The Amazing Stickie and Crouch Jacks

Some days, the Amazing Stickie really wants a whole body challenge.  Those days, she chooses crouch jacks.  Some people call them star jumps.  Choose the name you like best.

She begins by crouching down on the floor, arms close to her body.  Then she jumps up, raising her arms in a Y position above her head and spreading her legs.  Her whole body looks like an X.  She lands back in the crouched position.

 

Coordinating the movement can be a little tricky at first.  This is also a compound exercise, so Stickie knows she is going to get out of breath doing it.  She worked her way up to sets of 30.

By Request: How do I get back into workout safely (part 2)?

This month, I’m taking requests for things folks want to know about fitness (yes, please!  Ask me questions and I will blog the answers!).

I haven’t been exercising lately.  How do I get back into workouts safely?

 

Yesterday we talked about cardio.  Today we’re discussing weight training.

 

Once we’ve established a cardio base and a daily practice of exercising, we can add in some weight training.

 

Just like with the cardio exercise, we want to start small and work up gradually, continually checking in with our bodies to see how we feel.

 

Hiring a trainer (like me!) takes a lot of the brain work out of the process.  It’s certainly not necessary, but it does make things easy.  If that’s not the path we want to pursue, we have some choices.

 

One choice is to do body weight exercises.  The advantages here are pretty obvious:  we all have a body, so we have what we need!  A good basic body weight routine would include a cardio warm-up (something like jumping jacks or running in place), followed by exercises like squats, pushups, pullups, crunches, and planks.  It’s also a good idea to throw in a few balance moves, like single leg squats or deadlifts.  Three rounds of ten reps each is a good place to start.

 

Another choice is to join a gym.  Every gym has some combination of weight machines and free weights.  People who have never worked out before or who have specific restrictions might do best on the machines, but I prefer the free weights because they compel us to stabilize our own bodies, they allow our muscles to cooperate rather than work in isolation from each other, and they’re less boring.  Choose a balance of upper and lower body exercises and aim to bend everything you extend and vice versa (for example, we want to pair exercises like bench press, which involves pushing, with rows, which involve pulling).

 

Our first goal is to gain some endurance.  That means working with weights light enough that we can complete 12 to 20 repetitions.  When doing 20 reps is easy, we increase the weight.  Some people want to stay in the endurance phase (totally acceptable!), while others want to work on building big muscles or maximizing strength.  The big muscle group wants to choose weights that allow for 8 to 10 reps, and the max strength group wants to work up to the heaviest weight possible for one beautiful rep.

 

Go play.

By Request: How do I get back to working out safely? (Part 1)

This month, I’m taking requests for things folks want to know about fitness (yes, please!  Ask me questions and I will blog the answers!).

I haven’t been exercising lately.  How do I get back into workouts safely?

 

I’m going to answer this one over two days, one covering cardio and the other weight training.

 

Good news:  bodies are made to move, so we don’t need to freak out about safety as long as we don’t abandon common sense.

 

(One way to answer this question is:  hire me.  My job is to help people reach their fitness goals safely and with as little yucky stuff as possible.)

 

Those of us who don’t want to rush out and join my client list can still get fit safely.  Here’s what I recommend:

 

Start small.  Maybe we’ve wasted six months watching cooking shows and eating DoorDash, but we’re not going to get back from that in one six-hour marathon session.  That is just not a thing.

 

I suggest starting with cardio in the form of a daily brisk walk.  It’s free, requires only decent shoes, and we all already know how to do it.  At first, I prefer seeing people be consistent rather than doing it for a long time:  every day for fifteen minutes is better than an hour twice a week.  We want to build a habit.  As far as intensity is concerned, we’ll know if we’re working hard enough if we can manage to carry on a conversation but singing would be out of the question.  If we feel like we didn’t do anything at all the next day, we probably need to go a little harder.  If we feel like we’d like to dive headfirst into the Advil, we might want to take it a little easier.

 

Each week, we can push a little harder.  The walk might get longer, or it might get faster, or it might incorporate a few hills.  Again, we want to monitor how we feel the next day and adjust as needed.  We also need to remember that some days just go better than others.  A poor night of sleep, some stress at work, an unfortunate breakfast can all affect our performance on any given day.  We need to have compassion for ourselves without totally letting ourselves off the hook.

 

Once we’ve got a cardio base, we can branch out into other forms of cardio if we like:  swimming, running, biking, ellipticalling (is that a word?  It is now.), dancing, roller-blading, whatever.  And we can turn our attention to the weight training side of the equation, which I will discuss tomorrow.

