mine is that one day I will get the right office supplies and the instant magical result will be that I am Organized, Successful, and Generally Fabulous.  In the meantime, I have a bunch of pens and clipboards and binders and I live in mostly happy chaos.

 

Because I am a Trained Professional, I am actually organized about my clients.  I keep track of their workouts, preferences, dislikes, injuries, and goals.  It helps me help them.

 

What I notice for myself is that doing even a little bit of organization and tracking helps a lot.  The small, incremental changes don’t show up until I look back a ways.  That thing that used to be hard is much easier now.  I understand the point of that Pilates exercise on the 854^th attempt.  I realize that Thursdays are not the best day to try to accomplish anything, if only because it turns out that I never manage to write down what I did for a workout on a Thursday.

 

Some people are doubtless scoffing at my hapless self.  Some of us were born color-coding and filing.  Others of us are rolling their eyes because WHY would anyone waste time on this whole organizational business when there is important stuff to do.  That’s okay.  The world needs the whole spectrum of us with our varying gifts.  The slightly obsessive organizers could probably benefit from getting on with the actual workout and the more free-spirited might learn something from a pause to analyze.

 

My job is to suggest tools.  Then we get to use them together to make amazing stuff.

Done and not done yet

I was thinking (no, that is not what caused the fires).  My head was churning over all the stuff I have on my to-do list and I was getting all caught up in how behind I feel.  I was specifically thinking about my (self-imposed) reading goals, but it could have been any of my various not-yet-completed projects.  Then I looked up at the bookshelf in front of me.  Which is full of books I have actually read.  Right.  Maybe I don’t need to obsess about what isn’t done yet since I know, and have evidence, that I can do things.

 

Working out can be like that.  I know a lot of us want to be thinner/fitter/stronger.  We struggle to fit in a cardio workout, or some weights.  We hear about some new study touting some other kind of exercise and we sigh inwardly because how the heck are we going to manage to incorporate even one more thing.  Might as well just give up now. 

 

Except.  We don’t lose workouts.  We get to keep the ones we did.  Our bodies remember how, even if they might take some reminding and even if we, as always, have to adapt to the body we have in this very moment.

 

We have power.  We get stuff done.  Maybe we’re not done yet, but that’s all right.