Adapting is a challenge...

It’s a new month.  A lot of folks I know are using the opportunity to start new projects, begin or reboot work on some goals, and generally turn over a new leaf.  I love that!  It’s all exciting and new and wonderful.  We dive in to our new workout or sport or activity with fresh enthusiasm.

 

And then, on day two, we are tired and sore.

 

We’re using muscles we may not know we had, or the usual ones in different ways.  Our bodies, like the stubborn toddlers they are, throw tantrums:  THIS IS NOT THE SAME!!!!

 

This is important:  do not spank your inner toddler (or your outer one, if you have one…).  It won’t help.  It will not encourage that change-resistant being to accept that we are doing something new that will probably turn out to be fun.  Right now, the toddler just knows that this is not the usual breakfast/blankie/routine.

 

We need to be patient with ourselves.  We need to talk nicely to ourselves.  Unlike toddlers, we can be reasoned with.  Also, we have access to a lot more resources.  We remind ourselves about why we are changing things up (because we want more energy or smaller jeans or open jars or a view of our toes) and we reward ourselves for good behavior (hot bath anyone?) and we take care of ourselves (yes, I’d love some ibuprofen…).

 

New growth can be painful at first.  But it is so worth it!  We can do this.

Monday Workout: Medicine Balls!

This week I feel like having a ball.  So we’ll use medicine balls in our workout.  (Sorry about the pun… ok, I’m not actually sorry.)  If there are no medicine balls available, no worries!  Substitute something like flies for the rescues and jacks or burpees or jump lunges for the ball slams.  The rest of the exercises can be done with dumbbells.  Do three rounds.

 

woodchoppers	30
twists	20
rescues	10
ball slams	30
curls	20
pushups	10
overhead high knees	30
skullcrushers	20
Russian twist	10

 

Number 5 in the photo!

 

Today I present:  10 things that are better than junk food:

 

1.     Hugs.

2.     Baths.

3.     Good books.

4.     Dogs/cats/other critters.

5.     Flowers.

6.     Crisp apples, which are now in season.

7.     Walks.

8.     Sex.  (Maybe this should have been higher on the list?)

9.     Blue skies.

10.  Comfy clothes.

Joe knows...

Uncle Joe (Pilates) was an interesting fellow.  He had some unusual ideas about cleanliness and sleep and a few other things.  But he also was good at noticing the subtle little things that make big differences.  Pilates exercise instructions all include breath.  How and when we breathe can promote or inhibit our movement.

 

Now, when we are first learning an exercise, we might have plenty to think about with all our too many body parts to consider our breath.  This is fine.  As long as we do continue to breathe, we’re going to be all right.  However, once we’ve sorted out where our knees go and we’ve figured out that ears and shoulders are not the same thing, we can begin to notice our breath, too.

 

Our inhalations help us when we want to control the “easy” part of an exercise (the “eccentric contraction” in fancy trainer-speak, or the part where we lower a weight or work with gravity rather than against it).  They help us when we want to extend our spines, as we do when we bend backwards.  Inhalations help us find length in our bodies and space.

 

Exhalations help us on the “hard” parts, the pushing parts.  We exhale to contract our cores for chest lifts, roll-ups, and the like.  Those exhalations help us flex our spines, bending forward.

 

If you don’t believe me, try it out!  There are a few folks out there whose bodies don’t follow the general rules and you might be one of them.  But most of us will find that Joe has a point.  No matter what:  keep breathing!

Love is first...

A lot of people I talk to lately have weight loss on their minds.  Maybe it is because the weather is starting to change and we’re all putting on clothes we haven’t worn in a while.  Before I talk about weight loss, I need to get one thing out of the way:  YOU ARE FABULOUS JUST THE WAY YOU ARE.  You will not be a better person or more loveable or more intelligent or more capable if you lose weight; you will just be less weighty.  Pardon me for the yelling, but the fitness industrial complex and our capitalist overlords are very loud on the subject of thinness equating to virtue, spice, and everything nice, and they are not right.

 

Now, fabulous people, if any of us in our fabulousness want to lose weight, we need to approach the process with love.  I am not here to take away anyone’s cookies or to chase anyone around a track with a whip.  Shame and humiliation do not work to motivate people.  Deprivation is not a way of life.  So, how do we do it?

