Checking In: Part 1

Here we are in March!  That was fast!  So:  how about we take a moment to check in with our bodies and see how the year is going?  Today I’ll discuss what we might want to evaluate at this point and tomorrow I’ll talk about what we might want to do to tweak our fitness plans (or, you know, make a fitness plan in the first place).

 

First let’s talk about the quantitative measures we can use.  Two useful sorts of measurements are weight and circumferences.  For the first one, we just step on the scale and see how we’re doing.  As with all of the measurements I’m going to discuss, we want to do our best to take them under the same circumstances as much as possible; that is, in the same or similar clothes, at a similar time of day, using the same devices, and so on (hydration level can be important!).  Personally, I forget stuff when I don’t do it first thing in the morning, so that’s my preferred time, but other people have different sorts of rhythms.

 

Circumference measures require either a sewing-type tape measure or a long enough piece of string and a regular tape measure.  The most common and useful measurements to track are the chest (at the nipple line), the waist (at the belly button), the hips (at the widest point), the upper arm (halfway between the shoulder and elbow), the thigh (halfway between hip and knee OR at widest point—remember which one!), and the calf (at the widest point).  The reason for all those parentheses is that we need to make sure that we are measuring the same spot each time.  The narrowest part of our waist might not be at the belly button, but the belly button is a useful landmark for where to measure so we can track the changes.

 

People with fancy fitness trackers/Apple Watches/wristy overlords may want to track some other pieces of data.  Depending on your gizmo, you can track all kinds of things, but one metric I would like to point out is HRV (heart rate variability).  Research suggests that this measurement is one of the best indicators of cardio fitness.  NOTE:  it is a highly individual measurement and we should NOT compare ours to anyone else’s because that’s just not useful data.  In general, we want our HRV to trend higher.  (Folks who want to get REALLY fancy can track the measurement for a couple of weeks, figure out an average HRV, and then plan workouts for each day based on whether a particular day’s measurement is above or below average—a harder workout on a higher HRV day and a more recovery-based workout on a lower one; this has been shown to produce better results than plain old planning alone.)

 

Those of us who want even more gizmos can acquire a blood pressure cuff and track that, but it is not necessary unless high blood pressure is a problem.  Those of us who are curious about our body fat percentage can get a bioelectrical impedance monitor.  The consumer versions are not as accurate as the medical ones or as the water displacement tests, but they do allow us to track changes if we use the same device under the same circumstances every time.  The monitor I have also computes BMI, but anybody with a calculator (or a pencil and paper) can do the same (I am not putting the formula here because I think BMI is a bad measurement and less useful than many other indicators of health and fitness—anyone who wants the info can Google it).

 

One other kind of tracking we might consider is food tracking.  There are tons of apps out there to make it easy.  If we have been tracking, now we might want to do a little evaluating of how we are doing.  If we haven’t been tracking, we can start now.

 

Tomorrow I’ll talk about what to do with all this data.

Monday Workout: More New Stuff!

We have some more new compound exercises this week!  The squat raise begins with feet hip-distance apart, arms out to the sides at shoulder level with light weights in them; as we bend our knees, our arms move to the front of our body out over our knees; then we return to the start position.  The plié bend-extend begins with our arms out to the side at shoulder level holding light weights and our legs wide and turned out; as we bend our knees and lift our heels, we also bend our elbows to bring the weights in toward our shoulders; then we return to start.  The single leg deadlift row works like this:  we stand on one foot with our torso and other leg parallel to the floor (drinking bird position) while holding light weights in our arms; then we row the weights up to our armpits and lower them back down; do half the set on one leg and the other half on the other.  Plank quadruped works like regular quadruped except that it starts from plank position; we lift our right arm and left leg off the floor and then reverse it.

 

Everything else should be familiar!  Three rounds.

 

jacks	30
squat raise	20
reverse fly	10
overhead high knees	30
plié bend-extend	20
Arnold press	10
step ups	30
1 leg dead lift row	20
quadruped or plank quadruped	10

 

KISS, baby!

 Let’s keep things simple today.  Here are five things to do to feel good and stay healthy:

 

1.     Sleep.  Fight the cultural glorification of overwork and under-sleep.  Nap against The Man.  Seriously, prioritizing enough rest is good for the body, the mind, the metabolism, and people who have to deal with us.  Aim for about eight hours, give or take.

2.     Move.  It doesn’t have to be big or complicated.  A half hour walk on most days is enough to maintain a healthy body.

3.     Eat.  We need food to live.  When we pay attention to the foods that make us feel more energetic and happy and calm, we do better.  Spoiler alert:  it’s not going to turn out to be Jack-in-the-Box all day, every day.  Bonus spoiler alert:  it’s also not going to be a single leaf of kale per day and nothing else.

4.     Drink.  Water.  Plenty of water.  Dehydrated people are grumpy and mistake-prone.  Drinking other things is all right, but water is best.

