Cardio, fancy!

Once we have a cardio habit and our 30 minutes per day is easy-peasy, we can get fancy.  There are lots of ways to do that.

 

One is to go faster.  Maybe we’ve been walking and we can progress to jogging or running.  Maybe we’ve been biking and we get to go farther in the same amount of time.  If we’re on a treadmill, we set the pace higher.

 

Another way is to go harder.  We bike uphill.  We set the resistance on the elliptical trainer higher.

 

Alternatively, we can go longer.  Sure, we can do half an hour, but maybe an hour is not so much of a snap.  That 5K turns into a half marathon turns into a marathon…

 

My favorite way is to add intervals.  Intervals are kind of like sprinkles of harder/faster in our regular workout.  Once we’ve warmed up, we spend a minute going as hard and fast as possible to get our heart rate up toward the top of our cardio range.  Then we spend a minute or two at an easier level to bring the heart rate down to the bottom end of our cardio range (but still at or above 65% of our maximum).  A half-hour cardio workout might have five or six intervals in it (five minutes warm up, five minutes cool down, twenty minutes doing intervals).  Those sprinkles actually improve our cardio fitness faster because our bodies learn to recover from the hard work faster.  We burn more calories and boost our metabolism without spending all day at the gym.

 

It's also a good antidote to the boredom that can set in during long cardio sessions.  Yay!

How to Cardio, with math!

When I work with clients, we focus on weight training because that is the best use of our time.  That does not mean that weight training is more important than cardio, just that it more conducive to having someone stand there and help with directions and form and motivation and counting.  However, we need to do our cardio, too.  In fact, for anyone just getting started with exercise, it is where we want to start.

 

At the most basic level, cardio exercise is whatever we do that makes us breathe heavily and gets our hearts to beat faster.  We want to aim for about thirty minutes of whatever that is at least five days a week.  The easiest way to know if we are working hard enough but not too hard is to see if we can hold a conversation.  If that’s too much to ask while we are dancing/walking/running/biking/rollerblading, we’re working too hard.  If we find that we can belt out “Eye of the Tiger,” we’re not working hard enough to channel our inner Rocky—we have enough lung power left to sing, so we need to devote that power to the work at hand instead.

 

In quantitative terms, we want to work out at 65 to 85% of our maximum heart rate.  Here’s the math:  subtract your age from 220 to get your maximum heart rate in beats per minute.  Multiply that number by .65 to get the bottom end of the cardio range and by .85 to get the top end.  Take your pulse for a minute during the workout to see how you are doing.  (Those of us who have fitness trackers can let the gizmos do the work.  Those of us without will quickly get a feel for when we are working hard enough and when we’re working too hard.)

 

(If you are just getting off the couch for the first time in months, you may need to work up to 65% of your maximum heart rate.  This is totally all right.  Go slow and steady and safe.  Start with five minutes of work and go up from there.)

 

That’s the whole deal.  Get the heart rate up, keep it there for 30 minutes, cool down.  Makes sense now why clients do this on their own time and not with me hanging out watching—my conversation is not that entertaining.

 

Well, that’s almost the whole deal.  Tomorrow I’ll add a bit more, but this is enough to get going.

 

Go play.

Two things to do...

I don’t know about you, but I am getting pretty worn down lately.  We’ve all been dealing with the pandemic for what feels like forever.  We’re in the midst of a really weird holiday season in which we love our dearest ones by staying away from them.  And there are moments when no amount of lights or tinsel, no fancy packaging or special foods can make things seem better.

 

What to do?  Two things, and one will probably make the other easier.

 

The first thing to do is to take care of the folks around us.  Even if we live alone and we are staying by ourselves to protect everyone from the spread of this stupid disease, we can still do some things to take care of other people.  Maybe Zoom isn’t as fabulous as actually seeing our friends face to face, but we can still offer a word of encouragement or a smile.  We can drop a note in the mail, make a phone call, send an email with a funny picture or nice sentiment.  Heck, we can do good things for people we don’t even know—make a donation or two or three.  If we live with other people, it’s even easier.  Give some hugs.  Take an extra turn doing the dishes.  Watch that movie that is the other person’s favorite.

 

Doing nice things for others makes us feel good.  Science says so.  (So if you are looking for a fitness connection, here it is:  fitness is what helps us feel good.)

 

The second thing to do is to take care of ourselves.  I have a deep-seated irritation with self-care lists.  They often involve rampant consumerism, symptom-treating, or both.  The kind of self-care I’m talking about here is the kind you would do for someone you love, which is why doing the first thing might make this one easier.  It’s practice.

