How

Yesterday I wrote about how getting started is the hard part.  Today, I offer some ideas about how to make that hard part easier.

 

1.     Plan ahead.  All right, so some of us might find this even harder than starting the workout, but it really does help.  This might mean putting out the workout clothes the night before so we don’t have to be entirely awake to put them on.  It might mean packing the gym bag before bed.  Sleeping in morning workout clothes is also totally acceptable.

2.     Reduce the thinking.  We are really good at talking ourselves out of doing stuff.  If we build the habit of working out, we don’t have as much time to talk ourselves out of it because the body just starts on autopilot.

3.     Know the routine.  This might be as simple as:  it is morning, so I do spin.  It can get more complicated, too, if we need it:  Tuesdays are for lifting, Wednesdays are for Pilates, Saturdays are for biking with friends.

4.     Keep it fun.  We are always more likely to do stuff that we like to do and there are so many exercise choices out there that we can probably find something we enjoy, or perhaps someone to work out with who makes it better.

 

Go play.

Physics, Economics, and Yoga, oh my!

The very hardest part of working out is getting started.  In economics, I believe this is called opportunity cost.  In physics, it’s about overcoming inertia.  Uncle Patanjali, in the yoga sutras, phrases it slightly differently:  To begin is the victory.

 

Knowing this, we can strategize about how we can begin.  Maybe we need to negotiate with ourselves, as a woman I met in the gym a while back suggested:  just go LOOK at the weights.  Then the hard part is done:  we’re there, in the gym.  Picking them up and working with them is relatively easy after that.  Some days I tell myself I just have to do spin for five minutes; by the time that five minutes is done, I have remembered how much I like spin and I feel the energy surge I get from doing it.  The point is to make beginning stupidly easy, so that we have as few barriers to starting as possible.

 

Again, physics explains this with the same idea of inertia.  While bodies at rest tend to remain at rest, bodies in motion tend to remain in motion.  Just start.  It gets easier from there.

Literal and Figurative, As Usual

Math is not my favorite subject.  (Sing with me, in your best Cookie Monster voice:  “C is for Calculus, that’s good enough for me…”)  That said, it is darn useful, both in the literal and figurative senses, when we approach fitness.

 

In the literal sense, we use math to do things like calculate our target heart rate for cardio.  (Here’s the equation for the quick-and-dirty version:  220-your age=your maximum heart rate.  Multiply your maximum heart rate by .65 to get the bottom limit for your training range and by .85 to get the top limit.  Then check to see if you are in that range during your workout by counting your heartbeats for a minute.)  Math helps us figure out what percentage of our single rep max we are lifting today, allows us to add up our workout minutes to a weekly total to compare to our 150-minute target for basic health, and shows us whether we can spare the calories for that extra scoop of mashed potatoes.

 

Figuratively, we “do the math” to decide what workouts work for us.  If we find that our workouts make us tired in the short term, but give us more energy in the long term, we can say the math says it is a worthwhile investment of our time.  If the scale doesn’t seem to be budging, we might do the math and realize that we need to cut some calories or increase our workout intensity.  Or, we may discover that we have nothing left for our real lives when we’re done with our workouts:  the math says we’re overdoing it, since the point of working out is to make everything else in our lives more enjoyable.

 

The good news is that there are tools out there to help us with some of that math.  There are apps to track workouts and calorie counts.  Our phones and wristy overlords can tell us our heart rates.  Heck, most of us carry around a calculator all the time if we want to be more old school about the math.  (If we want to go REALLY old school, I’m sure we all have pencils and paper.)  The figurative kind of math is less conducive to outsourcing the difficult bits, but that’s all right; difficult bits build muscles in our minds as well as bodies.

 

So the take-away is:  Do the math and then go play.

Monday Workout: Up and Down

Admittedly, getting up and down off the floor is a way to increase cardio, but I still like to batch exercises so that we can get down and stay down, mostly, and then get up and stay up, mostly.  As always, substitute with exercises that work best for YOUR body (For example, if you don’t do well with weight bearing exercises on your arms, substitute regular jacks for the plank jacks and regular rows for the renegade rows; use the pushups to increase your arm strength, but modify to your ability.)  Three rounds.

 

plank jacks	30
renegade rows	20
pushups	10
woodchoppers	30
squats	20
Arnold press	10
lunge with twist	30
deadlift	20
pretty princesses	10

A drinking game?

Now that we’ve made it to spring, it’s time to remind ourselves of all the good reasons to drink more water.

 

1.     It makes us nicer.  Dehydrated people are grumpy people.  Drink up and avoid arguments!

2.     It makes our brains work better.  In fact, almost all of our body processes work better with enough water.

3.     It helps us eat less.  We get confused sometimes between hunger and thirst.  Water has no calories, so it’s always worth it to try drinking some before we dive head first into the spaghetti.

4.     It detoxes us.  I’m not big on the whole idea of detoxes, unless it’s just about knowing we have a liver and kidneys.  But those organs work better when there is water to move the systems along.

5.     It helps us keep cool.  No one likes to be too hot.

 

So find a good glass, ice if you like, some lemon, whatever helps, and drink up.

No need for pointy sticks...

Most of us don’t worry about brushing our teeth.  It’s just something we do on autopilot.  Maybe we aren’t so good about flossing and we need the hygienist to threaten us with her pointy sticks to spur us on to better things, but the brushing we have covered.

 

We want our basic workouts to be like brushing our teeth.  We don’t have to think about them or plan for them; we just do them.  Oh, it’s morning:  I brush my teeth and go for a run.  The work day is done:  I am going to lift weights now.

 

To get to that point, we need practice.  We need to make sure we have the workout equivalent of toothbrush and toothpaste available.  For some of us, this means sleeping in our workout clothes or having them right there when we roll out of bed.  Others of us need to make sure the gym bag is packed along with our lunch and our other work things.

 

Eventually, starting or ending the day without a workout will feel as weird as forgetting to brush our teeth.

How to make it harder...

Yesterday when I posted the workout, I mentioned that as we get more fit, we need to make our workouts harder.  However, we might need some guidance about when and how to do that.

 

When we notice that our cardio workouts aren’t making us as breathless or sweaty as they used to, it’s time to make them harder.  We have a couple of choices about how.  We can go longer (this is probably how people end up doing marathons and definitely how I ended up doing century rides).  We can make the work more intense (increase the tension on the stationary bike, add hills to a walk or run, up the pace on the swim).  We can add intervals if we aren’t already using them or decrease the rest period between intense intervals if we are.  Here’s the thing:  don’t do all those things at once.  I know it is tempting, but that’s asking for a crash.  For most people, time is a limiting factor, so I suggest adding a few minutes every week or so until the workout time is about an hour.  After that, the shifts should come in intensity, unless of course the goal is a marathon or other endurance event.

 

With weights, we want to increase the number of repetitions or the weight we are lifting.  Obviously, we are not going to lift the same weight a hundred times.  Most people who want to be building general strength are going to be doing something between 8 and 15 reps (fewer if the goal is to increase 1 rep max, more if the goal is general toning).  When the larger number of reps at a weight becomes easy, we increase the weight and drop down to the lower end of the rep range, gradually building up to the top end.  Then we increase the weight again and reduce the reps.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Another way to increase the intensity of our weight workouts is to add cardio intervals—a minute of running or spinning or jumping rope between sets makes everything harder.

 

In everything, it is important to pay attention to what the body says.  We want our workouts to be hard but not torturous.  Gradual increases in intensity are best.

 

Go play.  Hard.  But not too hard.