As we get more fit, we need to make our workouts harder to keep the process going. This is why burpees are back. Also, they get easier the more we practice. (It is totally all right to call me names or swear or both the whole time.) Three rounds.
overhead curtsey | 30 |
squats | 20 |
burpees | 10 |
| |
kb swings | 30 |
kb twists | 20 |
kb 8s | 10 |
| |
jacks | 30 |
rows | 20 |
quadruped | 10 |
Standing up straight is not as… straightforward… as just throwing back our shoulders and sucking in our bellies. We need to line up our body landmarks. Imagine looking at yourself from the side. We want these body parts to line up:
• Ear
• Shoulder
• Hip
• Knee
• Ankle
For most of us, our ear tends to be a little too forward, as are the hips. When we bring our heads back over our shoulders, it gets easier to bring our hips to the right tilt to lengthen the lower back a bit. Beware the tendency to stick out the chest—it is not any better than caving it in; we want the happy medium.
Good posture is not a particularly sexy idea. The cool kids slouch. We curl up in comfy chairs. We hunch over our desks. And it isn’t good for us.
Uncle Joe (Pilates, that is) encourages us to buck this trend. This is only partly because he was obsessed with breathing. When we don’t have good alignment in our bodies, we can’t breathe as well, which affects everything from our cognitive function to our energy levels.
Another reason Uncle Joe wants us to get ourselves in line has to do with efficiency. He was all about efficient movement and that starts with having correct length-tension relationships in our muscles. What the heck are length-tension relationships? Our muscles have an optimal default length when they are not contracting. When they contract, or shorten, they move our bones. If our muscles are too tense or too slack to begin with, they can’t exert as much force and we don’t move as well, as much, or as efficiently. We end up doing a lot more work.
Good posture helps protect us from overuse injuries. When we get out of alignment, our parts wear out faster (just like tires on a car!).
If all of that is too high-minded to be motivational, here’s one more reason to acquire good posture: we’ll look thinner.
We can do it!
Lately a lot of people I talk with seem to feel overwhelmed. Maybe it is cumulative exhaustion from more than a year’s worth of pandemic. Maybe it is the relief that is starting to come from the better news about vaccines. Even good change is stressful.
So when we get to our workouts, we need to begin slowly and we need to be patient. I admit, this is not my favorite way of being in the world. I love to jump right in and try to do all of it Right Now. Except that doesn’t work for fitness. Fitness works best when we build it as a habit, so we need to make sustainable habits.
Starting slowly might mean choosing a ridiculously easy goal, like maybe walking for five minutes a day. Once we have that habit, we definitely want to build on it, but we have to be careful not to get into the mindset of more-is-better.
Let me digress for a moment: I have and wear an Apple Watch to track my movement and exercise and standing (I don’t care that much if I stand up in 12 different hours during the day, but it’s part of the package, so I do it.) I call it my Wristy Overlord because it is always telling me what to do and God forbid that I should end a day without completing my circles! The Wristy Overlord, when it sees that I have met my movement goal all week, tries to get me to agree to a higher movement goal for the following week. It wants me to get on the endless upward staircase to failure, because at some point, I won’t be able to meet the increased goal. Every week, I talk back to the Wristy Overlord and tell him that I have set my goals at my minimum acceptable levels ON PURPOSE because I know when I’m going above and beyond; what I need to know is whether I have done just enough or not.
Whether there is a Wristy Overlord involved or not, we all feel a certain amount of pressure to achieve more, faster, and better. This can cause us to push ourselves beyond what is desirable. We do not want to be very fit stressed-out corpses. We want to be happy human beings. It is true that we sometimes have to do unpleasant things to be healthier, but we want to strike the right balance between what we need to do and what we like to do.
Go play. The right amount.
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 |
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?
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.
