Getting Used to It

As I often do, I have two opposing thoughts in my mind at once.  And, as usual, I like them both.  We live in a nuanced, paradoxical world, so maybe we should get used to it?

 

Thought one:  it doesn’t matter how we’re feeling; we need to do the work.  This is the being a grownup part, where maybe we would rather lie in bed all day and figure out what that shape in the plaster really reminds us of, but instead we get up and work out because it is the right thing to do, it’s in line with our goals, and it will actually make us feel better.  The spin bike does not care if we are grumpy.  The weights do not get offended if we snarl at them.  When we work out in spite of our own resistance, we build grit and character as well as muscle.

 

Thought two:  it matters a lot how we approach what we do and how we feel about it.  I know and love a lot of folks who are in a bit of a freak-out about their pandemic bodies.  Freaking out does not burn calories.  It doesn’t help.  It leads us into a shame and self-hatred cycle.  If that kind of negativity worked, we would all be extra double thin.  We need to treat ourselves with love, approach our workouts in a spirit of calm, and allow ourselves to grow patiently, as if we were our own beloved child.

 

How do I resolve this?  I don’t.  I do both.  There are plenty of days when I do let the weights or the spin bike absorb my anger and bad moods.  I do, however, even in my worst moods, remember that I’m working out because it is good for me, because I will feel happier and be stronger for it, because I would encourage my bestie to do the same.

 

We don’t work out just to work out; we do it to feel good in the largest possible sense.  So take a deep breath and go play.

Monday Workout: Round!

We’re rounding out the year with a well-rounded workout!  It has cardio stuff, upper body stuff, lower body stuff, core stuff!   We do compound exercises!  We get sweaty!  Do three rounds, modifying as needed for YOUR body.

 

plyo/reg/mod jacks	30
bench press	20
reverse flies	10
woodchoppers	30
lunge to curl	20
lateral raise	10
suitcase swings	30
squats	20
pretty princesses	10

Basics to go with minimums

When we want to set minimums for ourselves (like I’ve been writing about this week), we can consider setting them in these basic areas:

 

1.     Cardio.  This is anything that gets the heart moving and the breathing heavy.  Walk, ski, skate, swim, run, dance, bike, whatever blows your metaphorical skirt up.

2.     Strength.  This is the stuff that builds muscle.  Typically, it involves lifting weights, but we can get a perfectly good workout using just our bodies—looking at you, squats and pushups!

3.     Core and balance.  This work helps keep us safe.  A strong core leads to good posture.  Good balance helps us avoid falls.  Both together contribute to our coordination.

4.     Flexibility.  Stretching, yoga, and Pilates help us maintain and extend our range of motion.  We decrease our likelihood of injury when we work on our flexibility.  And it feels good!

 

Go play.

Not even muscular Christianity

I’m pretty sure that St. Paul was not a personal trainer or even a fitness enthusiast, but he sums up the problem of all of us who want to be more fit and struggle in his letter to the Romans (chapter 7, verse 19, for those who want to look it up):  “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”

 

I do not at all even a little bit endorse the idea of working out as virtue and not working out as sin.  Food is not a vice, but rather a necessity for life.  But we all know that there are times when we really should work out, not just to be healthier, but to feel better.  And we know we should choose foods that are better for us.  And somehow we don’t.

 

What to do?

 

One thing we can do is make it easy on ourselves.  We just do the minimum.  So, for example, I know that I get grumpy if I don’t do my cardio.  I tell myself that the goal is 30 minutes on the spin bike.  I don’t have to pedal fast.  I don’t have to pedal hard.  I just have to put my butt on the bike and move.  Almost always I do end up pedaling fast and hard.  I get to the end of my half hour and I’m sweaty and breathless and I feel so much happier.   But if I tell myself I need to go fast and hard, I won’t do it.  It sounds too difficult, when I’m tired and comfy and I’d really rather read some more or look at dog videos on Facebook.  I have to make it easy.

 

Minimums work for all kinds of things.  We can say that we have to eat at least one vegetable at some point during the day.  We can promise ourselves one set of squats, or one stretch.  We can commit to balancing on one foot while we brush our teeth to work on our core and balance.  We can even say that we have to go outside once a day.

 

If we just do our minimum, great!  Gold stars for us!  And if our problem was just getting started, we might find that we do more than the minimum, which is extra bonus points.  Beware, however, the fake minimum.  We have to mean it when we say that our minimum is enough.  We can’t say we’re cool with one stretch and then beat ourselves up for not doing a whole yoga session.

 

Count the small victories.  They add up.

Pandemic Bare Minimum

We are all really tired, I think, of living in pandemic times.  It’s boring.  It’s frustrating.  It’s stressful in so many ways.

 

Under the circumstances, it is tempting to give up.  Sure, ice cream is a breakfast food.  Why should I even try to work out?  I don’t really have the right stuff and no one sees me anyway and besides, I’m tired from watching that new streaming show about great lawns of the world until three in the morning.  What the heck, I’ll get together with my friends—I see so many people’s posts about it and none of them are sick, so what can it hurt?  And I’ve really had it with my glasses fogging up—I’m just not doing the mask thing any more.

 

Let’s resist the temptation.

 

The only way through these terrible times is by consistent good decisions.

 

And yes, this is about fitness.  We can’t be fit if we are dead.  We use the same kind of science-based thinking to deal with the pandemic that we do when we decide what kind of workouts to do.  We have to use the same motivational techniques to get us through the not-always-pleasant process to reach our happy future.

 

Our bare minimum fitness right now is:  stay home as much as possible, wear a mask whenever we have to go out, and do not gather with our friends and loved ones who do not live with us.  If we manage to do this minimum, we’ll all live to the next workout.

 

And if we don’t want to do it for ourselves, we need to do it for others.  We want our parents, our kids, our neighbor with cancer, our immunocompromised coworker, everyone to make it out of this.  Exercising our empathy is always a good workout.

Monday Workout: Four!

While I love my usual workout format, I like to shake it up from time to time.  This week we have a shorter list of exercises, but we are going to do four rounds.  What I am not going to shake up is this piece of important advice:  change the workout to meet your needs and equipment!!!  If you don’t have an exercise ball, substitute any other ab exercise for the roll out abs.  If your knees hate lunges, do deadlifts instead.  This is YOUR workout and it needs to work for YOU.

 

1 arm clean and press	20
squats	20
kickbacks	20
db swings	20
lunge with twist	20
roll out abs	10

 

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!