The Amazing Stickie and Arm Arcs

The Amazing Stickie likes to ensure that her shoulders function like they should.  She does arm arcs to assist her in keeping them both stable and mobile.

She begins by lying on her back with her knees bent and feet flat on the floor.  (It would also be all right for her to extend her legs long, but it’s usually more comfortable to work with the knees bent.)  She has her arms down by her sides.  For the full length of her inhale, she raises her arms until they are over her head.  Then, for the full length of her exhale, she lowers them back to the starting position.  At first, this seemed like a very slow pace, but now Stickie enjoys it.  She does a set of ten.  Then, to make things more interesting, she puts one arm overhead and one down by her hips to start.  Then she swaps their positions.  Even though her arms are moving in opposite directions, Stickie maintains her shoulder blades in a neutral position on both sides.

 

Sometimes for fun, Stickie does the same exercise lying on a foam roller (roller along her spine) or on an Oov.  It feels extra good and adds more challenge.

Water

When it is hot, we get dehydrated more easily.  We want to avoid that, because it feels bad.  Our bodies work better and we are nicer humans when we are hydrated.  (Insert quote from The Breakfast Club here, if you are old enough.)

A lot of us are not hydrated enough under normal circumstances.  A quick way to know if we are drinking enough is this:  bathroom trips should occur at least every hour.

 

There has been a bunch of debate and argument and blah blah blah about what liquids count for hydration.  The short version is:  all of them, but some are better for us than others.  Most of what we drink should be water.  It has no calories, comes clean out of the tap, and doesn’t require shopping.

 

I am not here to take away anyone’s morning coffee.  I would not survive.  And the truth is that it is probably not bad for us, as long as we aren’t drinking it by the gallon.

 

Those fancy sports drinks can come in handy when it is very hot or when we work out very hard.  They have electrolytes in them that replace stuff we sweat out.  We don’t need them unless we’re working out for two hours or more (think marathon, century ride, etc.) or unless it is so hot that we’re sweating faster than we can drink.  They won’t hurt us, so if they taste good and we don’t have to watch our calories, we can drink them in place of some of our water.  It gets expensive, though!

 

One liquid we need to be careful about:  alcohol.  Obviously, we don’t want to drink to excess for lots of reasons, but we especially want to be careful when it is hot because we get extra dehydrated from alcohol.  We need to drink more water when we drink.

 

Go play.  And take the water bottle.

Don't get me started on peas.

Most folks strongly prefer one kind of exercise over others.  Not skiing over rugby or pickleball over yoga, but more generally:  cardio or weights or flexibility.  We all have different gifts, after all, so it is not surprising that the kinds of exercise we like best vary among us.

Unfortunately, this means that we have to do the exercise equivalent of eating our carrots (you may like carrots; I do not, but I eat them because they are good for me.).  Those of us who are more than happy to spend a chunk of time with the treadmill will need to trundle over to the weight racks.  Our new friends at the weight racks will have to learn to share the weights and then try out the elliptical trainer.  All of us need to go chill out at yoga or Pilates.

 

We may never come to adore the kinds of exercise we don’t naturally gravitate toward.  Carrots may always be carrots.  But we may come to appreciate how we feel when we have a few carrots thrown in with our chicken and mashed potatoes.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Straightforward

This is a pretty straightforward workout.  Three rounds.

 

jacks	30
flies	20
pushups	10
woodchoppers	30
kickbacks	20
reverse flies	10
clean and press	30
side lunge	20
V sit press	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Side to Side

The Amazing Stickie is enjoying Side to Side today at Pilates.

She begins by lying on her back with her legs in tabletop position.  She inhales and drops both knees to one side of her body, keeping her shoulders down on the floor.  She exhales to return to the starting position.  On her next inhale, she drops her knees toward the other side of her body.  She continues until she has done a set of ten.

 

When she desires to challenge her body more, she extends the leg that is going to be on top as she drops her knees toward the floor.  In other words, when she drops her legs to the left, she straightens her right knee.  The knee bends again as she returns to the start position.  Then she extends the left knee as she drops her legs to the right.

 

For even more challenge, she does the whole exercise with straight legs.  She begins lying on her back with her legs straight up toward the ceiling.  Both legs drop from side to side, staying straight the whole time.  If she feels any strain in her lower back doing this, she stops right away and goes back to one of the less challenging options.

Why is the answer never "build a blanket fort?"

Risk is inherent in life.  We may not live like Wile E. Coyote, liable to have a safe or a piano dropped on us on a regular basis with only a small pink umbrella to protect us, but the world is sometimes a dangerous place.

The answer, sadly enough, is not that we need to build a blanket fort and hide in it all day reading murder mysteries and eating popcorn (although if anybody wants a play date, let me know!).  It’s preparation.

 

I’m not talking about having an earthquake kit or a first aid kit (even though it’s a good plan).  I’m talking about working on balance.

 

What we need for the routine dangers of our lives is balance.  We need to learn how to react when we unexpectedly step off a curb.  We need our bodies to adjust, automatically, when our toddler grandchild crashes into our legs or when the dog we are walking suddenly tries to chase a squirrel up a tree.

 

Balance comes from, among other things, knowing where our bodies are in space to begin with and from having the strength to adjust to sudden changes.  We can work on improving our balance in lots of ways.  One of the easiest is to practice standing on one foot, maybe while we’re standing at the sink anyway brushing our teeth or when we’re stuck in line at the grocery store.

 

If we want to get more intense about learning balance, we can cart ourselves over to yoga class or the Pilates studio.  It’s just being a good scout:  prepared.

Friends and Workouts

When we work out with friends, it can be a lot of fun.  I’m in favor of fun and of working out, but it’s important to understand which thing is taking priority at a given point.  Let me explain.

Say my friend and I decide to go for a walk together.  What we actually do could be anything from intensive interval training where we both manage to have just enough breath available to egg each other on to a casual stroll along a shopping street looking in the windows and ending up at the café for coffee and pastries.  There is some work involved in both those scenarios, but one is focused on the work and one on the fun bits.

 

This is important:  both scenarios are totally good ones.  We don’t have to work out at our very hardest every single time.  And we do need friends for our wellbeing.

 

What we also need to do is balance.  We need to consider whether we’re concentrating too much on sweating and not enough on listening to our friend’s nasty breakup, or if we’re slacking because we really want all the gossip about the new hottie down the hall in their building.  It is possible that one of us is more fit than the other.  That can mean that one person’s tough workout is the other’s rest day.

 

Both our mental health and our physical health contribute to our overall happiness.  Give both of them the attention they need.