First, compassion, then Pilates...

Most people do not get to be as old as I am without having some injury history.  Life is just like that.  We break a leg, or sprain an ankle a few times, or hurt a shoulder.  Injuries heal, but our bodies are not entirely the same afterwards.  In fact, one of the best predictors of injury is… previous injury.

 

Even if we don’t re-injure a body part, we can struggle with how that part behaves.  We may consciously or unconsciously compensate for that wrist we want to baby a bit or that knee that makes that weird sound.  These compensations ripple through the body and suddenly some other part is working too hard and starts to complain.

 

So what do we do?  First, we try to have some compassion for ourselves and our hard-working body parts.  Our bodies do amazing things every single day.  Yes, even the ones that don’t conform to societal standards of beauty, even the ones that creak a little more than last year, even the ones that are too whatever for our personal tastes.  Some of us might think it’s too weird to thank our bodies, out loud, for all that work they do for us, but maybe it’s not.

 

Then we tune in to what the body says back.  Maybe the body needs to move a little slower.  Maybe it would be happier moving more often during the day.  Maybe a bath?  We only get one, so it’s a good idea to treat it nicely.

 

We can also do some mindbody work.  Pilates is great for this.  We discover that our left side is both more stable and more inflexible than the right side.  Who knew?  We can encourage the right side to work a bit more and the left side to chill out a bit.  It can be disconcerting, doing a bunch of exercises that expose all the little cheats we use to get through the day, but once we find them, we can teach our bodies to do better, with less pain and suffering.

 

We can do this.

Monday Workout: More TRX

TRX was fun last week, so let’s do it again!  Or at least a different set of exercises.  Do one or two rounds, depending on time or energy.  As always, modify based on equipment on hand and personal needs.

 

1 min cardio
sprinter start with hop	20	long
curtsy	20	long
chest press deep angle	20	long
1 leg squat with hop	20	mid length
kneeling roll out	20	mid calf
TY deltoid fly	20	mid length
back row, deep angle	20	short
hamstring curl	20	mid calf
atomic oblique pushup	20	mid calf
side plank with rotation	20	mid calf

But I don't wanna...

 

We all have days when we don’t feel like working out.  Here are three workouts for those days:

 

1.     Go for a walk in a pretty place.  Any moving is better than no moving and seeing stuff that feeds our souls is good for us, too.

2.     Play.  Take the kids or the dogs, or borrow somebody else’s and hit the park or the beach.  Grab your spouse and invent a game with a frisbee, two koosh balls, and a pool noodle.  Laughing gets us workout bonus points.

3.     Stretch.  Even if it’s just for a minute or so, our bodies appreciate it.

 

Let’s do it!

Aware...

The purpose of doing workouts is not just to do workouts.  The point is to feel better than we would if we didn’t do workouts.  Sometimes we lose sight of this, or at least I do.

 

When things get really stressful and I’m overtired or overcaffeinated or both, I get crabby.  I find myself grumbling through my workouts and scrunching up my face and holding my shoulders tightly up toward my ears.  I try to notice when that’s happening.  Once I’m aware, I have two choices:  to keep working or to rest.  Both options have good points.

 

Most of the time, I know that if I keep working, I will end up happier at the end.  The magic of cardio will do its thing on my mood, my brain will work better, and I’ll have the pleasant soreness of after-weights instead of the unpleasant soreness of clenching everything to no purpose.  The awareness lets me release my shoulders, get back in touch with the present moment instead of whatever it is that I’m obsessing over, and get a bit of perspective.

 

Sometimes, however, it is time to stop the workout and rest.  I do this if my body hurts too much, if I have trouble keeping my motion in a safe range, or if I’m too tired to focus.  The final exercise in the set in that case is releasing the guilt.  I am still a worthwhile human even if I rest sometimes instead of working out.

 

Maybe everyone else out there is not like me, but I suspect that I’m not alone in needing to be aware of tension and to decide appropriately how to handle it.  We can do this.

The boss...

I am a trained professional.  This means that I know about fitness in general, along with techniques for losing weight, building muscles, increasing flexibility, and all that good stuff.  What I am NOT is an expert on anyone else’s specific body.

 

We are all unique.  My quirks are not anybody else’s.  No one else has to work around my own personal problems, injury history, anxieties (I hear that collective sigh of relief from way over here!).  I can be the most empathetic person on the planet, but I will never be able to feel anyone else’s pain in a real sense.

 

Because of this, I am never the boss of anybody else’s workout.  I make suggestions and I use my knowledge and experience to guide clients through exercises as safely as possible, but only my clients know when something hurts a bad way.  I can make observations and reasonable inferences about when my clients are reaching limits.  There are times when I certainly tell folks that they are done with a particular exercise.  It’s even more important to note that there are times when my clients need to tell me that they are done—I welcome hearing that and I respect clients’ decisions.

 

I will always encourage clients to go as far as they can.  That’s my job.  But clients have a job, too, and that includes saying stop when their bodies are done.

Monday Workout: TRX

Let’s play with the TRX today.  Do one or two rounds.  (If you don’t have a TRX, that’s all right—all of these exercises work just fine on the ground.)

 

TRX
squat row (mid)	20
mountain climber (mid calf)	20
clock press (long)	20
overhead squat (long)	20
crossing balance lunge (mid)	20
plank (mid calf)	30 sec
low row (mid)	20
burpee (mid calf)	10
crunch	10
hamstring curl	10

 

Make it better...

I think the least useful fitness phrase ever is “No pain, no gain.”  I’m a believer in “No pain, no pain.”  (This does not mean that fitness is never uncomfortable.  There are always exercises that challenge our character as well as our bodies, but less sucking it up is better, on the whole.)

 

However, if we are doing enough in our workouts, we will end up sore from time to time.  This is a good thing and helps us get stronger.  We do need to have a few coping techniques.  Notice that I am NOT talking about injury protocol.  If we get injured, we need to seek medical attention and do what our doctors tell us.

 

Here are a few soreness-fighters, including the classics that all trainers recommend.

 

1.     Rest.  We already build this into our workout plans (I hope) by choosing not to work the same muscle groups two days in a row in our strength workouts.  This also means that if we worked some muscle particularly hard, we give it time to recover before we work it a bunch more.  If we are still really sore on the third day after a workout, we know that we need to dial it back a bit next time.

2.     Ice.  Ice reduces swelling.  If we have an actual injury with swelling, ice is an excellent friend.

3.     Heat.  Heat does not help swelling, but it is soothing.  If muscles feel like they are clenched beyond repair, a heating pad, microwavable pad, or hot bath or shower can help the muscles unfold a bit.

4.     Ibuprofen.  Unless there is an allergy or other reason not to take it.  OTC medications help and we are not weaker humans for taking them.

5.     Massage.  Admittedly, in a pandemic, this is not an easy option to take unless we planned ahead and got quarantined with a talented provider.  However, exploiting our spouses, partners, and/or children to help rub sore spots can be a viable thing, especially if we are willing to reciprocate.

6.     Self-myofascial release.  This works less well than good massage, but a whole lot better than nothing.  Quality time with a foam roller or set of tune-up balls can make the world seem like a friendlier place.

 

Again, we work out to feel better, not worse.  Fight the soreness and then do the next workout.