I'll do it for a...

Bribery is a good thing, sometimes.  When we’re trying to get ourselves to do the workout we’ve planned, offering ourselves a bribe can get us to that starting place.  Here are five non-food bribes (yes, I know that many of us will do all kinds of things for tacos, but we’re focusing on fitness right now):

 

1.     Hot bath/shower.  Maybe the kind with fancy bubbles or candles or a scrubby thing.  Bonus:  it will help sore muscles relax.

2.     Outing.  (Keeping in mind safe protocols for the pandemic.)  We can go to that museum we’ve wanted to visit or catch a movie or stroll through the park with a friend.

3.     Music.  This one is great because when we get new, upbeat music, not only do we get to enjoy it, we can use it to make our future workouts more fun.

4.     Friends.  We can give ourselves a moment to chat with the people who make life fun.

5.     That (small) thingie we’ve been coveting.  Maybe it’s a pair of earrings or a new pen or some cool socks.  We can give ourselves a reward for a week’s worth of workouts.  (Gotta be careful with this one because it can get expensive!)

 

Go play!

Obstacles

About this point in our shiny new goal journey, we realize that change is hard.  There are a surprising number of obstacles and we think about giving up.  (Note:  resting is not the same as giving up.  It is always all right to take a rest and then get back to work.)  Here are a few kinds of obstacles we might face in our fitness journey and some strategies for fighting those suckers.

 

We’re sore.  Yup.  That one happens a lot.  The first thing we need to do is decide if we are the good kind of sore or the bad kind.  The good kind means that we’ve given ourselves a challenge, but one we can handle.  We know it is the good kind because it goes away after a day or two.  If we’re still sore on the third or fourth day after a workout, we might want to dial the workout down a little.  If we’re dealing with the good kind of sore, we want to check in with our friends Ibuprofen (or whatever OTC pain reliever is appropriate), ice (if there is swelling), and heat (if we’re just feeling stressed and sore with no swelling).  Then we need to do something counterintuitive:  we need to keep moving.  Gentle movement (think yoga, stretching, maybe a stroll) will help keep our bodies from clenching up and feeling even more sore and stiff.  If we are the bad kind of sore, we need to adjust our workout, get some rest, and then start again.

 

We’re tired.  Maybe we’re not actually all that sore from the workouts, but we are really tired.  Change is hard on the mind as well as the body, so this is a good time to cut ourselves some slack.  Prioritizing getting enough sleep can be hard, but so worth it!  Even if we can’t get more sleep, we can focus on things that give us more energy (no, not you, caffeine and sugar!) like positive interactions with friends or meditation or flowers or even an episode of a favorite show.

 

Our family/friends don’t like what we’re doing.  This is a hard one.  Our spouses or kids or significant others or whoever may resent that we are spending time taking care of ourselves.  We have to work on our self-care muscles as well as the physical ones.  This is where we tell ourselves about putting on our own oxygen mask first.  If we are not healthy, we can’t be there for others.  And, if our loved ones don’t get that we deserve to be healthy, we may have to do some reevaluating about the health of our relationships.  That’s never easy, but it is useful.

 

We actually hate working out.  Very few people hate every single possible workout that exists.  We just might have to experiment for a while to find the right workout for us, whether it’s Zumba or swimming or kayaking or heavy lifting or just a date with our favorite show and the treadmill.

 

Still struggling?  Poke me for advice!

Get started

Let’s talk about yoga and Newtonian physics (I leave the quantum physics to experts).  Both yoga and physics apply to all our workouts, surprisingly enough.  They agree:  the hardest part is getting started.

 

In yoga, this is phrased like this:  To begin is the victory.

 

Physics, in the form of Newton’s first law of motion, says it a little differently:  A body at rest tends to remain at rest and a body in motion tends to remain in motion.

 

In our daily lives, then, what we need to focus on is that first step.  Once we get going, once we get to the gym or get on the bike or look at the weights or roll out the mat, we can keep on going more easily.  We win by showing up.

Monday Workout: New Stuff!

Every once in a while, we need to change things up to keep our bodies from getting too bored.  I love my usual workout format, but this week, we’re doing a shorter circuit and doing four rounds, just to keep things fresh.  (Obviously, do more or fewer circuits and adapt exercises as usual for appropriateness!)

 

There are also two new exercises in this workout.  The 1 leg balance with arm wave works like this:  stand on one foot with the other knee lifted so the thigh is parallel to the ground, arms at sides.  Then lift the arms out to the side and overhead.  Lower back to the side.  That’s one rep.

 

The db (dumbbell) pullover works like this.  Begin lying on your back (yay!).  Hold a dumbbell in both hands over your breastbone with arms just slightly bent (as if your arms were parentheses) (I like parentheses.).  Lower your arms toward the floor over your head, stopping just before the weight touches the ground.  Return to start.  That’s one rep.

 

jacks or plank jacks	20
1 leg balance with arm wave	10
curl to overhead press	20
curtsy	20
db pullover	20
Russian twist	10

Ways to Measure

In keeping with the goal theme of the week, here are some ways to measure things to help us meet our goals:

 

1.     Pencil and paper.  Spreadsheet also works.  Measurements only work if we have a way to track them, so write or type it down.

2.     Scale.  Yep, our good friend on the bathroom floor.  It’s best if we weigh ourselves on the same scale in the same clothing (or lack of clothing) at the same time of day to keep things consistent.

3.     Tape measure.  The sewing kind that flexes, not the construction metal kind that crinkles when it bends.  We can use it to measure our upper arm, chest, waist, hips, thigh, and calf.  Measure the same spot every time for best results.

