The Amazing Stickie and Alternating Kettlebell Swings

The Amazing Stickie loves kettlebells for many reasons, but one is that they challenge her abdominals.  Regular kettlebell swings are great, but when Stickie wants some extra work for her obliques, she chooses alternating arm kettlebell swings.

She begins with one hand on her hip and the other hand holding the kettlebell.  She swings the kettlebell back between her legs and then snaps her hips forward, straightening her knees and bringing her arm to shoulder level.  She transfers the kettlebell from one hand to the other at the top of the swing, placing the free hand on her other hip.

 

A set of thirty swings (in other words, fifteen for each arm) is a good place to start.

Pilates Principle: Movement Integration

We’ve made it to our last Pilates principle!  Hooray!  It is movement integration.

 

The best way to talk about movement integration is to talk about what happens when we try something new and suddenly we have about 27 more body parts than we know what to do with.  We can do whatever we are supposed to be doing with our arm, but then our knees and feet are doing something else entirely.  As we keep practicing and learning and paying attention, eventually our various body parts get with the program.  They integrate into a whole, all concentrated on the task at hand.

 

The mindful practice of Pilates helps us learn how to go through that integration process.  We start with simple exercises, work with the breath.  We refine separate parts of movements.  Then we add complexity.  As our brains and our bodies learn more, we can do more, until we can move with fluidity and grace.

 

Go play. 

Think Fast!

If you know me at all, you know I am not into fads or weird eating programs.  I believe in food.  In general, my nutrition advice is this:  eat your veggies and drink lots of water.  The rest of it, for many of us, is a matter of experimentation while we figure out what kind of eating makes us feel good.  I know people who feel best eating vegan and people who feel fabulous with keto and people somewhere in between.

All that is about what we eat.  There is a certain amount of evidence that when we eat can affect how we feel as well.  Enter intermittent fasting.

 

The theory behind intermittent fasting is that back before agriculture and electricity, we ate when we could and we slept when it was dark because there was nothing to binge-watch.  We know, physically, how to thrive when we don’t eat all day every day.  At least that’s the idea.  Theories are, by nature, generalizations and we have to test stuff out to see how they apply in our own personal, particular, unique-snowflake lives.

 

The science suggests that intermittent fasting can have a positive effect on lean body mass, longevity, and brain function.  Check out this link: 

 

Anyone who wants to experiment can try the 16/8 method, in which we fast for 16 hours and eat during the other eight, or the 5/2 method, in which we eat normally five days a week and have only a single meal on the other two days.  If we feel good, great!  If we don’t, we can stop and return to our normal eating patterns.

 

Tell me what you think!

Monday Workout: Stretch

One of the things I like about the combination of leg kicks and squat to leg lift is that we get some dynamic stretching in with our cardio.  Three rounds.

 

leg kicks	30
flies	20
curls	10
squat to leg lift	30
rows	20
kickbacks	10
mountain climbers	30
bench press	20
plank	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Jump Squats

The Amazing Stickie knows that a great way to add challenge to a workout is to add plyometrics.  Plyometrics is a fancy word for “jumping.”  Today she is doing jump squats.

She begins in sumo squat position, knees and toes aligned and pointed outward, back up straight, knees bent.  From there, she jumps into the air, straightening her legs and pointing her toes toward the floor.  To land, she comes down first with the balls of her feet and then her heels, bending her knees at the same time to absorb the forces from the ground.

 

When she first started doing jump squats, Stickie paused between reps, but as she progressed, she learned to minimize her time on the ground.  She uses the momentum of her landing plus the bend in her knees to propel her upward for the next jump.

 

Sets of thirty are good.

Pilates Principle: Alignment and Weight Bearing of the Extremities

Our next Pilates principle is alignment and weight bearing of the extremities.  In other words, we want to approximate straightness (in our bodies!  This is not queer-shaming!) for optimal relations with gravity.  Eric Franklin says, “Ideal Alignment involves all body parts approximating toward the central axis, as much as structure permits.”

Structurally, we’re actually not all that straight.  Our spines curve multiple times from top to bottom.  Our femurs angle in from the hip sockets to the knees.  Our knees, even though they are mostly hinges, also have some rotational abilities.  What we want to do, when we align ourselves, is to make sure that we are moving our bones in ways that facilitate movement and avoid injury.

 

In Pilates, we do this by working with what are called kinetic chains to refine our movements.  There are three kinds:  closed, pseudo-closed, and open.  Closed kinetic chain movements are those when we are working against a stable surface.  When we do footwork on the reformer, that is a closed chain movement because our feet are firmly on the foot bar while our knees and hips are bending.  Doing a single leg pump on the chair is a pseudo closed chain movement for the working leg because the working foot is stabilized against the chair pedal while the pedal moves through space.  Open chain movement is what happens when we do femur arcs on the mat:  our foot is not stabilized against anything as it moves through space with the motion of the hip.

 

Closed kinetic chains are simplest for our bodies.  The stabilization provided by the closure lets us focus on the parts that are moving without worrying about the parts that are held still.  As we progress, we can learn to stabilize ourselves and carry on through open chain movements with proper alignment.

 

Another way we work on this principle is by doing exercises with different relationships to gravity.  Footwork on the reformer, double leg pump on the chair, footwork on the trap table, and squats are all very similar exercises, but our relationship to gravity and weight-bearing is different in each position.  Sometimes, as in footwork on the reformer, we are not working against very much resistance at all, which allows people with problematic knees to experience the movement of a squat without all that stress.  We can build up our ability to deal with gravity gradually.

 

All this work helps us learn where our bodies are in space, move with efficiency and grace, and feel good.

 

Go play.

Procrastination

We all have things we don’t feel like doing.  (Sometimes it is writing blog posts!  Shh… don’t tell anyone!)  I am here to help.  Here are some exercises to do while we are procrastinating about other things.  Or, possibly, something we want to do even less than whatever we are procrastinating about.  Either way, we will end up ahead, whether we exercise or we get down to other business. 

1.     Squats.  Squats are my favorite exercise for lots of reasons, but the one I’m going to focus on right now is that they don’t require any equipment!  We just have to stand there and then get to work.  Do ten or twenty.

2.     Foot exercises.  We don’t even have to stand up to do these.  If we have a ball, we can do the push like a pedal, side to side, sink into the grass exercises in series.  If we don’t, we can lift our big toes, then our little toes, then our middle toes.

3.     Neck stretch.  We put our right hand on the left side of our head, pull our right ear down toward our right shoulder, and press our left hand down toward the floor.  We hold a while and then turn our head as if we are giving our biceps a kiss.  Then we do the other side.

4.     Doorway stretch.  We stand in a doorway, arms stretched out against the doorframe.  Then we lean forward to stretch our chests and shoulders.

 

Worst case, we have spent about five minutes.  We might even feel a little more energized.