The 3 Stooges Version?

As I have said before, I took up tai chi some months back.  I still have tons and tons to learn, which made me think about learning styles.

We all have them.  Some of us like to be told how to do something.  Others like to be shown.  Some of us need to move our bodies to imprint the ideas in our brains.  Yet others like to talk themselves through things.  And, of course, most of us are some combination of all those different ways of learning.

 

As I try to learn the sequences of movement in tai chi, I find that I need both brain engagement and body engagement.  I want to know how many repetitions there are of a particular sequence.  I need to hook movements to images in my mind (much to the horror of my tai chi instructor when I described one motion as “pie to the face.”  This does not capture the warrior nature of tai chi, apparently.).  And I need to do the sequences over and over and over so that my body knows what to do all by itself.

 

Remaining a learner helps me when I am on the other side of the equation, teaching clients new exercises or helping them refine their performance of familiar ones.  I need to stay awake and aware that one client may need to know what something is for, another may want to know what muscles are working, another may just need to see the movement a few more times.

 

We can all learn.

I want to be a fairy princess, or maybe a barbarian...

Halloween is a day when we get to pretend to be something we aren’t.  Or maybe it’s a day when we choose to express a part of ourselves that we usually keep inside.  Either way, it’s a day of possibilities.

One possibility we can try on is living like a person who prioritizes health and well-being.  This might not sound as edgy as dressing up like a vampire or a monster, but, trust me, it’s just as countercultural.

 

What if, just for this one day, we decide to move because we love our bodies and we like them to feel good?  What if we feed ourself food that nourishes our bodies and souls while still being delicious?  What if we give ourselves permission to play, to rest, and to sleep?

 

I admit that the results could be scary, indeed.  We may discover that we like opting out of the all-stress-all-the-time cycle.  We may feel so much better eating real food that we no longer feel drawn by the siren song of drive-through fries.  We may not need to do so much retail therapy when we can regulate our emotions with cardio.

 

Change is scary, but it can be wonderful, too.

Monday Workout: Halloween!!!!!

This week, our workout dressed up for Halloween.  We didn’t even have to torture the exercises too badly to fit into the acrostic!  Depending on time, do two to four rounds.

 

H - high knees	30
A - Arnold press	10
L- lunge	20
L - lateral raise	10
O - oblique crunch	10
W - woodchopper	30
E - extend triceps	20
E - elbow plank
N - narrow squats	20

 

The Amazing Stickie and Leg Pull

Today the Amazing Stickie wants a challenge for her shoulder flexibility, upper body strength, and core control, so she’s doing the Pilates Leg Pull.  (No, this does not mean that Uncle Joe is going to play a joke on her!)

As with many Pilates exercises, there are options for Stickie to choose.  The starting position is sitting on the floor, hands slightly behind the hips, legs extended in front of the body.  The position of the hands is where the choices come in:  Stickie can have her fingers pointing away from her body, out to the sides, or towards her body.  Different positions will feel differently for different people, but generally folks find it most challenging to have the fingers pointing toward the body and least challenging to have them pointing to the sides, but the best way to find out which way works best is to try all three!

 

Once Stickie has chosen a hand position, she lifts her pelvis toward the ceiling, pressing her feet into the floor.  Basically, she is doing an upside down plank.  The main part of the exercise starts now.  On an inhale, Stickie lengthens one leg and lifts it toward the ceiling.  She keeps her pelvis stable (i.e., she doesn’t let her butt sag down!) as she lifts.  Then she exhales as she lowers her leg back to the upside down plank position.  She alternates legs and does about ten reps on each side.

Apple?

This post requires all my usual disclaimers:  I am not a doctor, therapist, nutritionist, or dietician.  Please check with any/all of those other kinds of folks for advice from people with more education and training than I have.  That said, the general comments below are within the scope of my practice.

What we eat affects how we feel.  (Thank you, Captain Obvious!)  Even if all that changes is that we don’t feel hungry anymore after we eat, we have changed our state of being.  Since we’re going to make a change anyway, it might as well be a good change.

 

It is both easy and hard to eat healthy food in our culture.  We have an incredible abundance of food and a boggling number of choices.  (Digression:  I used to worry that my kids didn’t eat a particularly varied diet.  Then one day they were discussing whether Ethiopian food or sushi was better.  I relaxed.)  Unfortunately, a lot of the choices we have are not ones that are particular good for us.  Food deserts exist.  Food insecurity is a big problem, exacerbated by all kinds of societal pressures right now.  We are stressed and it is way easier to get ice cream at the drive-through than it is to get a real, healthy meal cooked.

 

It's worth it, though.

 

We need to try to eat a non-potato vegetable fairly often.  We need to drink water.  We need to eat food that still looks more or less like it did when it started, not like a sad and pummeled version of itself pumped up with sugar, salt, and a bunch more chemicals.

 

Try an apple.  They’re in season.

Go have a healthy snack

An awful lot of us walk around feeling tense all the time.  Not in the psychic sense (although that is true, too, but beyond the scope of my practice to address), but in the physical, my-muscles-don’t-move kind of way.  In doing my homework on flexibility and stretching, I learned that there are some not-so-obvious potential causes of that tension.

Of course, we have the usual suspects:  mental and physical stress and physical deconditioning.  Most of us need to address those as actual or potential problems all the time.

 

But sleep deficiency can cause excessive muscle tension.  Maybe we need to rest more!

 

Another pair of interesting factors:  dehydration and poor nutrition.  Drinking enough water and eating healthy snacks can improve how tense our muscles feel!  How cool is that?

 

We all know that feeling of tension we have when we’ve worked out too hard and everything in our bodies declares that we are never moving again, ever.  However, when we don’t move, our bodies also don’t like it and our muscles get tense.  We have to find the sweet spot.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Change? Change!

I love our usual workout template, but sometimes we need to do things differently.  This is a short circuit, so we’re going to do four rounds.  And sorry/not sorry about the burpees.

 

1 min cardio
suitcase swings	20
ball bench press	20
lunge to curl	20
kickbacks	10
burpees	10
pretty princesses	10