Enabling!

One of the questions I ask new clients is what they do for fun.  Sure, it’s a standard getting-to-know-you kind of question, but when I ask, it’s for a good reason

Which is:  my job is to make is possible for my clients to do whatever it is they do for fun.  If, say, they love gardening, I want to make sure they can lug heavy plants places and that they have good strong backs for digging.  If they have toddlers, I’m going to be working that cardio because they’re going to need lots of endurance for running around.  Even if what they love is sitting on their behinds reading books all day, I know that I need to pack all the essentials into their workouts so they can live long enough to clear off the to-read shelf.

 

What do you love to do?  I can help.

Moooooooom, Do I Have To?

As a NASM-certified Personal Trainer and a NPCP-certified Pilates instructor, I have to do continuing education.  This is a good thing.  I love learning new stuff and my clients get fresh things to do.

However, I do bitch about my homework and sometimes about the structure of my continuing education courses.  The point of all this education is to serve clients, to help them get to their goals, and to keep them safe.  I love all the nitty-gritty bits and even the random factoids.  However, super technical definition questions on the quizzes and tests do not help me train my clients better.

 

It is theoretically possible that one of my clients will ask me to explain the difference between bound water and bulk water in connective tissue, but I doubt it.  The practical application of the difference is to ensure that we stay hydrated.  That’s something I’ll tell my clients.  (OK, fine.  Bound water in connective tissue is in liquid crystalline formation, which increases viscosity, thereby promoting flexibility and elasticity.  Bulk water is the rest of the water in the tissue; when there is inflammation or edema, the proportion of polluted bulk water in the fascia is larger.  Happy now?)

 

What I want in my education is practical, useful stuff for my clients.  I love some academic details, but those aren’t what make me a good trainer or instructor.  Test me on what matters, people!

Monday Workout: Weight-Bearing

The middle set of this round involves a lot of weight-bearing on the arms.  Modify as needed!  Three rounds.

 

squat to leg lift	30
bench press	20
front raise	10
skier jumps	30
renegade rows	20
pushups	10
woodchoppers	30
flies	20
brains	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Side Kick

The Amazing Stickie has amazing hips and strong glutes.  One reason for this is that she loves to do the Pilates exercise side kick.

She begins lying on her side with her legs stacked on top of each other.  Ensuring that her pelvis does not tilt forward or backward, she lifts her top leg with her foot flexed and lowers it.  She does a set of ten and then does the other side.

 

There are (at least) two more variations of this exercise that Stickie is not demonstrating.  Both begin in the same position and the hips remain neutral throughout.

 

For the first variation, Stickie lifts her top leg a few inches and then kicks it forward and back.  It is particularly challenging to keep the pelvis still while kicking to the back, but Stickie uses her strong core muscles to achieve greatness.  This exercise can be done with the foot pointed or flexed, or changing from pointed to flexed.  Stickie likes to experiment.

 

The second variation is called developpé, so Stickie’s friends who take ballet will have an idea of what to do.  Stickie begins by externally rotating (aka turning out) her top leg from the hip socket.  She points her toe and draws the toe up her calf to her knee, which means her top knee bends.  Her legs look like a lying-down letter P, more or less.  But she is not done!  Without changing the angle of her thigh, Stickie extends her knee so that her toe is pointing out into space (like a lying-down letter V).  Then she lowers her straight leg back down to the starting position.

 

For all of these exercises, sets of eight to ten are good; then do the other side.

What? I Don't Remember That...

There are many reasons to love Ted Lasso.  The show demonstrates the power of love and positivity, gives us hope for second chances, and even encourages a healthy attitude toward mental health issues.  But I’m here to talk about the goldfish.

One of the players on Ted’s team screwed something up.  The details escape me.  Ted reminded the player that goldfish reputedly have very short memories.  (I have not fact-checked this because it’s a metaphor and metaphors don’t have to be factual to work.)  He said the player should be a goldfish and just keep playing, letting go of the mistake instead of letting worry about the past mess with the present and future.

 

I bring this up because for me, September is a time of new beginnings.  In theory, the hot and lazy days of summer are over and we can return, fresh, to our lives.  It helps, sometimes, to have goldfish mind when it comes to starting again.  We can forget how much ice cream we ate.  We can let go of the missed workouts.  We can start fresh.

 

Get swimming, goldfish!

Uncle Joe, Noted Efficiency Expert

Somehow, efficiency has gotten a bad rap.  I mean, who doesn’t want to get the work stuff done quickly and then get on to the fun stuff?  (Hint:  it’s our broken system in which finishing tasks quickly wins us… more tasks.  But I digress.)

In fitness, there are two kinds of efficiency we want to pay attention to, because they do in fact make the work get done better so we can do fun stuff.  The first one is structural efficiency.  Structural efficiency is kind of an elaborate description of alignment.  If we begin our motion from an aligned place, everything goes better.  Specifically, we want our basic standing position to have our ears aligned over our shoulders, which should be aligned over our hips, which should be aligned over our knees, which should be aligned over our feet.  Nothing should be twisty or tilted.

 

Functional efficiency is the efficiency of movement.  It is recruiting the right muscles at the right time with the right degree of force for the task at hand.  We don’t want to waste energy swatting a fly with the kind of effort we’d use to hit a home run.  Nor do we want to struggle to move the couch because we can’t get our legs to cooperate.

 

There are many ways to build our structural and functional efficiencies.  One of the best and most fun ways is through Pilates.  Uncle Joe has lots of tricks to teach us about aligning ourselves and portioning out our power in appropriate doses.

 

Want to try?  Hit me up!

Monday Workout: All The Things

This week we’re doing a fair amount of overhead work, plus a little balance and twisting.  Three rounds.

 

push press	30
rows	20
1 leg deadlift	10
leg kicks	30
skullcrushers	20
kb bottom up press	10
reverse lunge twist	30
bench press	20
pretty princesses	10