Finding the best buddy

A lot of us need help with accountability.  We are more than happy to flake on ourselves when we don’t feel like getting up in the morning to work out or when we’re tired on the way home from work and we skip the gym to go to the couch instead.  One way to short-circuit that tendency is to buddy up.  We don’t like to flake on our friends.  However, it is important to choose the right friend to be a workout buddy.  Here are some things to consider:

 

Is my friend a morning person or an evening person?  Both kinds of friends are great, but planning a morning workout with an evening person is not likely to be successful.  (Note:  we need to check what time works best for US, too!)

 

Is my friend overbooked?  Often late?  Prone to emergencies?  If so, this friend might not be the best workout partner.  We want someone as committed or slightly more committed to showing up as we are to make this work.

 

Is my friend at about the same fitness level I am?  Working out with a friend who is a lot less fit than we are can be fun and social, but maybe not the most effective workout unless, say, we are on neighboring treadmills going at our own appropriate paces.  Similarly, trying to keep up with a friend who is a lot more fit than we are can be discouraging and in extreme cases dangerous.

 

Is my friend interested in my success (and am I interested in theirs?)?  We probably don’t want to work out with that friend who always has to one-up us or who puts us down.  We may want a bit of (friendly) competition, but only a bit; when it gets to be about winning, we may lose sight of our real goals.  We want to choose the friend who is encouraging and who appreciates our encouragement.

 

Is my friend too chatty?  Of course we want to chat while we work out with our friend, but we need to make sure we’re still doing the workout.

 

Go play.

Gotta Make the Morning Last...

One of the things I love about Pilates is that it helps me slow down.  I am not the world’s most patient person, so I tend to go as close to warp speed as possible most of the time.  This is not entirely sustainable, so I am grateful, again, to Uncle Joe for his help.

 

Two particular aspects of Pilates make it conducive to a more sensible tempo for me, and maybe I’m not alone in this.  Pilates moves with the breath.  While it is possible to breathe fast enough to do a set of chest lifts or femur arcs or Russian splits at the pace I often want to get them done, it’s not very pleasant.  Allowing the breath to facilitate the motions almost automatically slows things to a more manageable level.  It also keeps me from hyperventilating!

 

The other part of Pilates that helps me tune in to a more leisurely, enjoyable experience is the integration it demands between body and mind.  My body, left to itself, will flail around at its top speed.  When I have to be more precise and more thoughtful about the quality of the motion, everything takes longer.  Pilates is not about getting it done; it’s about getting it done right.

 

We all, I think, need a little more space in our lives.  Pilates, by helping us unplug from the high-velocity activities of the day, makes that space possible.

Monday Workout: Pursued by a Bear

This week we have more compound exercises!  The lunge to curl to overhead press is exactly what it sounds like; those of us with knee issues may just want to do a curl to overhead press.  The bear crawl starts with us on the floor on our hands and feet; we move our right arm and left leg forward to crawl and then the left arm and right leg.  Ball wall squats can be done several ways, but two that I might suggest this week are the usual up-and-down or an endurance squat held for as long as possible.  As always, adapt as needed!  Three rounds.

 

1 arm clean and press	30
flies	20
ball wall squat	10
suitcase swing	30
(lunge) to curl to overhead press	20
bear crawl or pushups	10
mountain climbers	30
deadlifts	20
brains	10

Friday Book Report: Yoga and the Quest for the True Self

Stephen Cope’s book Yoga and the Quest for the True Self is not the one to pick up for how to do poses.  It’s more about why to do poses, and I don’t mean to achieve yoga butt.

 

Cope is both a psychotherapist and a yogi from Kripalu.  His book has a lot of the characteristics of the usual self-help and pop psychology books (stories about people with various problems and their victories through yoga).  It’s also a history of the Kripalu ashram, which provides some cautionary ballast to the happy joy love story.  Cope’s writing style is conversational and clear.  He doesn’t throw out a whole bunch of Sanskrit and leave the reader to sort it out.

 

While at times he strays a little far along the woo-woo spectrum, he remains grounded and practical.  He does not look at yoga as a cure for everything and does, from time to time, note that he did refer various people in his stories to therapy.  He seems to believe that yoga, by freeing the body, helps us get to what we need to free our minds, which is where therapy is a useful adjunct.

