Five

We get bored with our same old workouts.  Here are five ways to modify what we’re doing to make it less boring.

 

1.     Go faster.  In fact, if we go as fast as we safely can, we add some significant challenge.  This can take the form of intervals of max effort, or just a general increase in speed, whether in cardio or weight training.

2.     Go slower.  This one is for weight training specifically.  If we deliberately raise and lower the weights at a very slow pace, we increase the time our muscles are under tension.  It can be super challenging and useful for building up our strength and endurance.

3.     Go a different direction.  We tend to do everything going forward, but life isn’t always that way.  We can try walking backward (safely!) on the treadmill, or we can trade our regular lunges for side lunges, or we can throw in some twists.

4.     Change the order.  If we always do our cardio first and then our lifting, we can switch it up.  One note:  no matter what order we are doing our workouts in, we need to ensure we get in a warm-up.

5.     Change the time.  We can try working out in the morning if we are usually after-work workout people, or vice versa.  We can try a short, intense workout instead of a longer one, or we can see what happens if we do something more endurance-based and long for different.

 

These are my ideas.  What are yours?

Sweat It

I am a person with depression.  It is under control, most of the time, but there are times when it gets worse.  When that happens, I try to remember to get some exercise.

 

Please note:  I am not a doctor or therapist or counselor or psychiatrist.  I am a personal trainer.  What I am saying here is not a substitute for professional psychological help.  I encourage any and all depressed people to seek out whatever therapies they need, including medications, which can save lives.

 

Now that I’ve got the really important disclaimers out of the way, here’s why I exercise when I feel an upsurge in my depression.

 

Cardio exercise releases endorphins in our bodies.  Endorphins are the neurochemicals that make us feel better.  So it works like this:  we exercise, we get happy brains.

 

Another thing that exercise does for us is make us breathe.  This can be the heavy breathing of cardio or weight training, or the focused breathing of yoga or Pilates.  In either case, we have to pay attention to bringing air in and out of our bodies, which helps to ground and center us.

 

One more thing:  exercise is something we can actually do.  When we feel overwhelmed and useless and hopeless, we may feel like we can’t do anything.  Going for a walk, doing five minutes of yoga, lifting one weight is a completed task.  We are now people with agency in the world.  If we manage a whole workout, we are not only people with agency, but we are also stronger.

 

Go play.

Uncle Joe Loves Us

I love Pilates for a lot of reasons, but today I’m going to talk about how it makes other things we do better.

 

One of the gifts that Pilates gives us, or, more accurately, one of the rewards we earn when we do Pilates, is core strength.  Core strength is not just doing eight million crunches in fifteen seconds.  The best core strength is the kind that does what it is intended to do while we are in motion:  stabilize our bodies.  The core musculature is not limited to the “six-pack.”  In fact, the rectus abdominis is a superficial part of the core.  Pilates gets to the deep stuff.  Also, we have core muscles in our backs as well as on our fronts.  Pilates strengthens them all.

 

Core strength leads directly into balance.  The ability to balance helps us deal with all the uneven, uncertain, wobbly terrain that we encounter in our active pursuits and in the course of our daily lives.  In sports, this skill contributes to our agility and quickness in changing direction.  As we age, balance practice becomes an important tool in preventing falls.

 

Proprioception is one of my favorite five-dollar words.  The five-cent definition is where our bodies are in space.  The Pilates repertoire, with its insistence on precision, helps us learn where we think our bodies are, where our bodies are really, and how to bring the two into agreement.  As we learn to perceive our bodies, we learn to align them, which makes our movements more efficient and helps us avoid injury no matter what we are doing.

 

Finally, Pilates helps us chill out.  Movement, in Pilates, is tied to the breath.  Tuning in to our breathing centers us in our bodies and helps us become mindful, which is something we can bring with us out of the studio and into the world.

 

Spend some time with Uncle Joe.  It’s worth it.

Monday Workout: With Burpees

Burpees are not fun.  Almost nobody likes them.  The thing is, they are a really good whole-body exercise and a good way to gauge how we’re doing on our cardio fitness.  I promise:  no burpees next week.  This week?  Three rounds.

 

woodchoppers	30
flies	20
burpees	10
kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s	10
(jump) lunges	30
rows	20
pretty princesses	10

 

What to bring

Folks planning on playing outside need to plan ahead a little.  Here are things to bring:

 

1.     Water.  Always.  Hydration is our friend.

2.     Snacks.  These might be optional if we are not going to be out long, but anything over an hour it is good to be prepared.  I prefer non-squishable snacks like nuts or dried fruit or granola bars (or gel packets for endurance events), but careful people may manage to snack on bananas.

3.     Hat.  The sun is only sort of our friend.  Too much is too much.

4.     Sunscreen.  See above.

5.     Bug spray.  This may not be necessary if you are staying in town, but really, life is better without mosquito bites.

6.     ID.  Just in case.  I take my driver’s license, a credit card, and $20 when I hike, bike, or paddle.

 

Depending on what we’re doing, we might want a notebook or camera, extra clothes, a first aid kit, a towel, etc.

Sumer is icomen in

Summer is coming.  This means that we need to figure out how we’re going to combine our fitness activities with the heat.

 

I know I’m always banging on about how we need to stay hydrated, but in the summer I mean it even more.  We need to be replenishing the water we lose to sweat.  That means that we need to drink before, during, and after our workouts.  If we don’t need to use the bathroom at least every hour, we’re not drinking enough.  Go fill up that glass or bottle; I’ll wait.

 

One reason the hydration is so important is because it helps us maintain our body temperature.  Dehydration can make it so we feel the heat even more, which is at best not fun and at worst dangerous.  Don’t go there.

 

Which reminds me:  sunscreen is a good thing.  (I tend to forget this one, even though the smell of sunscreen is one of my favorite aromatherapy scents.)  A healthy body has healthy skin.  Burned skin is not healthy.  It’s uncomfortable in the short term and potentially cancerous in the long term.  Also:  hats.  It probably gives us fitness bonus points if our hats make us look silly because… because… oh, yeah, because laughing is great work for our abdominals.

 

Getting the workouts in early is a really good idea.  Late can also work, but really, early is cooler.  Indoor workouts where there is air conditioning are also a good idea.

 

More ideas?  How about workouts with water?  Swimming, water aerobics, rowing, paddling, competitive Marco Polo, whatever gets the heart rate up!

 

Go play.

Mustard, pickles, whatever...

Recently, I started to learn how to play pickle ball.  I figured that I could run around waving a paddle and looking like an idiot while making some friends.  Turns out, I was right, especially about the looking like an idiot part.

 

The good thing is that I know about Beginner’s Mind.  It’s one of those Zen kind of concepts that presumably are good for the soul, but that’s not my area of expertise.  I find it to be super useful in my actual area of expertise, fitness.  The short version is that when we start something new, we know we don’t have a clue.  This allows us to be open to new ideas and experiences and techniques.  It frees us from the expectation that we’re going to be good at whatever it is for a good long time.  We can play around.

 

Play is serious.  Just because we’re playing, we don’t throw out effort and rules and everything.  We can try hard, but we have the understanding that what we are doing is intended to be fun.  When it stops being fun, we can stop playing, or change the game so it becomes fun again.

 

When we exercise, we want to give our best shot and we want to pay attention to safety, but that’s pretty much the whole enchilada, right there.  If running isn’t fun anymore, we can try biking or swimming or pickle ball.  Go play.