Five

Yesterday I talked about starting small.  Here are five small changes to try:

 

1.     Stretch before getting out of bed.  In the morning, our muscles need to wake up, too.  Our fascia gets all gummed up to our muscles, too, and needs to loosen up a bit.  A whole body stretch and maybe a spinal twist or two will improve our day.

2.     Put back one scoop.  Portion control is one of the keys to avoiding weight gain or promoting weight loss.  Try scooping out one less spoonful of casserole and see if it helps.

3.     Go to bed on time.  “On time” can mean different things to each of us, but aim for a time that allows for enough healthy sleep.  No, I am not sorry if this means we have to wait another day to finish binging that series.

4.     Meditate for five minutes.  We don’t have to get fancy.  Just sit and breathe quietly for five minutes.  The brain needs a break, too.

5.     Go for a walk.  Even if we just go to the end of the block.  Outside is good for us.

 

Go play.

Change is hard

Change is hard.  When we contemplate changing, even for the better, we face obstacles.

 

One of the most common obstacles is fear of failure.  We want to take better care of ourselves, but in the back of our minds, we remember all those other times we said, “This time it’s going to work.”  And it didn’t.  This is why I am in favor of ridiculously easy first steps.  We don’t start with a marathon.  We start with a few stretches and a short walk.

 

The sneakier obstacle is fear of success.  If it turns out that we can, in fact, get stronger and healthier, what ELSE might we be capable of doing?  Will our loved ones still recognize and love us?  Will our friends get annoyed or jealous?  It’s pretty scary when we find out that we are, in fact, pretty awesome.  Still, we start small, which gives both ourselves and those around us time to get used to the whole idea.

 

We CAN make changes.  We are strong.  And I am always here if anybody needs me.

Experiment!

I talk a lot about what works for me, personally.  But I recently realized that because I’m a “trained professional,” that might give the impression that what works for me is What Works.  What works for me might not work for anyone else.  That said, HOW I figured out what works for me can be helpful to pretty much anyone.

 

People who put working out on their calendar and then show up because it’s written down do exist.  The rest of us try not to resent them for their superiority and try not to make fun of them for their obedience to the Calendar Gods.  Those folks have already done the figuring and have found their answer.  (It is certainly worth a try!)

 

The short version of my method for those of us who can’t manifest stuff by writing it or typing it in the box for the day is:  experiment.

 

Experiment one:  try working out at different times of day.  Some people do best sleeping in their gym clothes, rolling out of bed, and getting right to work.  Some of us think this is cruel and unusual punishment and would much rather finish the work day and transition to the rest of life via some good sweat.  Still others of us want to get the kids settled at their schoolwork and then start lifting.  The after-lunch workout is totally a good thing if it works.

 

Experiment two:  try different kinds of cardio.  All of them work, but not all of them make everyone happy.  I know runners who hate swimming, bikers who hate running, dancers who just want to boogie.  Ideally, we will find a favorite that we can make really easy to do for ourselves and an alternate or two for variety.  (I hesitate to use myself as an example, but I’m the closest one, so here goes…)  Most of the time, I do spin.  When I get tired of that, I walk or hike.  In the summer, I mix it up with some swimming.

 

Experiment three:  add some weights.  Some folks just want to tone up a bit.  Others of us want big muscles.  And some of us feel empowered by lifting the heaviest things we can.  We have to try it to see.  Maybe we feel great doing weights weekly; maybe we feel even better working out with weights twice a week.  The only way to know is to test it out.

 

Experiment four:  find your bribe.  This can take lots of forms.  Everyone has days when we just don’t want to do it.  Maybe we bribe ourselves with a soak in a hot bath.  Maybe we tell ourselves we don’t get our coffee until we’re done.  What motivates one person does not motivate others.

 

Experiment five (and last, for now):  treat ourselves with love.  It is super easy to beat ourselves up over our perceived failures.  Change is hard.  Approaching all these experiments with curiosity and kindness lets us find out how best to do it.  Sometimes experiments fail (like me trying to show up by writing stuff on my calendar).  It’s just information.  We take it and try something else.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Up a notch

This week we’re taking our jacks up a notch (if that is appropriate in your body) by choosing between plyojacks (hard) and crouch jacks (harder).  We’re working on balance moves, core control, and overall strength.  Do three rounds.

 

woodchoppers	30
1 leg squat	20
curls	10
plyojacks/crouch jacks	30
renegade rows	20
round lunges	10
overhead curtsey	30
side tricep pushups	20
Russian twist	10

 

V-Day is not my fave...

Valentine’s Day is my Least Favorite Holiday.  I have nothing against love or candy or any of that stuff, but the holiday itself annoys the heck out of me.  However, I will seize the Hallmark-ian moment to make a list of things that are good for our hearts.

 

1.     Movement.  We want to give our hearts a chance to get pumping good and fast most days of the week.  Hearts are a muscle and they get stronger with more intense use.

2.     Healthy food.  Our hearts work best in conjunction with nice clear arteries, so that whole cholesterol thing is important.  Focus on the fruits and veggies.  They are dear to our hearts.

3.     Relaxation.  Stress is not good for our hearts, so we also need to find some ways to give ourselves down time.  Unless trying to figure out how the heck to fit that in with everything else just makes it worse.  Worst case, steal an extra five minutes behind the locked bathroom door to breathe.

4.     Hugs.  These might be harder to come by than usual with the pandemic and all, but hugs, especially long ones, do good things for all our body systems, including our hearts.

Our vocabulary is a tool...

Hi, my name is Janet and I’m a metaphor addict.  The thing is, I have no intention of reforming.  Those things work like ants plundering a picnic (see?).

 

I spend a lot of my time with clients giving instructions.  Bend this, lift that, and so on.  But I don’t just care about the rude outline of the motion; I want to get all the details in the picture (it is happening again…).  Some of us know a lot about anatomy and I can say things like, “Engage your adductors” and get results, but some folks have no idea what I mean by that, so I say things like “Squeeze a beach ball between your thighs.”

 

“You are one of those drinking bird toys.”  “Pull a sheet of paper apart under your feet.”  “Spread your abs out like a rubber band.”  We are people who live by analogy and a lot of what I do is finding the one that speaks to the person in front of me at any given time.

 

I joke all the time about my invisible tool kit.  Perhaps the most useful of those invisible tools is words.

Write about it...

I write stuff down.  I admit, I am better at writing stuff down about my clients than about myself, but I’m not horrible at keeping track of my own stuff either.  It is a useful tool.

 

Why?  Well, for one thing, we don’t remember things as well as we think we do.  How often was I lifting weights five years ago?  I have no idea, but I have my workout sheets from back then, so I can look it up.  What weight should my client choose for the next exercise?  Hmmm… let me see what I wrote down about last week’s workout.

 

For another thing, it helps us see patterns.  This is how I know not to start anything new on a Thursday and that Monday is my best workout day, followed by Saturday.

 

We can be as simple or as complicated as we like.  At the simple end, we want to write down the name of the exercise, the number of reps, and the weight (or the kind of cardio and the time).  At the complicated end, we can add food journaling and brief notes about what went well or poorly and how we felt.  We can also add instructions and cues about form if we like, so we remember to align our knees over our toes or keep our upper arms stable at appropriate times.

 

Even if we don’t do it every time, it can be useful as a snapshot.  We can look at that one time we recorded, six months ago, and see that we are lifting a lot more today, or that we were really burning up the cardio back then.

 

Try it and see what happens!