The Amazing Stickie and Dumbbell Floor Chest Press

Chest presses, the Amazing Stickie knows, are a classic exercise.  There are, of course, many variations.  Today, Stickie is doing the dumbbell floor chest press.  She doesn’t do this variation that often because she likes to be able to lower her elbows farther, but this is fun once in a while.

To begin, she lies on the floor with her legs in tabletop position, holding a pair of dumbbells directly above her shoulders.  The dumbbells are close together, but Stickie knows that if they touch each other it makes the exercise easier and cheats her of some of her work.  Stickie does not like to cheat.  Maintaining a neutral spine, Stickie bends her elbows to lower the weights toward her chest and then raises them up again to the starting point.

 

Depending on the weight, ten to twenty reps should do it.

I Have Answers

Because I do both personal training and Pilates, folks sometimes ask me which they should do.  I have two answers:  it depends and both.  (Yeah, I know.  I’m annoying like that.)

The “it depends” answer springs from the fact that we are all coming to fitness from our own special spots in the universe.  We have individual needs and goals.  For most of us, it will be pretty clear whether the usual outcomes of weight training or Pilates will align better with what we need and want.

 

The “both” part comes from the synergistic nature of weight training and Pilates.  When we do both, we improve our outcomes even more than just by getting the individual benefits of each of those training modes.  The strength we gain in weight training opens up opportunities for us in the Pilates repertoire.  The finesse and balance and alignment we learn in Pilates translate into better form and performance in our weight training.  Our powerful brains benefit from the mindset of both disciplines and from the challenge of switching between them.

 

The good news is that we can start anywhere.  It’s all good.

Change the Input

Recently I listened to a webinar about neuroplasticity.  At the risk of sounding far out there, it made me realize how much we create our own reality.

Yeah, that’s pretty woo-woo, even for me.  Let me give a practical example that can also be a party trick, depending on the kind of parties we go to.

 

Don’t try this if you have bone loss in your spine.  Everyone else:  stand up and then bend forward as if you are going to touch your toes.  It does not matter how far you can reach, but note how far you can reach.  Stand back up.  Now think about that problem part of your body, the ankle you keep spraining, the scar from your appendectomy, that shoulder that hurts in the morning.  Once you’ve settled on one (any one will do!), rub that part of your body for a minute or so.  Longer is better for this exercise, but a minute is enough.  Then do that forward bend again.  I’ll bet you could reach farther than you did the first time.

 

Why does it work?  Because we distracted our brains.  We gave a bunch of input to our brains from something that wasn’t reaching for our toes.  Our brains stayed so busy with that that they couldn’t focus on our limitations in the direction of our toes.

 

We just changed our reality.  When we change the input, we change the output.

 

Go make some stuff real.

Monday Workout: Rev Up

This week we’re keeping on with our compound exercises to build strength and rev up our metabolisms.  Three rounds.

 

tap backs	30
renegade row	20
lateral raise	10
squat to leg lift	30
(lunge to) curl	20
YTA	10
jacks	30
good morning/deadlift	20
pretty princesses	10

The Amazing Stickie and Farmer's Carry

The Amazing Stickie knows that sometimes simple is best.  There are not many exercises out there simpler than the farmer’s carry.  The level of challenge will vary depending on the weights she chooses.

Holding a dumbbell (or weight plate!) in each hand, Stickie ensures that her posture is good (ears over shoulders over hips over knees over ankles).  Then she walks forward holding the dumbbells without swinging her arms.  That’s it.  When she feels like she has taken the weights for a long enough walk, she stops.  She usually takes about ten steps in one direction and ten to return to the weight rack, because she is efficient.

Do your own!

It is really tempting to let other people set our goals for us.  I get it.  I’m the “expert,” so I should know what it is my clients should do.

Yes, I do have expertise and education and experience.  Those things are useful.  But no matter how smart I am, I can’t know what is crucial to my clients without them telling me.

 

My ideas about what my clients should want don’t really matter.  What they want does.  My job is to apply what I know to what they want.  I show up with curiosity.  I watch.  I ask.  Given what I see and what I hear and what I am told, I adapt what we do to optimize for what my clients have their hearts set on.

 

A lot of us are so used to people telling us what to want (and what to do) that it can be a challenge to tease out what is important to my clients themselves.  It is worth the effort, however, because ultimately the only goals worth working for are the ones we choose for ourselves.

 

(On a related subject, positive goals along the lines of “I want to be able to dance all night” beat the heck out of “I don’t want to die immobile.”  We do best when motivated by love, excitement, joy.)

 

All goals present challenges.  We’re not going to sail, trouble-free, straight to what we want.  This is why it is so crucial to ensure that the goal is worth it to us.  That worthy goal keeps us working when things get hard.

 

Whatever my clients want, I am there to help them get it.

Happiness and Joy

Today we’re going to talk about happiness versus joy.  (My brain just imagined the two as Luchadores, but, aside from making me laugh, that’s not relevant right now.)  Happiness is a circumstantial thing.  We feel happy when things are going right, when we have cute shoes, when there is no traffic on our commute, when we get tasty snacks.

 

Joy, however, is not.  Joy is a way of being in the world, more of a mindset than something dependent on how things are going.  We achieve joy in a variety of ways, including integrity and gratitude.  Joy is a practice.

 

So what’s the connection with fitness? 

 

The most obvious connection is… connection!    That mind-body connection is a real thing.  When we tune in to what makes our body feel good, when we experience ourselves as moving beings designed to move, we open ourselves to the joy of existence.

 

Then there is that whole practice bit.  When we move with intention, we learn.  We grow.  We learn to appreciate our capabilities.  We practice being grateful for bodies that can do so many things in so many interesting ways.

 

Finally, as we move our bodies, we treat ourselves with love.  That love spills over into things like better sleep, good-for-us food, reduced pain.  All those things contribute to our sense of joy in the world.

 

Bottom line:  happiness is good and joy is even better!  Get both!