The Amazing Stickie and Dart

Today the Amazing Stickie is working on Pilates by doing dart.  This is a spinal extension exercise, so it makes her feel good.

She begins by lying on her belly with her arms down by her side.  She inhales and peels her upper body up off the floor segment by segment while lifting her arms behind her as if she were trying to touch her toes.  Then she exhales back to the starting position.  After a couple of reps like that, she inhales to the top position and then pumps her hands up and down with her arms straight a few times before lowering back to start.

 

She does as many reps as feel good.

You're Getting Sleepy....

There’s a current in our culture that glorifies hustle.  We’re all supposed to be doing productive stuff all the time and maximizing our output and streamlining our processes and whatever.  One way this manifests is that we brag about how little sleep we get.  This is not ok.

Sleep is essential to health.  Depriving people of sleep is a torture technique, y’all.  Let’s not engage in self-torture!  We deserve to be healthy and happy humans.

 

Not convinced.  Sigh.  Fine.  Getting enough sleep will make us more productive in our lives in general and will contribute to optimizing our fitness.  Weight workouts are fabulous, but our muscles get stronger when we sleep afterwards, during the repair phase.  Also, we do better in the workouts themselves if we begin well-rested.

 

Go play.  And then get some sleep.

Consent

Since I work almost entirely online, the issues around tactile cuing, for me, are pretty academic.  However, since I’m doing my continuing education on flexibility and stretching and there is a big chunk about assisted stretching, here’s the deal.

Within my scope of practice as a personal trainer and Pilates instructor, I can’t do massage or adjustments (the province of licensed massage therapists and chiropractors, respectively).  I can’t diagnose or treat injuries, and so will not feel that bump or that swelling or whatever.

 

Consent is mandatory.  If I think I can help a client with a tactile cue (say, putting a forearm along their spine and the back of their head to encourage good alignment during a pushup or plank), I will ask every time if it is all right for me to touch them.  Even if it has been all right with them the previous four hundred and sixty three times.  This time might be different.  I try to be specific when I ask for consent:  Is it ok for me to put my arm on your spine?  If it is ok with you, I am going to put my hand here by your knee; see if you can press into my hand.

 

It is 100% all right for a client to tell me no at any point.  This is true not only about touch, but about any exercise that they do not feel comfortable or confident about.  My clients trust me to keep them safe and I trust them to tell me the truth about how they feel.

 

Tactile cuing and assisted stretching can be helpful, but they’re not essential to a client’s fitness.  I have more than one tool in my chest.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: The Whole Thing

The whole body has to work for this one.  And yes, there are burpees.  Three rounds.

 

plie bend extend	30
Arnold press	20
burpees	10
kb swings	30
kb twist	20
kb 8s	10
clean and press	30
reverse fly	20
femur arcs	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Prone Press

The Amazing Stickie loves spinal extension exercises for many reasons.  Maybe the biggest reason is that spinal extension helps her inhale deeply, which makes her feel happier.  The Pilates prone press is a simple spinal extension.

 

Stickie begins lying on her belly with her hands under her shoulders.  She had to experiment with a couple of positions to find the right place for her hands.  Some people find it works better with the hands a little lower.  Then, as she inhales, Stickie begins to tilt her head up as if she were watching a ladybug crawling away from her.  The rest of her spine keeps following her head as her arms extend.  She goes only as high as is comfortable in her body.  Some people only straighten their arms a little bit.  Others go all the way up to straight arms.  She tries to ensure that each segment of her spine is moving.  She, like a lot of people, often does most of the work with her neck and neglects the part of her spine between her shoulder blades.  Perhaps because of this tendency, Stickie has had an uncharacteristic lapse in form in the second picture; she has overcompensated for her tendency to do most of the work with her neck by looking down.  At the top of the movement, she should be looking forward.

 

Stickie exhales to come down to the starting position.

 

Stickie usually does three or four repetitions, but sometimes she feels like only one and other times she does five or six.  Her spine lets her know when she’s done enough. 

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!