I am off from now until after Labor Day. Time away from the blog will, I hope, give me a chance to find some fresh ideas and some new inspirations. I will post workouts on the Mondays, so that everyone can work out without me, but otherwise, see you in September!
At the risk of sounding too woo-woo (it happens to me; I lived in Berkeley for twenty years), let me suggest that sometimes we choose our workouts by listening to our bodies.
This is not as far-out as it sounds. A way to quantify it would be to consider heart rate variability (HRV). If we have a smart watch or other device, we can track HRV and work out harder on days it is above our average and less strenuously when it is below.
However, relying on a device to tell us how we are does not build our ability to figure out what we need ourselves. The listening I am thinking about does build that ability. We wake up in the morning, check in with the body, and decide what we need, whether that is cardio to boost our mood or stretching to recover from a previous workout or weight-lifting to improve our strength. One note: most of us, upon waking up, will have the first thought that what our bodies really want is to go back to sleep; we need to wait for the second thought before we decide.
Go play.
We get better at what we practice. (I hope this is not some big revelation to everyone!) From this premise, I have two points I would like to make.
First, practice does not mean just showing up and going through the motions of our workouts. That just makes us better at doing a half-assed job.
The second point is related to the first. Good form is crucial, because when we are practicing, we are learning form along with improving our fitness. We don’t want to imprint bad form in our minds and in our muscle memory if we can help it. A second set of eyes on us, especially a trained set of eyes, can help us know if we are practicing good form. That said, our form doesn’t have to be perfect from day one; we can refine it as we get stronger/more flexible/more fit/more knowledgeable.
Go play.
We are working on our asymmetric exercises this week, which helps improve our balance and our core strength. Three rounds.
kb swings | 30 |
kb twist | 20 |
kb 8s/overyets | 10 |
| |
1 arm clean and press | 30 |
(lunge to) curl | 20 |
pushups | 10 |
| |
woodchoppers | 30 |
rows | 20 |
pretty princesses | 10 |
Sleep can be a scarce commodity in our world. Here are four ways to promote better sleep.
1. Ditch the caffeine. Yeah, I know. Many of us just can’t cope without our morning coffee, but doing the work to wean ourselves off of it can be worth it.
2. Get some exercise. Working harder, paradoxically, can help us feel more rested because it promotes easier and deeper sleep.
3. Turn off the light. Yes, even the little ones on the computer monitor. We sleep best in the dark.
4. Make it a habit. We tend to do best when we go to bed and get up at the same time every day.
All of us face stressful times every once in a while. (If stress gets chronic, that’s a whole different story for another day.) It’s really easy to decide that we’re going to cope with the stress with a pint of ice cream on the couch, but if we can manage it, there are better options.
One of those options is making sure we get in some cardio. Cardio improves mood, helps us sleep better, and makes our brains work more effectively. We get bonus stress-busting points if we can take our cardio outside in the fresh air, so stressful times are a great time to go for a walk or a run or a swim.
Another important self-care option when we are under stress (or any time, really) is making sure we drink our water. Dehydrated people are crabby people. Or, to put it another way, we don’t need our bodies to be stressed while our minds are already trying to cope with stress. Feeding ourselves healthy food on a regular basis helps, too.
Finally, stress is tiring. We are allowed to rest. In stressful times, it is all right to nap and to do what we can to ensure that we get our full nights of sleep.
Fitness pretty much comes down to this: move, eat, drink, and rest.
The goal of fitness, in the largest sense, is promoting optimal health. I like to focus on the positives, but today, I want to discuss some of the negative things that fitness helps us avoid. Our vocabulary word is comorbidities.
Comorbidities are conditions that make it difficult for us to be healthy. There are lots of them, but here are a few of the most common and how fitness helps us reduce them.
Heart disease is a very common comorbidity. When we do our cardio exercise, we are reducing our susceptibility to clogged arteries and heart attack. We also improve our lung function, which helps us avoid things like COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease).
Type 2 Diabetes is another increasingly common comorbidity. Both cardio and weight training help keep this one away. Cardio increases glucose tolerance in the body and weight training increases lean body mass.
While I believe that healthy bodies come in every size, excess body weight can, in some circumstances, put us at higher risk, so overweight is considered a comorbidity. Our work at the gym helps us avoid overweight or reduce it when we also work on eating foods that are good for us.
We want to have long, happy, and fun lives. Working on our fitness now will help us live better.
