Might take more than one session

Recently I listened to a webinar about Pilates and self-esteem.  I do these things so no one else needs to.  The presenter was very… sincere.  She spent an hour talking very earnestly and here’s what we need to know:  Pilates can improve our self-esteem when we approach the exercises with a sense of curiosity, ready to explore what our bodies can do, rather than with an ego-driven need to succeed (whatever that means) at Pilates.

Simple enough, right?  Sure.  Park all that achievement-minded programming we’ve been receiving at the studio door.  Ignore all those messages about our bodies and what they’re supposed to look like and feel like that have been bombarding us our entire lives.  Defeat the dominant paradigm, and hey, presto!  self-esteem!

 

Well, defeating the dominant paradigm might take more than one session, but we begin with the breath.  Focusing on our breath, coming into our bodies, sensing what we actually feel:  these are the first subversive steps.  They help us let go of all those voices, those distorting mirrors.  We move.  We think about how we move.  We move some more.  And as we keep going, we do get curious.

 

It's a little bit like being a kid.  We’re stuck waiting for the school bus at some random corner of the sidewalk.  At first, we’re bored.  There’s just concrete.  But then we notice the dandelions pushing up through the cracks and the line of ants and the ladybug.  We find a cool stick.  We use the stick to poke around in the pile of last year’s leaves and find a bottle cap and a nickel.  By the time the bus comes, we’re squatted down, fascinated by the trickle of water into a storm drain, totally engaged.

 

Breathe through the boredom.  Find the little bits of interest.  Follow them.

Monday Workout: Plus

This week, we’re working plenty of compound exercises, plus some balance work.  Three rounds.

 

sumo to high pull	30
lunge twist	20
truck driver	10
kb alternating arm swing	30
kb halo	20
kb hammer curls	10
plank jacks	30
1 leg deadlift	20
brains	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Bridge

The Amazing Stickie loves Pilates.  Today she is working on bridging, which is an excellent exercise for strengthening glutes and hamstrings, working on spinal mobility, and synchronizing breathing with movement.

She begins lying on her back with her arms at her sides and her knees bent so that her feet are flat on the floor.  She ensures that her feet are hip-distance apart.  Stickie inhales deeply.  As she begins to exhale, she tilts her pelvis toward her belly button.  She continues this curling motion until her behind lifts up into the air and she is a straight line from her shoulders to her knees.  Some of us find that our hamstrings don’t enjoy this process.  Stickie used to have this problem, too, until she learned to imagine pulling her knees out away from her pelvis.

 

Stickie inhales at the top of the motion.  Then, as she exhales, she pulls her hips away from her shoulders and rolls herself down, one vertebra at a time, back to the starting position.

 

Safety note:  Because Stickie doesn’t actually have bones, she is not ever going to get osteopenia or osteoporosis.  Anyone who does have either of those conditions should not roll the spine up or down.  Instead of tilting the pelvis and rolling up, those folks should keep the spine a straight line, lifting the hips straight up toward the ceiling and lowering the same way.

 

Stickie likes to do four or five bridges during her Pilates workout.

Back to Basics

I don’t know about anybody else, but sometimes my life feels kind of overwhelming.  I have so many tasks and responsibilities.  I get so busy and caught up in completing errands and crossing things off.  And suddenly I am not working out.

When that happens, it takes me a little while to notice and then a little while to gather my forces to take action.  And then what I need is to get back to basics.

 

Here are the basics:  do cardio for at least 30 minutes a day and do one weight workout sometime during the week.  I get bonus points for remembering to stretch.  When I have managed that for a couple of weeks, I’m ready to think about making my workouts more ideal for my body.  What that means varies by how I’m feeling, but it might include more weight workouts, different or harder cardio, more Pilates, more yoga.

 

I am a trained professional and sometimes I need to remind myself about the simplest level of working out.  That might mean that everyone else does, too.

 

So:  get in that cardio and lift weights at least once this week.

Go Do Stuff

I love making lists.  I make lots of lists.  I have lists with sub-lists, because what is not to like about that?  My lists help me get things done.

Except when they don’t.

 

Sometimes, making a list makes me feel like I have done things, when really I’ve only made a list of things to do.  It is great to make a list of things to do, but it is even better to go out and do the things on the list.

 

And, on days when I’ve got far into my own head, it is often a good idea to ignore the list entirely and go work out.  I know what a workout is.  We all do.  We don’t always need to have a list and a clipboard and a complicated system.

 

Go do stuff.

Monday Workout: Simple

Sometimes simple is good.  Nothing fancy this time, but still plenty of work!  Three rounds.

 

 

step ups	30
flies	20
lateral raise	10
jacks	30
renegade rows	20
pushups	10
woodchoppers	30
bench press	20
pretty princesses	10

The Amazing Stickie and Pelvic Clock

Today the Amazing Stickie is working on her Pilates exercises.  One of her favorites is one of the simplest because it increases her proprioception, helps her maintain a neutral spine in her daily life, and releases any tension she has from prolonged sitting.  She’s demonstrating the pelvic clock.

She begins by lying down on her back, arms at her sides, knees bent so that her feet are flat on the floor.  It is hard to see in the picture, but her spine is maintaining its natural curve in the starting position.  That means that there is a little bit of space between her lower back and the floor, enough for a ladybug to crawl through like a tunnel, but not enough for a badger.  (No, I don’t know why ladybugs or badgers would want to crawl under Stickie’s back.)

 

Stickie is going to do three variations of this exercise, but there are certainly more out there and she encourages everyone to experiment.

 

First, she is going to rock her pelvis up and down her body.  As Stickie exhales, she uses her abdominals to tilt her pelvis back toward her belly button.  (This presses her lower back into the floor and would squish our ladybug friend.)  Then she inhales and tilts her pelvis forward toward her pubic bone.  Working with the breath on this exercise is very useful.  She keeps the movement small to minimize the engagement of her powerful thigh muscles.

 

After several reps, Stickie shifts her attention to moving her pelvis from side to side.  When she does this, she tries to maintain the distance between her ribcage and her pelvis.  She knows that many of us, when we shift our weight from one side of our pelvis to the other, tend to hike our hip up toward our ribcage.  This might look slightly sexier, but does not help.  We want to be using our obliques to practice keeping our pelvis level even as we press one hip bone and then the other into the ground.

 

Then Stickie combines both movements.  She makes pelvic circles by pressing first her belly button, then one hip, then her pubic bone, then the other hip toward the floor.  Some people do this by envisioning a clock lying on their pelvises and pressing down the various numbers (thus the name of the exercise).  Alternatively, Stickie can imagine that she has a shallow bowl of water on her belly and she is swirling the water around.  Of course, she makes circles in both directions.

 

After she is done, her lower back often feels much nicer.