Gotta do it.

As we get into the darker months and the months with more variable weather, it can be a challenge to go outside.  Personally, I think that I was intended to be a bear who slept through the winter.  Since I have yet to find a job opening in the hibernation industry, I’ll just keep on doing what I do.

Outside can be cold or dark or rainy or windy or even all of those things at once.  Unfortunately, going outside is still good for us.  We need daylight, however feeble it might be, and fresh air and trees.

 

Maybe we have to bundle up or grab an umbrella or bribe ourselves with tea afterwards, but let’s do it.  We’ll feel better and we’ll sleep better.

Them Bones

The prophet Ezekiel did not know anything about Pilates when he saw the vision of the valley of dried bones.  But, he did grasp one of the essential underlying themes of Pilates as he watched the bones knit together again:  it’s all connected.  (Sorry about the earworm about the foot bone connecting to the leg bone and all…)

This connection is good news.  It means that when we work on any part of our body, the whole body feels the effects.  Sometimes it means that it’s better to work on a part that is not the part that hurts because what’s causing the pain is not what is happening right there.  We are a holistic system.

 

That said, we often get best results when we begin with the spine.  As we get good alignment along this central part of our body, the extremities can fall into place.  If they don’t, we can work on them more afterward.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: 12 Days of Christmas

Yes, I know that next Monday is actual Christmas, but I’m not working then.  So we’re doing the 12 days of Christmas workout this week. 

For those of you who have not yet tried it out, here is how it works.  We begin doing one push press.  Day one is over!  Then, we start day two, on which we do two goblet squats and one push press.  We continue on until we have completed all twelve days.

 

It is ok to rest as needed, but we try to rest between the days rather than stopping in the middle.

 

Yes, I know that this adds up to 42 burpees by the time we are done.  I am not your true love after all.

 

Merry Christmas.

 

1 push press

2 goblet squats

3 Overhead press

4 1 leg squats each leg

5 deadlifts

6 burpees

7 pushups

8 renegade rows

9 mountain climbers

10 jump lunges

11 kb swings

12 plyojacks

 

The Amazing Stickie and Single Leg Kick

The Amazing Stickie likes to ensure that she has strong glutes, mobile hamstrings, and healthy knees.  One way she does this is by doing Single Leg Kick when she goes to Pilates.

She begins lying on her belly with her torso propped up on her elbows and her hands pointing straight in front of her.  She bends one knee, flexing that foot, and pulses it toward her behind as if she were trying to kick herself in the butt two times.  Then she points her toe and stretches her leg out long to return to the starting position.

 

Stickie does about five repetitions on each leg.

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