Monday Workout: Ring my Bell

It’s a great day for kettlebells!  Three rounds.

 

kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s	10
squat raise	30
bench press	20
curls	10
woodchoppers	30
rows	20
brains	10

The Amazing Stickie and Lunge to Curl to Overhead Press

As we all know, the Amazing Stickie doesn’t like to waste time.  When she needs to get in and out of the gym quickly, she chooses compound exercises like lunge to curl to overhead press.

She chooses the weight for this exercise based on what she uses for overhead presses because if she chooses based on what she uses for curls, she won’t be able to complete as many reps with good form.

 

To begin, she stands with good posture, holding the dumbbells at her sides.  She lunges forward on one leg making sure to keep her torso over her hips.  Then she curls the weights up to her shoulders.  She then raises the weights overhead.  As she lowers the weights back down to her sides, she also steps back to her starting position.  Then she repeats on the other side.

 

Sets of thirty are good.

New Energy

This month I signed up for tai chi classes.  Oh boy do I have some learning to do.

Which is the point.

 

My brain and my body get bored (and everyone else’s brains and bodies do, too).  I needed something to wake me up.  So far, tai chi is working great.

 

The first thing I learned, not for the first time, is that I have way too many body parts.  I’d figure out what my feet were supposed to be doing and my arm was in a totally wrong place.  Or I’d finally remember that my palm was supposed to face down only to find that I had my weight on the front foot instead of the back foot (unless that was the other way around?).  This is all good because it means I have to integrate new motor pathways.  Eventually, both my body and my brain will be smarter.

 

Another lesson?  Slow is hard for me.  I am a champion at rushing through things, but taking my time?  I have lots of up to work with on that.

 

One more:  I go big, even when I shouldn’t.  Big steps, big waves of my arms, big turns.  It will be interesting to find out if I can learn to be more subtle.

 

Not that my specific lessons are important to anyone but me.  The facts that I’m doing something new, though, and processing new ways of being and moving in my body are more widely applicable.  If I can do it, anyone can.  Novelty is good for humans.

 

Go play.  In a different way than usual!

Oilcans and Updates

I’ve talked about my set of oilcan exercises before; they’re the things I do every day to keep my body capable of moving despite my ever-increasing age and my injury history.  None of the things are particularly hard.  A lot of them involve yoga tune-up balls and stretches.  They do make a difference to the quality and comfort of my movements in the whole rest of my life. 

I try to give all my clients a similar set of oilcan exercises based on their needs and their time constraints.  (Whether they do them is up to them!)

 

However, bodies and situations change.  My personal list has shifted as I have learned new exercises that improve my mobility or reduce my suffering.  Sometimes an issue I’ve had for a while resolves and I don’t need to do the things I used to do to care for it.  This is all good, because it means I have to be present in my body, pay attention to what it feels and what it needs.  From that data, I get to experiment.

 

The best part is that doing my oilcan exercises takes at most ten minutes.  That small investment of time pays off all day long.

 

Want help figuring out your oilcan exercises?  Hit me up!

Monday Workout: Back!

We have some exercises that focus on the back of the body this week.  Remember that using abs protects the lower back!  Three rounds.

 

step ups	30
squats	20
1 leg squats	10
jacks	30
deadlifts	20
reverse flies	10
clean and press	30
flies	20
pretty princesses	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Plié Bend Extend

The Amazing Stickie has a busy life, so she loves compound exercises for their efficiency.  Today she is doing plié bend extend.

To begin, she stands in what she thinks of as the starfish position:  arms holding light dumbbells held out at shoulder height, palms facing up, and legs wider than hip distance apart and externally rotated.  From there, she bends her knees and elbows and then straightens again.

 

Sets of thirty are good.

Why yes, office supplies do count as fitness equipment!

Yesterday I wrote about tracking for people who would rather not track.  Those of us who love the process of making lists and graphs and color-coded systems are the target audience today.

I don’t have to convince those of us who love this stuff to do it, so I’m just going to talk about some good practices.

 

First, let’s talk about what we want to track, besides everything. 

 

We want to have some baseline data about our bodies, so we can start by weighing and measuring.  We need to step on the scale (sorry!) and write down the result.  Please keep in mind that we are way more important than any number and that we are valuable humans, no matter how much or how little we weigh.  Then we need to spend some quality time with the tape measure.  I suggest measuring the chest (at the nipple line, so we always measure the same place), the waist (at the belly button, for the same reason), the hips at the widest point, the thigh halfway between the spot where the hipbone juts out in front and the top of the kneecap, the calf at the widest point, and the upper arm halfway between the shoulder and elbow.  It can be easier to make these measurements (especially that last one) with help, but it isn’t essential.  A couple of selfies can also be useful here.

 

There are a lot of ways to get baseline data for cardio fitness.  In my studio, I give new clients a step test, which has handy charts that separate results into categories based on a huge chunk of data from tons of people doing it.  A simpler and more individual approach would be to pick a specific route, walk or run it, and note down how long it took, how hard it felt, and the heart rate at the end.  If we have Wristy Overlords, we can start noting down our HRV numbers daily.  Averaging a week of numbers will give us our baseline.

 

For strength, our baseline is best obtained through doing a one-rep max workout.  For this one, it is best to have a friend to spot us for safety.  After a warm-up, we go through our repertoire of strength exercises with heavier and heavier weights until we can only complete one (good form) rep.  We write that number down next to each exercise and we have our benchmark.

 

With all this data in hand, we’re ready to start tracking our daily work.

 

For cardio, we want to record what kind and how long.  Depending on what we’re doing, we might also record distance, speed, max heart rate, elevation gain, and route.  We might want to include some qualitative data, too, like how close to death we felt on those hills.

 

In our weight workouts, we want to note down the exercises we chose, the number of reps and sets, and the weights we used.  We might want to say something about tempo or about specific modifications we made.  Again, qualitative data can be helpful.

 

If we’re working on flexibility and balance, again we need to write down what we did, how we felt, and any milestones we managed to pass.

 

Tracking data from classes can be more challenging.  It’s hard to stop to write down what we’re doing and still keep up with what’s happening, so it might be best to summarize, writing down something along the lines of “boot camp class, weights up to ten pounds, hard, but manageable” or “yoga class, flow, struggled with tree, fell asleep in savasana.”

 

Every month or so, we get to review the data.  We can look for patterns, like it’s really hard to get a workout in on Thursdays, or my measurements really changed once I switched to free weights, or that hill route is actually fun now. 

 

As we think of more things we want to keep an eye on, we can refine our systems.  We may notice that we could use some accountability around food, and add meal tracking and planning to our routine.  We may recognize that sleep has a major impact on the quality of our workouts and decide to track how many hours a night we manage.

 

We can get as fancy as we like.  But I do suggest getting a clipboard and/or a binder because we need a place to corral all that paper.