Happy...

I may have mentioned once or twice or several thousand times that I am not a fan of Valentine’s Day.  However, I will seize the opportunity to talk about how we show love to ourselves.  Hint:  it does not involve our own personal two pound box of chocolate, even if it is pretty and heart-shaped.

We’ve been conditioned not to love ourselves.  People who love themselves don’t necessarily need wrinkle-remover or expensive perfume (no shade thrown on those things if we are into them).  Anxiety sells.

 

Truth is, anxiety sells even in fitness.  A large proportion of the folks working out are doing it because they are worried.  Their partner might leave if they get fat.  They can’t afford to be ill, or injured.  They might look too old to get another job.  We all have anxieties.

 

Unfortunately, anxiety is also exhausting.  At a certain point, we can’t lift weights and anxiety, too.  We wear ourselves out and we surrender.

 

When we start by loving ourselves, we feel lighter.  In the same way that we want the best for our partner or child or parent, we want that for ourselves.  We are motivated to do the things that are good for us, even hard things that are good for us.  Sure, sometimes we want a chocolate treat, but we know we should just have a piece.  We find our satisfaction in healthy behavior.

 

Let’s go give our hearts some love in the gym today.

Ouch

One of the things that tends to derail our best workout plans and schedules is soreness.  This is where I put the disclaimers:  I am not a doctor, physical therapist, or other medical professional and so I do not diagnose or treat illness or actual injury.  If you are sore for more than a couple of days after a workout, consider consulting your health care provider.

That said, I do know a thing or two about soreness and things we can do to mitigate it, assuming we are not actually injured.  (I trust that we all know the difference between normal soreness and pain that means we’ve damaged something.)

 

First, let me say that ibuprofen is our friend, unless we have some reason why taking it is not good for us.  Its job is to reduce inflammation and that is exactly what our soreness is.  It is the best of the OTC pain medications for our purposes, but the other ones will do if we need to avoid ibuprofen specifically.

 

If our soreness involves swelling, ice can help bring that down.  Some people also find ice soothing.  I am not one of them, but I’m also not here to criticize.  When the soreness does not involve swelling, heat can be soothing.

 

A combination of rest and gentle movement can also be helpful.  Many of us, when we are sore, vow that we will never move again until it stops hurting, but it turns out that it will probably stop hurting sooner if we move a little.  Certainly we don’t want to go lift a bunch more heavy weights with our poor sore biceps, but taking a little walk and swinging the arms a little will do wonders.

 

If the budget permits, I also love massage.

 

What have I forgotten?  Best tips?

Monday Workout: Weight Bearing

The last set in this workout is all about weight bearing on the arms and core control.  It is all right to modify the plank jacks or renegade rows to the regular version as needed.  Three rounds.

 

woodchoppers	30
deadlifts	20
curls	10
squat heel lift	30
kickbacks	20
truck driver	10
plank jacks	30
renegade rows	20
plank	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Corkscrew

The Amazing Stickie has, of course, amazing articulation of her spine and amazing abdominal strength.  Those of us who do not may opt for a different exercise; those of us with osteoporosis should definitely give this one a pass.

To begin, Stickie lies on her back with her legs toward the ceiling and her arms at her side.  She peels her spine up into the air, ending up in a position where she is looking at her own shins over her face.  From there, keeping her legs together, she circles them around and then peels her spine back down to the floor.  Then she repeats, circling the other direction.

Rest then smash

I have and wear a Wristy Overlord (otherwise known as an Apple Watch).  It helps me make sure that I exercise, move, and stand up enough each day.  Somehow, though, I was not consulted about the parameters.  The W.O. does not know about rest days.

Here in the white supremacist cis-heteronormative imperialist capitalist patriarchy, we’re a little unclear about resting.  Hustle culture is a thing.  We’re supposed to be doing More all the time.

 

The thing is, our bodies don’t buy it.  We certainly need work for our bodies, but we also need rest.  We get stronger because we rest; our muscles repair themselves while we are resting, becoming a better version of themselves in the process.

 

In other words, we don’t need to be going flat out every single day.

 

Personally, I think we do better if rest is not the same as lying on the couch all day and not moving at all.  Rest can be a stroll or a little stretching.  Movement does not always have to be hard.  That said, nearly all of us could use a little more sleep.

 

Rest.  Then smash the aforementioned patriarchy.

In the middle

We spent last month learning about how to set goals.  Now it’s time to get real on doing what we’ve set out to do.  Two handy tools for staying motivated are the minimum and the maximum.

The minimum is the tool we use on days when we just don’t want to do anything.  We set the minimum on a day when we are neither unreasonably low-energy nor unreasonably optimistic so that it is more likely to be both doable and enough.  If, say, we have cardio goals, our minimum might be a 30-minute walk, or a trip around the block twice during the day.  We want the minimum to be easy.  Depending on where we are in our fitness journey, that minimum might be a five minute commitment.

 

On the other end of the spectrum, we prevent burnout by setting maximums.  Some of us who want to do All the Things just keep piling more stuff into the workouts.  We do cardio and then weights and then some yoga and then there’s this really good class and our friends want to play pickleball and maybe it would be nice to go for a swim and we just totally overdo ourselves.  Unless we are specifically training for an endurance event, we do not need to be spending two hours working out.  Those of us coming from the couch might want to set the maximum at one kind of workout, plus a little stretching.

 

We can do this in the happy middle.

Monday Workout: Reach!

This week we are working compound exercises.  Adding the reach to the side lunge will make it harder and challenge our balance.  That high pull added to the sumo squat means the whole body gets involved.  Three rounds.

 

jacks	30
bench press	20
side lunge with reach	10
sumo squat to high pull	30
flies	20
goblet pour	10
mountain climbers	30
rows	20
femur arcs	10