Water, even when it's icy

So it has been pretty darn cold this last while.  Personally, I’m over it.  I’m ready for warmer weather.  But, I am not in charge.  In the meantime, we still need to get our workouts in.

There are a variety of challenges to cold-weather workouts, starting with getting out of the nice warm bed, but one that sometimes gets forgotten is hydration.  When it’s hot out, we notice how thirsty we are and we don’t forget to drink our water.  In the cold, we are somehow not so motivated to keep drinking.

 

My solution?  Schedule it.  When we have the habit of drinking between sets, we keep on doing it.  The pickleball game finished and it’s time to switch up the teams?  Drink.  Got to the bottom of the ski slope and it’s time to wait in line?  Take some sips.

 

Hydrated people are nicer people.

Monday Workout: Favorite

Squats are my favorite exercise.  They are super practical and help us in our daily lives.  We rarely do just plain squats, but this week it was time.  Body weight is fine, or hold some dumbbells or put a weighted bar across the shoulders.  Three rounds.

 

woodchoppers	30
squats	20
Arnold press	10
kb swings	30
kb twist	20
kb 8s	10
lunge punches	30
renegade rows	20
brains	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Single Leg Step Ups

The Amazing Stickie has amazing balance because she works on it.  Today she is working on it by doing single leg step-ups.  Because Stickie has a stick version of everything, she is stepping up on a sturdy stick box.  We can use a gym step, a sturdy bench, a step stool, or anything else that will not tip over and will support our weight.  The higher the step, the more challenging the exercise.  Stickie can also hold dumbbells in her hands to increase the difficulty if she feels like it 

She begins standing in front of the step.  She steps up with one leg, bringing the other leg to a position where her thigh is parallel to the floor.  She can hold the balance for a moment or she can return directly to the floor.  She can do all the reps with one leg and then repeat on the other side or she can choose to alternate; both ways are good.

 

Stickie likes to do sets of 30 per side.

Travel

Sometimes my clients travel, either for work or pleasure.  I am always happy to send them a workout to take with them.

If my clients are staying at a place with a gym, it’s easy.  I give them a list of things to do and let them loose.  If they aren’t, or don’t know, I can always send them a body-weight workout that can be done in any hotel room ever.  Sometimes clients travel with stretch bands or sliders or other workout stuff and I plan around what they have.

 

But.

 

It can be extra challenging to work out when we are not in our usual routines.  If we’re traveling for work, working out might be a useful way to stay energized and reduce stress.  Or we may find that shifting time zones and dealing with logistics and eating restaurant food is more than we can cope with as it is; working out is just too much.

 

Vacations are a whole different story.  Depending on where we’re going, we may find ourselves way more active than we are at home.  Trekking through museums burns a gazillion calories, more or less.  Skiing, swimming, hiking, and biking can be energetic vacation activities.  Then again, we may have the kind of vacation in which our biggest exercise is turning over on the beach.

 

Travel workouts are great.  Not working out while traveling is also okay.  We need to do what makes us feel best.  Sometimes that is working out and sometimes that is rest.  What we definitely do not need to do is beat ourselves up about what we choose.  We do our best.

Choose hard

I’m wearing my Captain Obvious cape this morning, at least to start:  workouts can be hard.  This is pretty much the basis of my career.  If workouts were easy, no one would need me.

The thing is, not working out is also hard, just in a different way.  I tend to focus on the positive, but for a moment, I’m going to talk about what happens to us when we choose to avoid all the workouts.  When we don’t exercise, we find that stairs become more challenging.  We get tired and out of breath faster.  We lose muscle tone.  Jar lids defeat us.  Carrying the groceries gets harder.  We may lose our balance more often.  It even gets harder to pick up our socks from the floor.  And that’s just the direct physical stuff.

 

We may find that it is harder to manage our moods and our stress levels.  Our brains might feel a bit fuzzier.  We may not like how we feel or how we look.

 

Healthy bodies come in many, many shapes, so this is not intended in any way to be fat-shaming, but when we don’t exercise, we may find that it is harder to stay at the same weight.  This can be inconvenient, unless we have an unlimited budget for clothes.

 

A lot of things in life are hard.  This is unfortunate, but true.  The good news is that we can choose, in some cases, what kind of hard.  Working out is one of the hard things that, I think, is worth the trouble.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: More Balance

I really like balance exercises.  They’re practical and challenging.  So we get single leg deadlifts this week.  Three rounds.

 

squat to leg lift	30
1 leg deadlift	20
truck driver	10
1 arm clean and press	30
flies	20
lateral raise	10
jacks	30
bench press	20
femur arcs	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Front Raise

The Amazing Stickie, as we all know by now, loves a challenging exercise.  Today she is demonstrating the front raise.

She begins standing in her usual fabulous posture.  She holds some light weights out directly in front of her in what she likes to call the zombie position.  Then she raises the weights over her head until her upper arms are next to her ears.  She lowers back down to the starting position.

 

Stickie would like to remind us that it is important to keep good posture throughout.  Sometimes it can be hard to keep from arching the back while raising the arms.  It is always a good idea to keep the shoulders down out of our ears no matter what our arms are doing.

 

Because this exercise challenges the front part of the deltoids, Stickie likes to work in sets of ten to avoid listening to them complain too much.