Speed Limit

One of the themes of my life right now is slowing down.  I am not happy about this.  But when the universe speaks, it’s safest just to listen.

I’ve mentioned that slowing down when it’s time for stretching is beneficial.  It can also be beneficial when we are lifting weights.  The concept we’re working with here is time under tension.  We get stronger when our muscles spend time under tension.

 

In practice, this means that we don’t want to lift the weights as fast as possible to get things over with.  OK, maybe we do, but that’s not the best choice.  There are circumstances under which we lift fast, like when we’re trying to develop power, but if our goal is strength, slow wins.

 

It makes sense.  When we take four counts to push up those weights on our bench press and another four counts to lower them, we are spending a lot more time with our muscles working than if we just pump those suckers up and down.  I realize that this is more work and it requires that we have some patience.  I am always the bearer of bad tidings.

 

One interesting note, though:  we can get most of the benefit of a slower tempo by just slowing down the lowering phase of the movement (the eccentric contraction, for those of us who relish a bit of fitness jargon).  That is, we lift the weights in a single count and then lower them much more slowly.

 

Try it out and see!

This one goes to...

One of the most memorable lines from the movie Spinal Tap is from the description of their amp:  “This one goes to 11.”  It’s funny in the same way that cutting a pizza into six pieces because we can’t eat eight is funny.  Just because we change the numbers doesn’t mean we change the total.

But, innumerate silly fools that we are, we do tend to think that one that goes to 11 is better than one that goes to 10.

 

Then along comes some reality and smacks me upside the head.  In stretching, not only do we not want to go to 11, we probably only want to go to about 5.  What the heck?

 

Let me explain.  Let’s say we’re stretching our hamstrings (because, let’s face it:  most of us need to stretch our hamstrings.).  (It is perfectly ok to test this out for real on our own bodies!  An activity!  Woot!)  We’re lying there on our backs with a strap around one of our feet and we begin to lift that leg up toward the ceiling.  The very first place we feel resistance is called R1.  Please note that resistance may not even feel like stretching.  It might just feel like the leg doesn’t really want to go.  If we keep lifting our leg up past that point, we get to a place where going farther would hurt.  This is called R2.  The space between R1 and R2 is the place where we should be stretching.

 

It turns out that if we gently move our leg back and forth between those two spots, we improve our range of motion.  In other words, we make the distance from R1 to R2 larger.  Pushing past R2 actually freaks our muscles out and they lock down and refuse to go anywhere ever again.  Not really.  But they do protect themselves by tensing up.  No more stretching for you, buddy.

 

Those of us who are used to pushing the edges of our stretches might not feel like we’re doing that much when we work in this space.  This is why it is good to try it and see.  I was surprised at how much more movement I could create by going gently.

 

So:  no pain means not only no pain (yay!) but also more gain.

Monday Workout: Back to Balance!

We are keeping the back of our bodies strong and working on balance this week.  Four rounds.

 

1 min cardio
suitcase swings	30
1 leg squat	10
bench press	20
woodchoppers	30
deadlift	20
pretty princesses	10

The Amazing Stickie and Standing Roll Down

The Amazing Stickie loves to maintain her spine mobility.  Those of us who have osteopenia or osteoporosis should not do this exercise along with her because spinal flexion is risky for those folks, but the rest of us can follow her good example in doing the standing roll down.

Stickie begins standing up with her usual good posture.  She inhales to lengthen her spine.  As she exhales, she nods her head forward and then curves her spine forward one vertebra at a time.  She keeps her weight toward her toes because as her torso bends forward, her hips want to push out behind her and she wants to prevent that as long as possible.  When she has curled forward as far as her body allows, she reverses the process, again keeping her weight toward her toes so that she can get her hips aligned over her legs as early as possible to provide a strong and stable base for her re-stacked spine.

 

Stickie often does three or four repetitions.

The difference

Recently I read a thing on the Internet (as one does) about the difference between self-soothing and self-care.  What our culture tries to sell us as self-care is often self-soothing:  fancy drinks, hot baths, retail therapy.  Self-care is often a lot more about doing the not-always-pleasant-but-useful stuff that our future selves thank us for.

Working out is one of those things.

 

While I certainly try to make workouts fun, that is not really the point.  The point is that we work out because it makes other things more fun.  It is much more fun to be able to breathe easily at the top of the stairs, to catch that excitable toddler or puppy on the playground, to spend time anywhere besides the hospital.  We work out so that we can garden and travel and go to our cousin’s quinceañera and eat cake at our own 100^th birthday party.

 

Helping ourselves be healthy humans is self-care.  If necessary, we can bribe ourselves to do it with a self-soothing hot bath at the end.

Play is the work of...

When I learn new things, I like to remember that it’s a process.  Those of you who have been reading along for a while know that my most recent continuing education effort was about flexibility and stretching.  I passed the course (of course!), but now that the academic part is done, I’m exploring the practical applications.

One way I do that is by… practicing.  I try techniques on myself.  I try stuff on my family members (they don’t mind; they’re used to me by now).  As I get more of a feel for how different things work, I throw one or two new things into my workouts with my clients.  Not surprisingly, some things work better for some people than others.  Whether the specific exercises I try work the way I want them to or not, I learn.

 

I know I say this a lot, but it is really worth repeating:  experimenting is the way to go.  Our culture is super hyper focused on successful results and that inhibits our ability to play, to be curious, to find out.  Trial and error is not trial and error if there is no error.  Learning what doesn’t work is often as useful as learning what does.

 

Go play.  It might be fun.  It might not be.  But odds are that we’ll learn something either way.

Monday Workout: Whole

I am enjoying the shorter circuits right now.  This one should get the whole body working!.  Four rounds.

 

1 min cardio
step ups or high knees	30
renegade rows	10
flies	20
kb alternate arm swing	30
Arnold press	10
oblique crunch	10