 

For me, the price of the book was worth it for these five words:  “breathe, relax, feel, watch, allow” (p. 210).  This is his recipe for integrating physical, emotional, and energy experience.

 

Definitely an interesting read; may not be for everyone.

In a Car Jam

Anybody stuck in a car or behind a desk for a long time can attest to the toll it takes on the body.  Here is a list of survival tools to help us through.

 

1.     Duck.  Also called a point-pressing stick at the local Daiso store.  Best $1.50 investment ever.  We hook it over a shoulder and pull down and that spot between neck and shoulder that holds all the tension feels the relief.  May even keep us from swearing in traffic.

2.     Yoga Tune Up Balls or lacrosse balls.  The former are better for desk and the latter for cars because lacrosse balls are firmer to compensate for squishy car seats.  A ball under one side of the behind can bring all kinds of relief to aching hips.  A pair of them on either side of the spine can help keep the back from making us want to stab people.

3.     Microwavable neck pillow.  This one requires planning ahead, which can be a problem, but in the morning cold the pillow can bring much needed relaxation to the neck and shoulders.

4.     Water.  Dehydrated people are grumpy people.  We should get whatever kind of travel cup makes us actually drink more water and add bubbles or mint leaves or lemon slices or whatever makes it feel more fun.

5.     OTC pain relievers.  Different ones work better for different folks and some of them interact poorly with various prescription medications, so we need to do a little checking, but keeping some in the car to deal with that post-work or in-traffic headache can get us where we are going slightly more sane.

 

Go play.

X Marks the Variable

If changing our approach to our workouts (see yesterday’s post) doesn’t work to break up the boredom, we can address other elements of the experience.  Basically, if there is a variable, we can adjust it.

 

Consider, for example, pace.  Some of us are the kind of people who do everything deliberately.  We lift and lower slowly.  We like endurance cardio.  When that gets dull, we can mix it up with some sprints in cardio and some power moves in weightlifting.  The speed demons among us can do the opposite and exercise patience along with our muscles.

 

Then there is time.  Sometimes throwing in a longer workout is exactly what we need to wake up our body and brain.  Conversely, maybe we want to work harder for a shorter time and call it a day.  Or we can get crazy and break up our workout into smaller segments at different times of day.

 

What about location?  Being stuck in the gym forever is not a recipe for happiness, so maybe take that run outside.  Already working out outdoors?  We can try a different route, add some hills.

 

Company can help.  We can piggyback on a friend’s workout, see what they do that is different, or invite them to join us.  This works best with friends who have roughly our same level of fitness or with a friend who is a lot more fit who is willing to take a rest-ish day with us.

 

How about order?  We can try doing the workout backwards.  We may realize that we do it in the usual order for a reason, or we may discover that backwards is better; either way, we’ve done something different and we’ve learned something.

 

In short, we break up boredom by trying things, lots of things.  Some of them will be fun and some less so, but at the very least we will not be staying the same.

Two approaches

Sometimes we get stuck in fitness ruts.  We don’t want to do our workouts.  We’re bored.  We’re tired.  I have two suggestions that go in totally opposite directions.

 

One:  phone it in.  This is for those days when we really are tired, but not so tired that what we ought to do is take a rest day.  It is all right, once in a while, to give significantly less than 100% to our workout.  Choose a lower incline on the treadmill.  Do two sets instead of three on the weights.  This works because what we are showing ourselves is that we can keep showing up even when it is hard and boring and we don’t want to be there.  Sometimes we take the C and move along.  NOTE:  it is not all right to do this all the time.  If we find that we want to phone it in all week, we need to try something else, like maybe getting some real rest.

 

Two:  kick it up to 11.  Yes, this is the exact opposite of what I just said.  This technique works if what is tired is our brain, not our body.  It is hard to stay bored when we are breathless from doing some high intensity intervals or from choosing weights that push our boundaries.  When we focus in on doing the most we possibly can do, we wake ourselves up a little.  We may discover that we can do more than we thought.  NOTE, AGAIN:  it is not a good idea to do this all the time, either.  Intense workouts require more rest afterward.  Making one workout a week more difficult is about right.

 

Tomorrow:  more boredom busters.