 

For example, when we take care of our kids, we don’t always decide that what they need is a bunch of candy and a trip to the toy store (the child-friendly equivalent of a glass of wine and some retail therapy).  Sometimes we know that they really need to unplug from the screens and run around outside, or to eat a real meal that isn’t shaped like dinosaurs or bugs or goldfish.  Maybe they need to talk about their frustration with doing school remotely, or they need a good night of sleep, or a hug.  It can be hard to step outside of ourselves enough to figure out what it is we actually need to take care of ourselves; noticing what the people around us need might make it easier.

 

And it may seem obvious, but self-care doesn’t always feel great.  That kid who really needs a nap may kick and scream about taking it.  Getting the fractious kid outside for some quality time with the bike or scooter or soccer ball might feel like moving the Himalayas, complete with peeved yetis.  We might prefer to zone out over a drink and some impulse shopping, but we can eat our veggies and drink our water and get a little exercise instead.

 

So:  go do something real and nice for somebody and then for your own dear self.

Monday Workout: 12 days

It’s time.  We need to do the infamous 12 days of Christmas workout.  Here’s how it works.  On “day one” we do one push press.  We rest if needed (ha!) and then proceed to “day two, “ on which we do two goblet squats and one push press.  We continue on, trying to take our rests between “days.”  Eventually, we reach the twelfth day and we do twelve plyojacks, eleven kettlebell swings, ten jump lunges, nine mountain climbers, eight renegade rows, seven pushups, six burpees, five deadlifts, four one-leg squats on each leg, three overhead presses, two goblet squats, and one push press.  At the end, we may decide it is time to get a new true love.  The good news is that we only go through the twelve days one time.  As always, feel free to substitute exercises that better suit your body’s needs—plain lunges are fine if you don’t want to jump, woodchoppers make a good swap for plyojacks, etc.  And yes, I do know that at the end of the workout we will have done 42 burpees.  Merry Christmas.

 

1 push press

2 goblet squats

3 Overhead press

4 1 leg squats each leg

5 deadlifts

6 burpees

7 pushups

8 renegade rows

9 mountain climbers

10 jump lunges

11 kb swings

12 plyojacks

Best

IF and ONLY IF someone on your list of people to shop for ASKS for a fitness gift (see Tuesday’s post for why we should never give unsolicited fitness gifts), here are my suggestions for the best ones:

 

1.     TRX.  I love TRX because it doesn’t take up a lot of space and it can be used in so many ways to build strength and stability.  Everything we do with TRX uses our core musculature.  It can be supportive (say for people with knee issues) and challenging.

2.     Stability balls.  Again, stability balls are versatile.  They add an element of instability to our usual exercises.  We can use them as an alternative to our standard desk chairs for variety.  And we can use them as Jedi mind tricks to convince ourselves that what we are doing must be fun because it involves a great big bouncy ball.

3.     Resistance bands.  I like the ones with handles.  They don’t take up a lot of space, they travel well (remember travel?), and they can be used to work out pretty much every body part.

4.     A workout buddy.  Seriously.  One of the biggest fitness gifts we can give is our support in the form of somebody to go with (safely and in a socially distant manner, if you are not already in the same household).  Commit to a daily or weekly walk/run/bike/swim/weight session.  This one is even free!!!!

Both!

Sometimes it seems like I say things that contradict each other.  It might even be true sometimes!  I do try to follow the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Silly!), but that can lead to oversimplifying.  So, now that I’ve blathered on a bit, I will provide some clarity, or nuance.  Hmm… I think I just demonstrated my problem.  Maybe an example will help.

 

I often write about the power of routine.  When we get in the habit of working out, we don’t have to waste a lot of energy getting ourselves started.  We do it like we brush our teeth, same thing daily.

 

And I also often write about the power of doing something different.  New experiences challenge our bodies and brains.

 

Which is true?  Both!  Life is full of nuance.  We want to have a routine for working out, but we also want to change up what we do from time to time.  It’s like getting a new toothbrush or a different flavor of paste, or remembering that flossing is good for us, too.  We want to use the influence of our good habits and apply that to doing bigger and better things.  And it is never bad to practice holding two different ideas in our heads at the same time.

 

Go play.

Bad Gift: No cookie

This holiday season I am repeating a very important piece of advice because sometimes we need reminding.  DO NOT give anyone unsolicited fitness stuff for whatever holidays you celebrate.  It will not go well.

 

Here’s why.  There’s this whole scale of readiness for change.  It ranges from not even thinking about it yet to taking action.  We can’t get ready for change for someone else.  We may think they should be ready to change.  We may love them and want what is best for them.  We may think we are being helpful.  We are wrong.

 

Our dear ones will not thank us, at least not sincerely.  They may feel guilty or resentful or inadequate or pressured, but they will not feel supported and loved.

 

None of us can change anybody else.  This is actually good news because it frees us up to work on what we CAN change, which is our own behavior.  If we want to buy fitness stuff, we can buy it for ourselves.  If our loved ones get interested, maybe we can share with them.