Monday Workout: Extension!

We’ve got some balance work and some work on spinal extension today.  Three rounds.

 

 

step ups	30
upright row	20
YTA	10
overhead curtsy	30
good morning/deadlift	20
1 leg squat	10
skier jumps	30
bench press	20
scissors	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Toe Reaches

The Amazing Stickie loves variety in her abdominal exercises.  Her friends with osteopenia or osteoporosis probably want to give this one a miss because it takes the spine into flexion, but everyone else can go for it.

To begin, Stickie lies on her back (aaaaaah!).  She lifts her legs up so that they point straight at the ceiling (it is all right if there is a little bend at the knee if we don’t have the hamstring flexibility that Stickie does) and her arms up toward the ceiling as well.  She looks like a slightly square U.  From there, she reaches her hands toward her toes, allowing her head and chest to lift off the floor.  Then she returns to the starting position.  A set of ten is a good idea.

By Request: Why are you making me do this exercise that hurts?

This month, I’m taking requests for things folks want to know about fitness (yes, please!  Ask me questions and I will blog the answers!).

Why are you making me do this exercise that hurts?

 

OK, so first of all, we have to discuss the difference between discomfort, soreness, and pain.  Discomfort happens when we do things we’re not used to doing, when we ask our bodies to move in ways that we haven’t before or haven’t in a long time.  Soreness is one of the results of working hard, and as we work out more, we learn to tell when we are sore enough but not too sore; this helps us figure out how hard to work out.  Pain is a way our body alerts us to possible danger.  We know to pull our hands away from a hot stove, to stop running when there is sharp pain in our knee or hip or ankle, to avoid our mean friend the day after a bad haircut.

 

I will never ask anyone to do something in a workout that intentionally causes pain.  (Accidents happen, and so do injuries.  I do my best to keep clients safe, but I am not God.)  When I do ask folks to do things that are uncomfortable, I will say that it’s probably not going to be fun.  We are adults.  We theoretically understand that we sometimes have to do unpleasant things to get the things we want.  (This is the whole basis of our employment system.)

 

An example:  there is an exercise that I have clients do (and that I do myself, every day) in which we lie with yoga tune up balls positioned on our backs just above the place where those of us who wear bras find our bra straps.  We put our straight arms above our chests and move them from side to side with several variations.  It is… spicy, particularly when we don’t do it very often.  I do it and I ask clients to do it because of the payoff.

 

In the case of this exercise, the payoff is greater mobility in the thoracic spine, improved breathing mechanics, better posture, and generally better alignment in daily life.  That seems worth the two minutes of discomfort.

 

We are all lovely unique humans with varying responses to stimuli.  My pain is not anyone else’s pain.  All my clients have both the right and the responsibility to push back against what I ask them to do.  In my math, the benefits outweigh the discomfort, but their math may vary.

 

I’m not into gratuitous pain, for myself or anyone else!

By Request: Easy Ways to Strengthen the Core

This month, I’m taking requests for things folks want to know about fitness (yes, please!  Ask me questions and I will blog the answers!).

What are some easy ways to strengthen my core?

 

It depends on what we mean by easy.

 

If we mean easy, in the sense of not having to do separate exercises for the core in addition to whatever else we’re doing in our workouts, the answer is that we need to incorporate compound exercises and relatively heavy weights into our workouts.  When we’re doing heavy squats, we get tons of core benefits without a crunch in sight.

 

If we mean easy, in the sense that we target our core efficiently and effectively without having to spend forever, let me suggest two things:  planks and pretty princesses.  The plank and its variations target the whole core in an isometric fashion (translation:  we just have to hold the position.).  For those readers who do not regularly work out with me, pretty princesses are not called that in any other gym or studio.  To do them, we lie on our backs with our arms and legs raised toward the ceiling, holding a stability ball (or yoga block or imaginary item).  We lower the ball toward the floor while simultaneously lowering our legs toward the floor.  Then we bring arms and legs back to the starting position, hold our ball between our legs and repeat the lowering and lifting.  That is one rep.  Pretty princesses work the entire front of our core while keeping our spines supported, so they are suitable even for people with osteopenia.

 

If we mean easy, in the sense that we don’t have to make any changes to how we move in the world, we’re just out of luck.  I do not lie to clients:  we have to work to get what we want.

 

Go do stuff.