4.     Tracker.  I have a Wristy Overlord (aka Apple Watch), but many fitness trackers exist and work just fine to track things like our exercise minutes, steps, heart rate, and the like.  They’re not necessary, but they’re nice and they keep us honest.

5.     Scale.  The one-to-ten kind.  This is useful when we want to track goals that are a little fuzzier, like having more energy.  We give each day a rating on a scale from one to ten and see how our ratings change over time.

6.     Other tech stuff.  This can be things like a bioelectric impedance gizmo to measure body fat percentage, or a blood pressure cuff.  Again, not necessary, but useful if we have very specific goals.

7.     Calculator.  Unless we love math, a calculator can really help us when we look at our averages.  Weekly averages help us see trends in things like weight, sleep hours, or HRV.

 

Remember that different people thrive under different systems.  What seems ridiculously elaborate to one person will delight someone else.  Some of us need things to be simple and others love to have thirty-seven color coded folders.  Do what works.

Goals, Part Two: DUMB

Today I’m going to write about DUMB goals, a system I just made up myself to articulate some things that I have seen and experienced.  Some of us feel (OK, I feel) pressured by SMART goals and constrained by systems that keep demanding more and more.  I offer DUMB goals for those of us who want something different.

 

DUMB goals are Doable, Understandable, Measurable, and Basic.  Yes, two of those things are the same as SMART goals, but with different letters.  I kept those two because they were the most useful.

 

Let’s get the repeats out of the way first:  Doable and Measurable, which map to Attainable and Measurable in the SMART system.  We want goals that we can meet, so choosing a doable goal is important, even if we need some help figuring out what exactly is doable.

 

I’ll come clean:  I really hate measuring stuff.  I resent it every single morning when I step on the scale.  I dread my monthly dates with the tape measure.  I often swear at my Wristy Overlord (aka Apple Watch) when it reminds me that I have not hit a particular measured milestone on a given day.  Problem is, measuring stuff works.  I like stuff that works even more than I hate measuring things.  The key is finding the measurements that combine effectiveness in gauging our progress with something we can tolerate doing.  Using myself as an example, again, my fitness level does not have a high correlation with my daily step count, at least partly because my favorite exercises are biking and swimming, which do not add steps.  Cardio minutes, however, really do impact my fitness level, so I pay attention to getting my 30 minutes every day.

 

Now on to the letters I added:  Understandable and Basic.  Understandable, in terms of goals, means that we choose something that means something to us.  Waist-to-hip ratio, BMI, body fat percentage may all be useful metrics, but if they don’t mean anything to us, they are not useful as goal-markers.  We may do better with something like a clothing size or a scale weight or a round-the-block time.

 

My favorite letter in the DUMB goal is the B for Basic.  I believe that we learn to meet goals by meeting goals, so starting with very basic goals is the way to success.  I think that our first goals should be stupidly easy—do five minutes of cardio once a day, do one squat, one pushup, drink one glass of water.  We learn efficacy this way.  Then, once we know we CAN do things, we make it just a little harder, say, six minutes of cardio.  One step at a time is how we get to our goals.

 

Try it and tell me what you think!

Goals, Part One: SMART

Now that we’re in 2022, we might be making some goals for the year.  I’m going to be writing about goals all week, beginning with today’s topic:  SMART goals.

 

There are lots of ways to make goals, some more effective than others.  A fair amount of research suggests that SMART goals are useful.  So what the heck are they?

 

SMART goals are Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely, thus the acronym.  Explaining further is best done with an example.

 

Let’s say we, like nearly everyone else after the holidays, want to lose weight.  We could say, “I want to lose weight,” and call our goal-writing done, but how will we know when we’ve met our goal?

 

We begin by making it specific:  I want to lose 10 pounds.  We’ll know, assuming we weigh ourselves, when we’ve reached the goal.

 

For a lot of fitness goals, specific and measurable go together.  We get specific by choosing a measurable thing.  Pounds are a measurement, so by making our goal in terms of pounds, we have automatically made it measurable.  (Reaching a milestone lifting weight or beating a best mile time would be other examples of measurable fitness goals.)

 

I’m going to be a little wacky and go out of order here, but that’s because it makes more sense to talk about the time thing next.  A lot of us do better with goals that have an end date and/or a deadline.  So instead of just generally wanting to lose ten pounds sometime between now and when we die, we can say we want to lose ten pounds by March 31.  Now we can do some math and realize that we need to lose a little more than 3 pounds a month, or about a pound a week—we’ve just made ourselves some mini-goals to go with our big goal.

 

The attainable bit comes into play right around the part where we start making time goals.  I’m sure all of us would love it if we could lose ten pounds by tomorrow, but that’s not an attainable goal (at least by any method I would suggest as healthy and sane).  It is totally all right to get help with figuring out what an attainable goal is.  A fitness professional can guide us so that we don’t set ourselves up for disaster.  (Pro tip for weight loss goals:  healthy weight loss is between one and two pounds per week, so 26 to 52 pounds per year.)  This is also the part where we consider how our goals fit with our real life, not the fantasy life we wish we had.  We get realistic and say that our birthday week, for example, is probably not going to be a week in which we lose two pounds and we might want to pencil in staying the same as a goal for that week.

 

Finally, let’s talk about the relevant part.  We need to choose our own goals.  We all get lots of messages from our loved ones, our acquaintances, and our society at large about what we are “supposed” to be.  Making changes is hard, so it really helps to want those changes deep in our hearts.  Maybe somebody else wants us to lose weight, but we are happy the way we are—those somebody elses can go pound sand.  Healthy bodies come in many shapes and sizes.  We need to choose what gives US joy.

 

Tomorrow:  another way to look at goals.