Why, yes, I AM the funglepress champion of the world

Yesterday I talked a little about montages.  They’re awesome, right?  But in real life, how do we see our progress?

In small steps.  Most of them go forward, but not all of them.

 

With our cardio workouts, we don’t want to increase our time by more than about 10 percent per week.  If that’s too mathy, we can just add a minute a week until we get to our target time.  When we want to increase our intensity, our best choice is to add in a minute of high intensity here and there, either by going faster or adding incline or resistance. 

 

With weights, we want to choose a weight that barely allows us to complete a set of reps.  When completing the set isn’t hard anymore, we increase the weight and see how many reps we can do with good form, even if that is fewer than we were doing before.  For example, let’s say we start doing funglepresses (yes, I made that up so no one has any judgy opinions about the exercise) with 5 pound weights.  After a couple workouts, it's easy to complete ten reps.  We trade our 5s in for 8s, but now we can only do six good-looking reps.  Over the next weeks, we work up to ten reps with the 8s.  When we switch to 10s, we have to drop back to four reps.  And so on until we are eventually, 25 years later, doing our funglepresses with 3 tons.

 

In either scenario, cardio or weights, we will have days when we need to back off.  Maybe the baby kept us up all night and all we can manage is five minutes of random stumbling on the treadmill.  Or we foolishly offered to help our friend move and all her furniture is solid oak, so we’re lucky to complete a single funglepress with 3 pound weights.  This is all part of the process.  Stuff happens.  We listen to our bodies and we do the right amount of work for this day.

 

Go play.

Not just the eye of the tiger...

We all love a good fitness montage.  Think about, say, any Rocky movie.  There’s always a series of clips of Rocky working out in various weird ways with an inspiring sound track and five minutes later he’s ready to have that big match.  (Also applies to the Creed movies I’ve seen, but I haven’t seen the last one.  I’m going to guess it still works.)

Sadly, here in real life, we don’t get fit by montage.  (Neither do we get to travel by map, as they do in The Muppets, but I digress.)  We get fit by showing up over and over again and getting sweaty.  The good news is that we can have any kind of inspiring soundtrack we want!

 

Go put on some Survivor and lift, kids.

Monday Workout: Bound!

Jumping makes everything both more fun and more challenging.  Not jumping is also good, if jumping is not appropriate.  Three rounds.

 

kb alternate arm swing	30
kb hammer curls	20
kb pushups	10
lateral bound/lateral lunge	30
bench press	20
truck driver	10
clean and press	30
rows	20
plank	10

The Amazing Stickie and Kettlebell Halo

The Amazing Stickie was thrilled to learn about another thing to do with her kettlebells!  Today she is doing the kettlebell halo.

She begins standing with good posture holding a kettlebell with both hands in front of her chest.  She circles the kettlebell around behind her head and back to the starting position while maintaining a neutral spine (and not bonking herself in the back of the head with a kettlebell, natch).  Five circles in each direction is good.

 

Variation:  this exercise can be done in a tall kneeling position or in a lunge position for extra fun.

Systematically unsystematic

I love systems.  And office supplies.  I have never met a planning system with color coding that I didn’t think I could use to transform my life.  And yet, here I am, mostly untransformed.

 

The thing about systems is that they want things to fit.  Tasks need to be categorized.  Hours need to be accounted for.  Nothing must be wasted.

 

Life, on the other hand, doesn’t care if stuff fits.  (This is why lycra was invented.)  No matter how carefully we write our workout on the calendar in the correct color of pen, life can still say, “Hey, but the car is going to break down right then and actually we’re going to spend the day talking to tow people and insurance agents and repair guys.”  We can plan the perfect workout that uses every single muscle group the optimum amount and life can hand us food poisoning instead.

 

I am not saying that we shouldn’t plan.  I’m just saying that we need to understand that life is bigger than our plans.  The world is not going to end if we miss one workout, or even if we write it on the chart in the wrong color.  If we end up getting in our steps pacing the hospital corridors while we wait to hear about a loved one’s test results, that still counts.  If someone offers us a spontaneous hike to see waterfalls, we don’t need to say no because we were planning on lifting weights right then.

 

The system is not important.  We are important.  When the system doesn’t serve us, we need to ignore it.

 

Go play. 

Everybody's Doing It

None of us does the same workout.  Even if we do the exact same exercises in the exact same order, we are different humans so our workouts are not going to do the same things in our bodies.  What this means is that we have permission to modify.  Heck, maybe we even have an obligation to modify.

This is where I point out that modifications are not static entities.  For example, sometimes we modify because a particular version of an exercise is not appropriate for us at the moment.  As we continue to work on that exercise, we need to modify our modifications.

 

Safety modifications can be either temporary or permanent.  Those of us who become pregnant need to make some adjustments to keep ourselves and our future progeny safe before returning to business as usual afterwards.  (Note:  afterwards will not be the same body as before and this is all good.)  On the other hand, when we receive a diagnosis of osteoporosis, we need to change our workouts forever to avoid spinal flexion.

 

No matter why we are modifying, the point of modifications is to make our workouts work for us.

 

We can do this.

Monday Workout: Compound

I love compound exercises!  So much work in so little time!  Three rounds.

 

 

squat heel lift	30
(lunge to) curl	20
Arnold press	10
kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s	10
woodchoppers	30
lateral raise	20
V sit press	10