The hard stuff

Sometimes, no matter how many good reasons we have to work out, we don’t.  What we need to do then is figure out how to get the obstacles out of the way.

 

Practical obstacles are relatively easy to overcome.  We can go walk or run for free if the gym is too expensive.  There are plenty of body weight exercises we can do if we don’t have a lot of equipment around.  Almost all of us can find enough time in the day to work out without stealing from our sleep.

 

The inner obstacle course can be more difficult.  Some of us have been scarred by our previous attempts to exercise—that mean coach in middle school or those girls who laughed at us the first time we circled the track and we felt like we were going to die or that time we broke a leg skiing and we had to hobble around on crutches forever.  Some of us hate the whole idea of sweat.  Some of us are convinced that hell is one big elliptical trainer or an endless aerobics class.  Dealing with negative emotions is hard.  In fact, it is harder than any workout.  No matter what particular issues we have, we want to go gently.  When we treat ourselves with kindness and respect and we set teeny tiny goals that we can nail, we encourage ourselves to keep going.  We love ourselves through the tough parts because we know that working out is good for us and will make us feel better in the long run, if not in the actual moment.

 

Navigating all that stuff can feel overwhelming.  This is where a friend or trainer can help—someone to be present for us while we work it through.

 

I’m here to help.

Not just for fun...

Even though I mostly enjoy working out, I don’t do it just for fun.  This surprises people, who assume that I have no problem motivating myself to work out because I am a Trained Professional.  Turns out I am human, too.  All of us, me included, work out for our own reasons.  There are some people out there who run or lift or whatever because they really love the thing itself, but the rest of us have to find other encouragement to hit the gym. 

 

Some reasons are more effective than others.  Research strongly suggests, and my experience confirms, that the best motivations are positive ones.  Put another way, if shame, meanness, cultural pressure, fear, and screaming worked, we’d all be thin and fit already.  What we need is the connection between our workouts and the things we deeply want in our lives.

 

Those deep wants don’t have to be actually deep—if we really want to be hot/gorgeous/thin out of personal vanity, that can be super motivating because we can see the link between showing up at the gym and how we look in that bikini.  Of course, they can also plumb the very depths of our souls:  we can work out to find peace, to live longer and better, to keep up with our kids or grandkids, or to reach the literal mountaintop.

 

So let’s ask the questions:  what do we want and how does that link up to getting today’s workout done?

Monday Workout: Mix

This week we’re doing some basics and some compound exercises.  The idea is to mix things up so our bodies stay a little confused, which helps them adapt.  Three rounds.

 

step ups	30
flies	20
Arnold press	10
mountain climbers	30
lunge twist	20
curls	10
squat to leg lift	30
deadlifts	20
Russian twist	10

Does it count?

What counts as exercise?  My Wristy Overlord (aka Apple Watch) has one definition, but it is not necessarily the right one.  Here are a couple of ways to figure out whether what we are doing is exercise or not:

 

1.     Are we getting sweaty?  If we’re not working hard enough to sweat, it’s probably not exercise.

2.     Are we getting breathless?  This one applies more to cardio and strength training than yoga and other mindfulness-based practices, but it is still a useful indicator.  Breathless, in this context, means that we are still capable of speech, but would really have trouble singing.

3.     Are we a little sore later?  We all have individual pain tolerances, but a good workout will leave us feeling like we did something the next day.  If we hate the very idea of stairs, we might have worked a little too hard, but if we can perfectly happily skip up and down them, we might not want to count whatever we did as exercise.

4.     Did we learn something new about our bodies in motion?  This one applies more to Pilates and its sibling practices.  Creating mobility in our joints, figuring out alignment issues, refining our proprioception (five-dollar word for our sense of where our bodies are in space), and improving our balance are all exercises that unite our bodies and minds.  It can be very tiring, too.

 

As always, I am in favor of all kinds of activity, whether they are technically exercise or not, but we do want to ensure that we get some real workouts in.  Go play.

Oilcan for everyone!

Over the last several months, I have been doing what I call my “oilcan” exercises every day.  These are the exercises that keep my body parts moving smoothly, little maintenance things that make a surprisingly big difference in how my regular workouts and the rest of my life go.

 

The practice grew out of work with my clients.  Every client has individual needs based on all kinds of things, including injury history.  I saw so many folks with knee issues that I just know to tack on a couple of specific exercises at the beginning of those workouts.  I don’t have knee issues, but I realized one day (I might have been a little slow on the uptake here, but hey, I eventually figured it out) that I could create the same kind of thing for the parts of my body that were giving me trouble.

 

It turns out that it takes less than ten minutes to do the five or six things that make my body work better all day.  Want to find out what yours are?  Poke me!

Where to begin

I have written before about how overwhelming it can be to begin working out.  I’m going to do it again, because there are always people just starting out.  Also, the rest of us can use some reminding.

 

What do we do first?  What are all these gizmos and machines for?  What do we really need to do and what is optional?

 

When we are starting from the couch, the first thing we need to do is to build some cardio endurance.  We need that cardio base to work from when we start lifting weights.  It is generally a good idea to start small and work up to reduce the likelihood of injury, soreness, or severe rebellion against the very idea of moving ever again.  “Small” is a term that each of us has to define for ourselves.  Some of us need to start with five minutes of walking most days of the week; others of us can jump right in to the recommended 30 minutes of moderate cardio five times a week.  Once we have reached that 30 minute level and we don’t feel like we’re going to die at any moment, we have our cardio base and we can move along to weight training.

 

This is where I come in.  Most folks don’t need a trainer to get in cardio.  We grab our headphones and turn up the music or bribe ourselves with our favorite shows or go on outside and get it done.  Weights are a little different, especially when we are starting out.  A trainer can help keep us safe by demonstrating good form.  It’s nice to have someone do the counting and planning for us.  And then there is that whole thing where I get people to have a reasonably good time doing something they don’t really want to do.  When we start lifting weights, again, our first priority is building some basic endurance.  We start with light weights and work our way up.  A good starting point is one session a week, building up to two or three (unless we want to be serious body-builders, in which case things get much more complex).  Even if we don’t choose to work with a trainer, we want to put the priority on free weights rather than all those fancy gym machines because most of those machines work our muscles in isolation from each other, which is not how stuff works in real life.  When we work with free weights, we also build core strength, balance, and coordination.  (Those machines have uses for people with specific issues or injuries or other limitations and it is not BAD to use them; free weights are just, on the whole, BETTER.)  Our bodies really start to change when we begin lifting weights.  This is where we begin to build lean body mass, increase our metabolisms, and burn a lot of fat.

 

Then I need to talk about the most neglected part of most of our fitness efforts:  flexibility.  We get pretty good about showing up to do our cardio and weights and then we’re tired and we think that we’ll just skip the stretching today or do it later and we never seem to get around to it.  This is not the best choice.  Having toned muscles and all is great, but life is about moving, so if we skip the stretches too much, we are essentially limiting our lives by way of our range of motion.  Stretching feels good, so we perverse slaves of the Protestant Work Ethic think that it must not be all right to do or something.  Fight the power:  do some stretching!

 

I am always available for questions, so don’t hesitate to drop me a line or give me a call to ask.  Now go play.

Monday Workout: Yep, there are burpees

Bad news first:  there are burpees in this workout.  We do them because they are good for us, increasing our coordination, muscle mass, balance, and calorie-burning.  This does not mean we have to like them.  Swearing is allowed.  Three rounds.

 

woodchoppers	30
bench press	20
burpees	10
lunge punches	30
squats	20
kickbacks	10
plyo/regular/mod jacks	30
lateral raise	20
brains	10