Monday Workout: New Stuff!

This week we have a bunch of new exercises, plus we’re getting in some burpee practice before the twelve days of Christmas workup shows up later this month. 

 

Leg kicks are exactly what they sound like.  We stand with our arms stretched out in front of us and kick one leg toward the opposite arm and then the other.

 

Front raise starts in a similar position.  We stand with arms out in front of us holding light weights and then we raise them overhead and return to the start position.

 

Truck driver can be done with a weight plate if available, but a dumbbell also works.  Hold the weight out in front as if it were a steering wheel and twist it 90 degrees one way and then return to start.  Repeat on the other side to complete one rep.

 

Three rounds.

 

leg kicks	30
front raise	20
truck driver	10
squat to leg lift	30
flies	20
burpees	10
mountain climbers	30
rows	20
pretty princesses	10

 

Noteworthy

Welcome to December!  Today would be a good day to take a snapshot of our current situation.  If you are so inclined, get out a piece of paper or start typing.  Here’s what we want to know:

 

1.     Current measurements:  that would be height, weight, and circumference measurements.

2.     Current cardio plan:  what we’re doing, for how long, and how intensely.  If we have access to the data through a smart watch, we can note our HRV.

3.     Current resistance training plan:  what we’re doing, with how much weight, how often.  Alternatively, we can do one-rep max workout and log the results.

4.     Anything else we think we might want to change.  This is our “before” picture, so if we want to, say, change our diet, we might want to write down what we’re eating now.  If we want to change our sleep habits, we might want to write down how much sleep we got last night and when we went to bed.  The first step to change is data!

 

Go play.

Growing with Uncle Joe

One of the reasons I like Pilates is because I am short.  Pilates helps me feel taller.  How?  The principle, in Pilates language, is axial elongation.  Normal people might call it standing up straighter.

 

It’s a little more complicated than that, but not too much.  Gravity is an inescapable fact of our lives and as we walk around and do the things we do, it pulls our spines down toward the earth.  When we do Pilates, we work to create space between our vertebrae in an anti-gravity kind of way.

 

Want to feel taller?  Here’s how.  We’re going to do a bridge together.  We begin lying on our backs (yay!) with our knees bent and feet flat on the floor with our heels in line with our sitting bones.  We take a deep inhale.  Then, as we exhale, we tilt our pelvises back toward our belly buttons and then keep tilting until our pelvises begin to lift in the air.  We peel one vertebra at a time off of the floor until we are supported on our shoulders and our feet.  Our bodies, from our shoulders to knees, should make a straight line.  We take another deep inhale.  Then, as we exhale, we peel ourselves back down on to the floor, pulling our hips away from our shoulders the whole time.  We imagine creating space between each vertebra on the way down and our hips will likely come down farther from our head than they started.  Voila!  Space in the spine!  We are taller!  (Please note:  people with osteopenia or osteoporosis should not do bridging with spinal articulation.  Those folks, instead of doing the pelvic tilt and the peel up and down, should lift the pelvis straight up toward the ceiling.  In the lowering phase, they can still pull the hips away from the head, but the spine should move as a unit rather than one vertebra at a time.)

 

Welcome to a taller future!

Forget about it

We’re back from the holiday weekend.  Now we’re going to forget about it.  No, not the great memories we made or the valuable lessons we learned about what not to ask Uncle Jerome at the dinner table; we need to keep those things.

 

We’re going to forget what we ate, how much pie we put away, and how little exercise we got.

 

We are going to start again, today, with the workout in front of us.  We’re going to eat our normal healthy foods.

 

There will be no punitive workouts and no one is being restricted to just bread and water.  Fitness, in the form of healthy eating and movement, is a gift we give our bodies.  We do it because we want to take care of ourselves, not because we think we are horrible people who deserve to suffer.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Both!

I love compound exercises and asymmetric ones, too.  So this week we get both!  Hooray!  Three rounds.

 

squat raise	30
flies	20
pushups	10
lunge punches	30
bench press	20
curls	10
1 arm clean and press	30
1 leg squat	20
brains	10

Thankful!

Happy Thanksgiving!  Things to be grateful for today in our bodies include:

 

1.     Food!  It fuels us and tastes good!

2.     Feet!  They take us where we want to go!

3.     Brains!  Consciously and unconsciously, brains figure out how to make all our body parts work and work together.

4.     Muscles and bones!  They move us and they support us, no matter what we are doing.

 

Now go eat.

Automatic Tools?

I’ve been reading about various tech processes and came across an interesting distinction that, of course, I want to apply to fitness.  To make processes easier, we can automate them, or we can use tools.

 

An automated process doesn’t require human action.  It just happens, on its own.  Sadly, fitness does require human action, but when we have a fitness habit, it almost feels automatic.  We get up and we work out before our brains even engage.

 

Mostly, though, we use tools in fitness.  Some of those tools are things like workout sheets that remind us to do cardio and strength training and stretching and balance work.  Others are pieces of equipment ranging from supportive shoes to 50-pound dumbbells.

 

Both tools and automation are handy.  We want them to make our workouts easier!

 

Go play.