Monday Workout: Ouch!

We don’t do hamstring curls that often because it is rare that we use our hamstrings all by themselves.  They don’t like it; they are cooperators by nature and they complain a lot when we do hamstring curls.  (I am a truth-teller:  hamstring curls hurt, but they’re supposed to; you will not be damaged, but you may want to call me some colorful names.)  All that said, every once in a while we need to do them because they help protect and/or strengthen our knees.  Three rounds.

 

woodchoppers	30
squats	20
pushups	10
plank jacks	30
renegade rows	20
hamstring curls	10
overhead curtsey	30
1 leg deadlift	20
Russian twist	10

Five

We all have our favorite workout tools and toys.  Here are some of mine:

 

1.     The right water container.  Mine happens to be a travel cup I was gifted at Burning Man, but I’ve had other favorite cups and bottles before.  This one is insulated, red, and the right size.

2.     The right music.  This varies from day to day, so I am glad that my phone holds so much!  In general, I like loud and fast for spin and mellow and calming for yoga.

3.     Actual workout clothes.  I was a latecomer to the workout clothes thing, but once I realized that wearing workout fabrics instead of whatever old cotton t-shirt was lying around meant that I was not an entirely soggy mess at the end, I was sold.

4.     Protective gear.  For me, that’s wrist and elbow braces and the right shoes (when I’m not doing Pilates or yoga).  When I’m on my outside bike, that means a helmet, too.  Sunscreen, bug spray, hats, and masks also qualify in this category when needed.

5.     Foam rollers and other SMR tools.  They make every workout better because they help me get the kinks out of my muscles.

 

What are yours? 

Mine isn't yours

Sometimes people ask me about my workouts.  I am happy to tell them what I do, but I try very hard to emphasize that MY workout should NOT be their workout.  I am older or younger than whoever is asking.  I have a different injury history.  I have different skills I’ve acquired over my lifetime and my own set of aptitudes.  Heck, I have different stuff on hand to use for my workouts and I definitely have my own preferences.

 

It goes against so much in our culture to avoid comparing what we do to someone else’s deeds.  We have been trained from the start to compare and compete with each other.  (Spoiler alert:  life goes better if we cooperate instead.)  We even compete with ourselves in not-so-healthy ways.  I can only work out with the body I have today.  Sometimes this is good news (I am stronger now than I was in my twenties) and sometimes less good news (I pay more now if I don’t do enough warming up).  It is all right to say that today’s workout was not as hard as yesterday’s or that we want to work a bit heavier tomorrow, but mostly we just want to show up and do our best with what we have available in the moment.

 

Go play.  Your way.

Wiggling is good exercise...

I love making plans.  Plans are like slightly more practical fantasies.  They hold out the promise of achievement and progress and all those seductive words that speak to my Protestant-work-ethic soul.  Do this and be better!

 

What I am learning is that the best plans are not as tidy as my fantasies would prefer them to be.  I—and I will venture to say we—need some wiggle room.  If I say I will get up at 5 every morning and I’ll do my cardio straight after breakfast and then weights and then stretch, I’m not exactly lying, but I’m not going to do exactly that every day.  There will be a day when I forget to set my alarm and don’t wake up anyway.  There will be a day when I have a cold.  There will be the day after a hike that turned into an accidental death march.  It’s a good idea to leave some slack.

 

Maybe my plan is something more like this:  I will do 30 to 60 minutes of cardio in the morning 5 to 7 days a week; I’ll lift weights 2 or 3 times a week; I’ll do yoga as often as possible and for sure on days when I skip the cardio.

 

For this to work, I have to be happy with the minimums and not totally wiped out by the maximums.  Thirty minutes of cardio on five days a week meets the minimum requirements for general health.  Two weight workouts is enough for folks who are not professional athletes.  A guaranteed two days of yoga (assuming I miss two cardio workouts) is a reasonable minimum.  If I hit the maximums and I’m totally trashed, I can adjust the maximums down until I get stronger or fitter or whatever.

 

And (bad news alert!) even the best plan doesn’t work if we don’t actually do the workouts.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Back!

This week we’re thinking about core in a different way.  Most of us think of core exercises as ab exercises, and that is true, but not the whole story.  There are stabilizers in the back of the body, too, as we notice when we have to balance or do asymmetrical exercises.  We’ve got deadlifts to target those back of the body muscles and single arm clean and press and round lunges to practice using all our stabilizers.  And, of course, we have pretty princesses to cover the traditional ab exercises.  Three rounds.

 

step ups	30
deadlifts	20
Arnold press	10
1 arm clean and press	30
flies	20
round lunges	10
squat to leg lift	30
curls	20
pretty princesses	10

 

Do more with fewer

Another efficiency technique for workouts is using compound exercises because they work more muscles in less time.  Here are five of my favorites:

 

1.     Overhead squats

2.     Deadlifts

3.     Lunge to curl

4.     Clean and press

5.     Woodchoppers

 

All of them use multiple joints and will get heart rate up as well!

Fitting it all in...

Yesterday I mentioned that we need to do cardio, weights, flexibility, and core and balance work.  How are we supposed to fit all that in?

 

Circuit training.  And specifically, high intensity interval circuits.

 

High intensity intervals are the key to getting a lot of cardio in a short amount of time.  We do minute-long bursts of exercises that get our heart rates elevated and then recover with less-intense exercise for a minute or two.  If we use that recovery period to lift weights and work on our core and balance, we just need to finish up with stretching at the end and voila!  It’s a little more complicated than that, but not that much.

 

Here’s how we plan.

 

First we plan a warm-up.  This is about five minutes (more if we are older, stiffer, recovering from injury, or beginners) of gentle movement, something like brisk walking or light jogging, and maybe a stretch or two toward the end.

 

Then we pick a few cardio exercises.  Think of things like jacks, mountain climbers, step-ups, jump squats, woodchoppers, anything that gets the heart rate really moving.  (Don’t do them yet!  We’re still planning!)

 

We need some weight training exercises now.  We want to pick more or less the same number of upper body and lower body exercises, so we might choose squats, bench press, deadlift, and flies.

 

Next, we need a couple of core and balance exercises.  This is where we might do multi-directional lunges and crunches.

 

(We’ll save most of our flexibility exercises for the end.)

 

Now that we have all our parts, we put them together like this:  cardio interval, lower body exercise, upper body exercise, core and balance.  Then we repeat with the other cardio, weight, and core/balance exercises we picked.  I usually create a circuit of about nine exercises and repeat it three times with rests spaced before the cardio intervals, but experimentation is good.  Finish with some SMR and stretching and call it a day!  Most people can finish what I’ve just described in under an hour.

 

Go play.