Eyerolls don't burn many calories, though

Bodies like to move.  I know some folks are rolling their eyes right now because they firmly believe that they could lie on the couch until they became one with the upholstery, but hey, rolling eyes is movement, so they just proved my point.

 

Silliness aside (who am I kidding?  I can’t leave the silliness out!), all of our bodies do, in fact, like to move.  The question is how much.  When we go too long without moving, we feel stiff and sore.  Our joints refuse to open or close as much as they used to.  We forget how to get enough air into our lungs to support dancing or running or even walking.

 

The good news is that bodies also remember.  When we give our legs a stretch or our neck a little roll, our bodies remember how to do it and reward us by making us feel better.  This is true even for those of us who have arthritis; studies recommend taking even arthritic joints through their range of motion each day so that there is no further loss and maybe even a bit of gain.  Starting slow with a few stretches or a short walk helps.

 

Go play.

Real reality

I love the gym.  It’s one of my happy places.  And, at the same time, I know that sometimes it’s really important to get out into the world because gym reality does not always match real reality.

 

What am I talking about?  Glad you asked.  Let’s say we spend a bunch of time using the weight machines at the gym and we’re feeling pretty good because we have been able to add plates.  Great, right?  But then we need to go help a good friend move some furniture and we realize a few things very quickly.  One:  objects outside the gym are not necessarily designed to be grasped easily.  Two:  moving heavy objects through crowded or narrow space bears only a slight resemblance to sliding weights along the channels of a machine.  Three:  balance is way more important than we thought.  Four:  we don’t like our friend as much as we used to and we’re too old to do this kind of work for beer and pizza.  This may not be an exhaustive list, but it’s a start.

 

Similarly, we may love the treadmill.  We may move the speed and incline up.  And then we go for a hike outside where it might be a lot hotter or colder than we’re used to and the hill doesn’t end at the push of a button.  We may hike at altitude and realize that there’s not the same amount of oxygen we’re used to having.  Also, the path may not be so smooth.

 

Gyms are not the most varied environments.  We learn a lot when we take what we learn in the gym and apply it in the proprioceptively-enriched environment of the world, doing our everyday tasks, and working with the constant variety that we find.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Phase

Like everyone else, I go through phases.  This means that sometimes I forget about a particular exercise for a while, but eventually I remember.  This is why there are bench dips in this week’s workout!  Three rounds.

 

step ups	30
squats	20
bench dips	10
woodchoppers	30
bench press	20
lateral raise	10
overhead curtsy	30
deadlift	20
brains	10

Friday Reading Report: The Yoga Tradition

In the West, yoga tends to be regarded as an exercise thing, but the tradition is much richer and deeper than that.  Anyone who would like an exhaustive (and exhausting) overview of that panoply might want to check out Georg Feuerstein’s book The Yoga Tradition:  Its History, Literature, Philosophy, and Practice.

 

This is not the book to turn to if you want to know how to do various asanas or if you want a concise description of the various yoga schools.  It’s not even the right book if you want a fluid translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras with commentary.  My Sanskrit is nonexistent, but having read more than one translation of the sutras, I can say confidently that Feuerstein did not concentrate on style or flow in that particular translation.  I’m unfamiliar with many/most of the other texts he translates, but my sense is that he is more of a literalist than a stylist, which may be fine for scholars, but tends to wear out and confuse the regular reader.

 

I think I am glad I read it, but I’m not entirely sure.  There is some truly weird stuff in the annals of yoga.  I don’t know how or if this book will influence my own practice, but I do know more than when I started, so that’s something. 

Wake up!

Sometimes we all get bored with our workouts.  Here are five ways to up the challenge and wake ourselves up.

 

1.     Make it unstable.  This can be about using tools like stability balls, a BOSU, a wobble-board, or a foam roller, or it can be as simple as trying the exercise on one leg or with one arm at at time.

2.     Change the speed of the lift.  Sometimes things are harder when we do them faster.  Sometimes we learn a lot by slowing things way down.  Try doing the “hard” part quickly and then lower the weights back down very slowly.

3.     Add cardio intervals.  This can be as simple as a minute of jacks between lifts or as complicated as creating a whole circuit routine.  The idea is to get breathless and then do the lift to increase the challenge.

4.     Go backwards.  If we always do the same exercises in the same order, our bodies know what to expect.  That’s a recipe for stagnation.  Mix things up by doing the same routine but in reverse.

5.     Change location.  If we normally work out outside, we can take it indoors, or vice versa.  A change of scene means fresh input for our brains and bodies, which is good for both.

 

Go play!

The goal is...

It has been a while since I’ve reviewed one way to divide up kinds of goals, so here I am to remind everybody.  And, because I’m opinionated, I’ll even say which kind I like better.

 

One kind of goal is a results goal.  It focuses on the end state.  This is a very common kind of goal in fitness:  I want to wear a size K, or weigh B pounds, or run Z miles in J minutes.  Fancy versions of this kind of goal add deadlines:  I want to lose C pounds by my wedding date, or my reunion date, or my birthday.  There is nothing wrong with results goals, as long as they take reality into account—nobody is going to lose 100 pounds by next week, at least not in a survivable way.  This kind of goal helps us think big and see the end of the rainbow.  What these goals lack is a how.

 

Which is where process goals come in.  I love process goals because they focus on what we can do right now to get where we want to go.  Process goals are things like:  I am going to ride my spin bike for 30 minutes on weekdays before work, or I am going to do two weight lifting sessions every week, or I am going to limit my desserts to one a week.  They are all about actions we can take to move ourselves in the right direction.  They also work really well when we don’t actually know what is realistic for us.  I may not know how long it is going to take me to lose L pounds, but I do know that if I choose smaller portions every day, I’m taking steps to lose them.

 

The other thing I want to say about goals is that we are allowed to change them, no matter what kind we set.  Maybe we initially thought we wanted to lose some number of pounds and we discovered that actually we felt and looked great before we hit that number, or we hit it and found that we wanted to go a little farther.  Maybe we thought we wanted to do a marathon, but realized that our bodies were best suited to a half.  No one is checking.  We can change our minds as we get new information or even just because we want to.

 

Go play.

Work from love

Welcome to summer, or at least to June.  A lot of us confront our body anxieties as summer sets in.  I will lay a lot of the blame for this on the capitalist imperialist cis-hetero-normative white supremacist patriarchy and its advertising machine—anxious people buy stuff.  But I have good news.

 

First of all, smashing the aforementioned many-adjectived patriarchy is good exercise.  We burn a lot of calories that way and build our muscles.  (Please do not smash any actual humans.  This is not good.  Use the energy to lift the weights and power the cardio.)

 

Once we’ve calmed down a little due to the exercise, we may be able to remember that we are more than just pretty faces/bodies.  We are valuable no matter what we look like.  When we are in tune with our actual worth, we find much better ways to motivate ourselves to do things that are good for our bodies and may incidentally make our outsides as lovely as our insides.  Working from love is always better than working from fear—the workout becomes a gift we give ourselves rather than some obscure form of punishment for our imagined sins.

 

All of us are allowed to take the bodies we have right now to the beach to enjoy sun and water and fresh air; anybody who says different is not our friend.