The Amazing Stickie and Saw

The Amazing Stickie knows that being able to rotate her spine and to bend sideways help keep her mobile.  This is another exercise that involves some spinal flexion, so it is best avoided by people who have osteopenia and osteoporosis.

She begins seated on the floor with her legs extended out in front of her about as far apart as a yoga mat is wide.  She holds her arms out in a wide V at shoulder height.  Stickie inhales to lengthen her spine.  As she exhales, she rotates her torso toward one side, simultaneously bending so that her arm comes across and down toward her opposite ankle, as if it were a saw chopping off her foot (no, I did not make that particular gory image up myself.).  Then she returns to the start position and repeats on the other side.

 

Four or five repetitions to each side are good.

No magic wand

So yesterday we started thinking about goals by figuring out what we want.  We have tuned into what makes us feel joyful.

That joy is the motivation to do the hard bits.  Which is what we’re going to talk about now.  Sadly, I do not have a magic wand.  This means that when we set goals they have to be more or less realistic while still bringing us toward what our little hearts desire.

 

What our hearts desire is our compass point, our big picture.  That’s the direction we’re going to go.  But we’re not orienteering to our goals:  we’re making a map. 

 

If, for example, what gives us joy is being able to travel, lugging our luggage, climbing up church towers or cliffs, eating all the local cuisine, and logging miles and miles of walking as we see the sights, our map to get there is going to need to include some strength training (to enable all that schlepping, to keep our bones strong, and to help our metabolisms process all those delicacies) and some cardio (so we don’t pass out when we end up in a hotel with no elevator and we have to take the stairs, or we want to scale the Mayan pyramids, or we want to do a Julie Andrews in an alpine meadow).

 

We want to figure out where we’re starting from (The couch?  Semi-weekly attendance at yoga class?  Trying Zumba once?).  Many gyms and personal trainers offer free fitness evaluations (yes, I do, too!) and that is a useful way to get some data, but it’s not necessary.  Once we have the starting point, we can begin to have an idea about the time it might take to get where we want to go.  We want to meet our goals safely, so we want to be consistent rather than overdo ourselves. A guideline for workouts is not to increase workout time by more than 10%, for example.  That means that this week’s 30 minutes is going to be next week’s 33 minutes and so on.  With weights, we increase our reps until we hit 10 to 12 with good form and then we increase the weight, dropping the reps down and continue alternating like that.

 

Personally, I like the kind of goals that go like this:  I’m going to do cardio five days a week for 30 minutes and I’m going to do one weight work out.  Then I’m going to see how I feel.  I will adjust each week until I am satisfied with my cardio endurance (it’s ok to attach a number to this, or some other measure, like not being out of breath at the top of the stairs) and I can tolerate two or three weight workouts per week.

 

Try it and see how it goes!

Joy

We’re getting toward the end of December, y’all, which means it is time to start thinking about goals for next year.  (We all have tons of spare time with the holidays, right?  Oceans of hours in which to reflect…)  This is the first of two posts on setting goals.

The only rule for right now is that we have to tell the truth.  This is not about the goals we should have.  I don’t care what our moms think we should do, or our spouses or our kids or our favorite magazines.  It’s about the ones we actually want.  I don’t care if it is silly or vain or unrealistic.  It just has to be real.

 

This might be harder than we think.  We have so many messages around us telling us how to be.  I’m pretty sure all of us have a knee-jerk answer about how much weight we’re supposed to lose.  I have a news flash:  happiness is not to be found in the number of lost pounds.

 

So.  Let’s spend a minute or two picturing or describing or feeling into the life we want to have in the new year.  Maybe we do want to look better than we do right this minute, but I bet we care more about feeling good and happy and full of energy.  Those of us who feel tired all the time might want to feel rested.  Those of us who get out of breath getting off the couch might want to change that.  Maybe we want to meet new friends playing a new sport or doing a new activity and we need to build a bit of strength to do that.

 

What we want to be able to do and to feel helps us to shape our goals.  We’ll discover that we want to be faster or stronger, that we want more stamina or energy, that we need more connection and more joy.

 

Find the feelings that lead to joy.  Then hold that thought for tomorrow.

Monday Workout: A Game!

For Christmas, we’re doing a workout game.  The only equipment required is a deck of cards, although it is handy to have an exercise ball or a yoga block for the pretty princesses and those of you who want to make things harder on yourselves may want some light weights to hold for the squats and punches.

This game can be played alone or with a friend.

 

One turn involves turning over a card and doing the exercise that matches the suit (see chart below) the number of times that is on the card.  So, for example, turning over the three of clubs would mean doing three pretty princesses.  Face cards can either be counted as ten, or jacks can be 11, queens 12, and kings 13.

 

Continue as long as time and energy allow!

 

(This is a good way to wear out any kids you happen to have lying around!)

 

Cardio Poker
Suit	Exercise
Hearts	squats/jump squats
Diamonds	lunge punches
Clubs	pretty princesses
Spades	pushups

 

The Amazing Stickie and Swimming

Today the Amazing Stickie is working on all kinds of good things, including spinal extension, core strength, and shoulder mobility.  She is doing all this by doing the Pilates mat exercise Swimming.

She begins lying on her belly on the floor.  Then she extends her arms and legs away from her until they lift up off the floor.  She makes sure that she doesn’t just use her lower back to curve her spine, but also involves her middle back in the work.  From there, she pulses her arms and legs up and down as if she were kicking while swimming and whacking the water with her arms.  As she does this, she pulses her breath as well, breathing out for four counts and in for four.  Eight cycles is enough.

 

She lowers herself back to the floor and takes a rest.

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.