Ruh-roh

I’m working my way through the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, not for the first time, but this time I’m doing it with a group.  In our meeting last week, we were talking about habits, both good and bad.

 

We don’t have bad habits because we’re bad people, or because we’re lazy or stupid.  We have bad habits because we get something out of them.  For example, when we have a bad habit of skipping workouts to lie on the couch and watch cartoons, it is not because we don’t know that working out is good for us.  It is not that we’re lazy bums.

 

What it IS could be a lot of things.  It could be that we’re actually just needing rest.  It could be that we are afraid that we might be capable of change and that might be the first domino in a whole concatenation of them and we’ll have to deal with everything from our loser partner to our childhood trauma to cleaning out the vegetable drawer in the fridge.  Or something else entirely.

 

Spending a little time analyzing why we don’t want to work out and figuring out ways to make working out work better for us is useful.  But we don’t have to put it into practice until Scooby Doo unmasks the bad guys.

Not a punishment.

Welcome to the day after the picnic or barbecue.  I hope it was fun and fabulous.  And now I hope that, whatever it is that happened yesterday, we forget it today.

 

But wait!  There was ice cream and pie and popsicles and beer and cheeseburgers and Grandma’s famous potato salad and and and.  I don’t care.  It was a holiday and maybe we made good choices and maybe we didn’t.  That was yesterday.

 

Today we are about treating our bodies with love.  We are not working out to “pay” for what we did yesterday.  Working out is good for our bodies.  It is not a punishment.

 

Let’s move and be happy today.

Monday Workout: New Exercise!

We have a new exercise for our cores today!  The V-sit press works the core in multiple ways.  Begin sitting just behind the sit bones with the spine leaning slightly backward and the legs lifted so that the body makes a V (if necessary, it is ok to bend the knees).  Hold a dumbbell in one hand at the shoulder and extend the other arm out toward the knees.  Lift the dumbbell overhead and lower it.  That’s one rep.  Repeat until five reps are done and then do the other side.  Three rounds.

 

step ups	30
flies	20
v-sit press	10
jacks	30
bench press	20
1 leg squats	10
(jump) lunges	30
rows	20
Russian twist	10

  

Check!

Time for a mid-year check-in!  Remember those goals from back in January?  Here are five things to consider as we go into the second half of the year:

 

1.     Sleep.  Are we getting 8 hours?  7? 4 ½?  Enough sleep is essential to our health and fitness goals. 

2.     Food.  Are we choosing nutrient-dense foods that satisfy our bodies and feed our souls?  Are we getting enough veggies?  Enough water?

3.     Cardio.  When was the last time we got breathless?  Are we doing it consistently?

4.     Strength.  We want strong bones, enthusiastic metabolisms, and lean bodies, so we need to do our lifting.

5.     Fun.  If we’ve been doing the same things every week since January, we’re probably really bored.  It might be time to mix things up a bit.

 

Go play.

How to get less cross by doing more cross...

I think, by now, we’ve all heard about the benefits of cross-training.  We hear about synergies and improved performance and yada yada.  Here’s an underreported one:  it lets us rest stuff that hurts.

 

I love biking, but if I do too much of it, hip pain will keep me from sleeping.  If I mix in some yoga or swimming or pickleball (my new obsession!), I use my body differently, I still get to work out, and I don’t suffer so much.  (Maybe everyone is tired about hearing about what I do, but I am the most convenient example, and I experiment on myself!)

 

In a pain workshop I attended recently, I learned some of the underlying reasons why cross-training helps.  The short version is that movement reduces pain.  We don’t necessarily need or want to move whatever part that hurts, but moving other parts of the body reduces pain everywhere.  This is why it is a good idea to go for a walk at least on the day after that intense workout in the gym.

 

Try it out and report back!

Safety first, even if it is ugly

I bought new shoes last week and boy are they ugly.  However, they do what I need them to do:  protect my feet.  Working out is great, but we need to take some basic precautions to keep ourselves safe.  My horrible shoes are part of that because, having once ruptured my plantar fascia, I know that supportive shoes are my friends.

 

Other fashion choices also keep us safe.  Hats to keep the sun off are good.  Fabrics that breathe in hot weather are good.  They’re not exactly clothes, but wearing whatever braces our doctors or orthopedists recommend is definitely smart, as are helmets, life jackets, knee pads, and the like, depending on what we are doing.

 

Another important safety consideration is company.  We don’t want to do heavy lifting alone; we need to bring a friend and share spotting duties.  Similarly, it is probably best not to swim alone.  If we do need to bike/hike/kayak/whatever alone, we need to make sure that someone knows where we are going and that we have essentials with us.  (My essentials are:  driver’s license, credit card, $20 in cash, water, and snacks, plus car keys if I have to drive to the starting point.)

 

Fitness is supposed to make our lives better.  Getting hurt is not better.  Let’s be smart about this.

Monday Workout: Back At It

We are doing a couple of exercises this week that focus on the back of the body.  This is good because we tend to emphasize the muscles in the front.  Deadlifts work the whole back of the body, squats and lunges work our glutes, and the renegade rows work our lats, among other things.  Three rounds.

 

squat raise	30
deadlift	20
kickbacks	10
mountain climbers	30
renegade rows	20
pushups	10
clean and press	30
(lunge to) twist	20
brains	10