Naturally...

Yesterday I talked a little about why I don’t use fitness photos for these posts all the time.  Here’s another reason:  nature is good for us.

 

As annoying as it is when our moms turn out to be right, it’s good for us to go out and play, especially in natural settings.  Forest bathing is a thing because it really does reduce our stress and calm our minds.  People who struggle with meditating can get a lot of the same effects by walking under trees or at the beach.

 

Please note:  nature is all over the place.  We don’t have to go far to find some, even in the city.  We have parks and gardens and even street trees.  It may be awesome to get to somewhere there’s a lot less car noise and crowding, but even a quick five-minute stroll down a tree-lined street can help us reset our brains and our bodies.

 

So for today, I will be playing the part of your mom:  don’t waste this whole beautiful day inside!  Go out and get some fresh air.

Not a fitness tree

The photos I use for these posts don’t usually have a lot of fitness equipment in them or anything.  It’s not just because fitness equipment is not always super photogenic.  Fitness is, for me, not a goal in itself; I’ll go out on a limb here and say that it shouldn’t be for most people, either.

 

Fitness is a tool so that we can do other things we want to do, like hike around and take photos of nature and flowers and stuff.  If I were a diving enthusiast, maybe more of my photos would be of fish, but the underlying condition for being able to dive and take the photos would be fitness.

 

Maybe another way to think about it is that love is an excellent motivator.  I think most of us, in the early stages of being in love with that Special Someone, have done all kinds of challenging things (you know, like combing our hair or giving up anchovies on our pizza).  When we are in love with playing with our grandkids, we’re willing to do some cardio to make that easier.  When we are fascinated with Mexican indigenous culture, we train so we can climb those pyramids someday.

 

Do the work and then go play.

Monday Workout: Simple

Some weeks the right answer is to keep things simple.  This is a pretty straight-ahead workout.  Three rounds.

 

woodchoppers	30
rows	20
pushups	10
squat raise	30
skullcrushers	20
deadlift/1 leg deadlift	10
suitcase swings	30
curls	20
pretty princesses	10

Go Team!

Working out is a team sport.  Here are some possible members (besides ourselves, of course!) for our teams:

 

1.     Our doctor.  Doctors provide data about lots of health markers for us and fix us when we are broken.

2.     Our trainer or coach.  These folks help us figure out what to do with our bodies and help keep us safe while we do it.  They watch our form and encourage us to keep showing up.

3.     Our chiropractor.  Adjustments can, for some people, make the difference between suffering and comfort.

4.     Our massage therapist.  They work magic on our sore bits.

5.     Our nutritionist.  They know how to feed us better than we do ourselves.

6.     Our physical therapist.  When we need to come back from injury, they help us do it safely.

7.     Our cheering squad and workout buddies.  These are the folks who want us to succeed.

 

Who’s on your team?

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