If I am working with a client who both enjoys understanding some of the underlying reasons I am asking them to do what they are doing and also might need something to distract them from the momentary discomfort of doing that same thing, I often chat, a lot, about what exercises are for, what should be working, how stuff works in the body, and so on. (I also sometimes tell stupid jokes, but nobody really wants to hear those.)
So, below, I’m going to talk about this week’s workout as if I happened to be working with a client who needed both information and diversion.
First: here’s the workout (in case yesterday’s post got missed!):
suitcase swings | 30 |
curls | 20 |
lateral raise | 10 |
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(lunge) punches | 30 |
bench press | 20 |
truck driver | 10 |
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mountain climbers | 30 |
squats | 20 |
brains | 10 |
Now for the analysis:
Suitcase swings: These are a whole-body exercise. The primary purpose is to get the heart rate up, which is why we try to move pretty rapidly while we do it. We’re also burning lots of calories because we are moving many joints. Whole-body exercises also have positive effects on our metabolisms, even after we are done working out. Because the arm swing is facilitated by a little squat, one thing we want to pay attention to while we do this is where our knees are; they should be lined up over our toes.
Curls: This is an isolation exercise for the biceps. We often do sets of ten instead of twenty like we’re doing today because twenty is a lot. We may choose lighter weights in order to complete the set with good form. I can tell that the weight is too heavy when people begin to move their torso back and forth to get the weights up, even if they don’t know they are doing it. Bodies are smart and like to find the easiest way to accomplish a task. Or, to put it another way, they like to cheat and use other muscles to help when we want to use only one particular group.
Lateral raise: This exercise is for the deltoids, a muscle group that often wins whining contests with the other muscle groups. They are small muscles and they prefer cooperating to working on their own. In fact, they tend to get all codependent with the upper traps and the scalenes, so I tend to watch clients’ shoulders to make sure that they are staying out of their ears. The image I use, over and over, to help avoid shoulder lifts, is that our shoulder blades are like the counterweights on railroad crossing barriers; they slide down our backs as our arms lift up from our sides.
Then we get a rest and some water. We want our heart rates to come down, because we are teaching our hearts to recover.
(Lunge) punches: I happen to have several clients with pretty serious knee issues, so the lunge part of the punch is optional. Punches work the abdominals in addition to all the arm muscles. Adding the lunge increases the calorie burn, bumps up the metabolic effect, challenges balance, and recruits all the leg muscles. Some of us naturally step forward on the same-side foot as the arm that is punching and some of us naturally do the opposite. Both ways are good for this exercise. We want to keep an eye on our knee alignment in lunges: the front shin should not go past perpendicular to the ground and the back heel should stay in line with the back toes to keep everything safe for long-term knee health.
Bench press: Nearly all of my clients do this exercise using a stability ball, which transforms it from a chest and arm exercise into a whole body one. On the stability ball, clients support their head and neck on the ball, using their glutes (a lot!) to make the body bench-shaped. This exercise also works the traditional way (on a bench, thus the name), lying on a foam roller lengthwise along the spine on the floor (bonus points for unstable surface), or even just on the ground. No matter the set-up, the weights need to remain over the chest, not over the face.
Truck Driver: This is an exercise I learned more recently than a lot of these other ones. I really like it because it works the arms, a lot, and also provides a good amount of ab work. The key is to keep the arms long to maximize the load. I didn’t learn a lot in physics, but I did learn about long levers doing more work.
Hooray! We get to rest again and have some water.
Mountain climbers: There are a couple of variations of this exercise. Some clients like to do the standing version, either because they get light-headed getting up and down from the floor or because a lot of weight-bearing on the arms is not appropriate for them right now. In the standing version, I want to see continuous movement to get the heart rate up, plenty of side-bending to work the abs and create or preserve range of motion, and arms maintaining the cactus position for best arm work. Those doing the more traditional version can make it more or less difficult depending on what the arms are resting on: BOSU is most challenging, then floor, then bench/step/chair.
Squats: As I have said time after time, squats are my very favorite exercise. They are practical. We are all getting older and the big determiner in how long we get to live independently is whether or not we can go to the bathroom by ourselves. Squats will delay assisted living. They also shape the glutes, strengthen the legs, challenge the core, burn calories, and demonstrate how well our bodies move. Different clients may do squats with body weight or holding dumbbells at their sides or in the goblet position. Sometimes we do sumo squats. (I don’t do heavy squats with a barbell via Zoom; that’s not safe.) No matter what the position is, we want to ensure that our knees and toes line up. If we are doing regular squats, we also want to try to keep our torso parallel with the line of our shins—the tendency is to bend the torso a lot more forward because it gives us the illusion that we’re going lower than we are.
Finally, we get to lie down and do brains. Brains are a great abdominal exercise for the obliques. They are safe for people of every age because the spine is stabilized against the ground. Clients with low-back problems may need to bend the knees (those levers again!) to reduce the load. Also, the exercise forces some thinking; it is called brains because the brains have to engage to get the opposite arm and leg thing working.
After a rest, we do the whole thing two more times and then we stretch.