5.     Play.  Not everything has to be hard.  Taking the time to find the joyful bits is entirely useful.

Pelvis, no Elvis

Recently I went to a workshop on Pilates for pelvic floor health.  Nearly all of us will have some pelvic floor issues at some point in our lives, so it was a practical decision.  I learned tons and my clients will be seeing little sneaky things creeping into their workouts to keep everything functioning smoothly (and drily!) as we go forward.  However, there are two things we all can do to improve our function that have nothing to do with kegels.

 

The first thing we can do is, surprisingly, to breathe deeply.  Deep inhales and exhales into the abdomen allow the pelvic floor to contract completely and then relax completely.  Muscles that are held too tightly or too loosely are weak muscles.  Teaching muscles to contract and relax allows us to create the optimal amount of tension for whatever we happen to be doing.  So what do I mean by deep breathing?  We need to inhale so that the breath fills our torsos from the bottom up and then empties the same way.  That’s it.  We may not be able to concentrate on breathing that way all the time, but even a few minutes of attention to the breath a couple of times a day will help.  (Bonus:  we get mindfulness points for this!)

 

The second thing we can do is to strengthen our deep abdominal muscles.  Most of us spend a lot of time focusing on the surface ones (the rectus abdominis) because those are the ones that make the six-pack look.  However, looks aren’t everything.  Below the rectus, we have the transversus abdominis, which runs across the body from side to side.  That’s the one we need to befriend in order to improve our function (not only for pelvic floor, but for all kinds of daily activities!).  When we hear (or use) cues like drawing our belly buttons to our spines, we are recruiting our rectus abdominis.  Instead, to wake up our transversus, we can think about all the stuff in our abdomens and imagine that we are shrink-wrapping it.  That feeling of pulling all those squishy bits together is our transversus working.  We can, of course, do this during our workouts, but we can also take a moment every once in a while during the day to do it all by itself (or maybe we can do it when we do our breathing?  Too organized?  Probably not.).

 

Try it out and let me know what you think!

Squat!

I have made no secret of the fact that squats are my favorite exercise.  However, I may have not been as obvious about WHY they are my favorite.

 

The very first reason they are my favorite is that I want to live an independent life all the way to the end.  As long as I can get up and down off the toilet by myself, I won’t necessarily have to go to assisted living or nursing home care (except, of course, if my tiny mind loses touch with reality, but that’s another problem).  In other words, I do squats to avoid a boring and sad existence in a small room.

 

A more cheerful reason to do squats is that squats work pretty much everything in our bodies.  The more muscles that work during an exercise, the more the exercise impacts our metabolism, burns calories, recruits stabilizers, improves our strength, and prepares us for the challenges of the world outside the gym.

 

Speaking of those challenges outside the gym, squats are particularly important as we get older.  By the time we get to 70, nearly all of us will have some bone loss (a.k.a. osteoporosis).  We can minimize that bone loss by doing weight-bearing activity (like squats!), but it will still happen.  With bone loss, we have to be careful about flexing our spines to avoid fractures.  In practical terms, this means that when we need to pick up things like packages or dogs or small children from the floor, we need to use our knees to get low rather than our backs.  Squatting regularly helps us do that.

 

Squats can be modified to suit nearly everyone.  People with troublesome knees may prefer to do squats with a stability ball against a wall or with the support of a TRX.  People with bionic/replacement knees will need to ensure that they don’t go too deep into the squat, as do folks with hip replacements.  Obviously, if a doctor or physical therapist tells us not to do them or if we experience the harmful kind of pain when we try to do them, we should skip them.  Otherwise, we should go for it.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Back to Compound

This week we are working on compound exercises again.  Three rounds.

 

woodchoppers	30
squats	20
pushups	10
mountain climbers	30
flies	20
kickbacks	10
clean and press	30
rows	20
brains	10

Five Core Favorites

I’m in the mood for core exercises.  Here are five of my favorites, with links to directions that feature the Amazing Stickie.

 

1.     Pretty princesses.  Here’s how to do them.   What I like about them, besides the fact that they work everything at once, is that they keep the spine supported, making them suitable for folks who should avoid flexion (people with osteoporosis and various other spine conditions).

2.     Brains.  Here’s a how-to.  Brains have the same advantage as pretty princesses, but they focus attention on the obliques.

3.     Femur arcs.  Another how-to.  This is a Pilates exercise that I use with both Pilates and personal training clients because it is so good for learning about our lower abdominals and about how to engage our transversus abdominis (the deep abdominal muscle that helps our tummies look flat instead of poochy).

4.     Plank:  yet one more how-to.  Planks not only strengthen the abdominals, but also help us with our upper body strength.

5.     Side plank:  the last how-to.  Another exercise to target obliques and help us with shoulder stability.

 

(If you would like a booklet of exercises featuring the Amazing Stickie, drop me a note!)