 

First, we give our bodies good food.  This might take some experimenting and we might have to remember some stuff about the long term when our short term brain is screaming for Twinkies.  (I don’t happen to like Twinkies, but we all have cravings for things that pretend to be food, like Twinkies, Jack-in-the-Box tacos, movie popcorn…)  Good food does taste good, but it also makes us feel good, not sluggish or hung over.  After a whole chunk of time spent studying fitness nutrition, I will only say with certainty that we should all eat our veggies and drink lots of water.  The rest of our consumption really depends on personal chemistry and preferences.

 

Then we give our bodies good movement.  Good movement means we burn some calories with cardio and we change our body composition with weights.  We toss in some flexibility, some core and balance stuff, and a touch of relaxation, and we call it a day.  Unless we are professional athletes, we should be able to get our movement done in an hour or less a day, on average.  Good movement will sometimes leave us a little sore, but we will know it is good movement because we will find our energy levels rising, our brains working better, and our bodies working better.

 

I will not lie:  weight loss is hard.  Our bodies have to work against centuries of evolution plus the pressures of agribusiness, modern life, and pandemic bonuses.  It can be done, but it is best done slowly and with love.

Monday Workout: Heavy

This week we’re going to do something a little different.  We’re going to do a single rep maximum workout.  That “we” is important because lifting heavy is not something to do all alone.  (If you do not have a partner, you can still lift heavy-ish, but please do NOT try to go to a single rep max without a spotter.)

 

Here’s how it works:  for each exercise, we begin with ten reps of a weight we can do easily.  The exercises I’ve listed below are in pairs, an upper body with a lower body.  This is so we can do more work in less time:  the lower body rests while the upper body works and vice versa, although as we get closer to our single rep max, we will probably want plain old still rest between sets.  So:  we do a set of the lower body exercise, then a set of the upper body exercise.  For the next set, we increase the weight.  After a couple of rounds, we will find that we want to reduce the number of reps.  This is good.  Eventually, we will increase the weight to the point that we can only complete one beautiful rep.  The “beautiful” is also important:  when we are lifting heavy, bad form can hurt us.  Our partner can help us keep an eye on our form so that we don’t start doing things ugly.

 

Lifting heavy can take a long time.  I usually only do one pair of exercises per heavy workout because it can take 45 minutes to an hour to go from my warm-up weight to my single rep max with the appropriate rest intervals.  Also, whichever pair of exercises we choose to do first will be our best.  All those max weights add up over time, so we shouldn’t expect the same performance from the last pair as the first pair if we keep going.  This is also why it is a good idea to rotate what we do first.

 

As always, if what I’ve said doesn’t make sense or you have questions, ask me!  I’m here to help.

 

Now:  here’s the list.

 

Basic Heavy Workout
5 minute cardio warm-up
	Start	Finish
squats
bench press
deadlift
flies
lunges
rows
abs
SMR and stretch

 

Questions...

When I meet with clients for the first time, I ask them tons and tons of questions.  Some of them are the expected health questions about heart disease and injury and other important stuff for safety.  The more interesting questions, however, concern history and preferences.  When we are getting back into working out, here are some questions we can ask ourselves:

 

1.     What fitness stuff have we done in the past?  Maybe we played softball when we were nine, or did gymnastics, or lived to tackle quarterbacks.  Some of us rode bikes everywhere or swam as much as possible or danced all night.  Even if we haven’t done whatever it was in a long time, the body remembers and has built patterns around that activity that we can use or reprogram.

2.     What do we do in our spare time?  (“Spare time”—that’s funny!)  Do we like to cook?  Watch movies?  Garden?  Shop?  Read?  Build battle-bots?  Please notice that this is not about fitness or fitness-related activities, just stuff we like to do.  When I ask clients this question, I am looking for information about things like whether they like to be inside or outside, sitting or standing, intellectually challenged or soothed.  This helps me plan workouts that meet them where they like to be.

3.     What fitness activities do we actually like?  Very few people hate every single possible kind of fitness activity.  And most of us can get all the fitness we need without having to suck it up and do unpleasant things most of the time (there will always be a few necessary evils, but we try to minimize those).  There are approximately eighty-seven gazillion kinds of cardio with new ones springing into existence every moment.  Trainers and instructors everywhere constantly come up with new kinds of classes that blend cardio and weights and flexibility and all kinds of good stuff.  With all those choices, we can find something that is fun, even if the usual choices don’t do it.

 

With the answers to these questions, we can begin to piece together workouts that feed the body and don’t deplete the soul.