POWER!

So I try to keep my posts the right amount of technical because really, nobody wants to wade through a bunch of jargon.  Today I’m going to talk about power, though, so I need to clarify the difference between power and strength.  Strength is how much we can lift.  Power is how much we can lift fast.

Because of the speed component, we don’t really try to do much with power when we first start working out.  We want to be sure that our form is ready to deal with speed.  However, power is pretty fun as an element in our workouts.  Here are a few ways to incorporate power into what we’re already doing.

 

1.     Plyometrics.  Plyo- is a fancy way to say “with jumping.”  When we trade our step ups for box jumps, we’re going plyo.  Side lunges become side hops.  We get a boost to our cardio and we learn to deal with some impact when we do plyometrics.

2.     Ballistic Exercise.  The goal with ballistic exercises is to move or launch the weight as fast as possible.  When we do medicine ball slams, we’re working ballistically because we have to move that ball fast and hard enough to bounce back to us!  Kettlebell swings also have some ballistic qualities.

3.     Dynamic Exercise.   When we do dynamic exercises, we do a slow prep and then an explosive movement.  For example, we lower slowly into a squat and then explode up.  Things like golf swings are another example of this kind of work—the slow backswing and then the powerful stroke.

 

A few notes:  Form is super important.  We have to know that we are using proper alignment because otherwise we’re basically saying: I feel like getting hurt today.  Also, when we work on power, we don’t want to use the very heaviest weights.  Going with about 60% of the heaviest we can do is the best option.

 

Try it!

Monday Workout: Plenty

We’ve got plenty of compound exercises going today!  Three rounds.

 

suitcase swings	30
underhand row	20
Arnold press	10
squat to leg lift	30
bench press	20
reverse fly	10
overhead high knees	30
flies	20
pretty princesses	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Plank with Foot Touch

The Amazing Stickie loves exercises that do a lot at once.  So today she is demonstrating the plank with foot touch.

She begins in plank position, a nice straight line from her head to her heels.  From there, she lifts her hips toward the ceiling, making herself into an inverted V as if she were doing downward dog in yoga.  She reaches one hand back and touches her foot with it before putting it back on the floor and coming back down into plank position.  She repeats the whole thing, using her other hand to touch her foot.  That’s one rep.  Five reps should do it.

Captain Obvious!

Time for another bulletin from Captain Obvious.  Today she would like to let us all know that overdoing our workouts is bad.  We work out because we want to feel better, after all.  When we are sore and crabby, that is not an improvement.  Injury is not a thing we want.

But our culture is always after us to do more and faster and harder.  I get it.  I live here, too.

 

So here’s the mind game to get past it:  Doing the right amount of work is actually the fastest way to our goals.

 

In the moment, here are a couple of techniques we can use to avoid the temptation to overdo.  One is to lean in to perfect form.  To keep the form ideal, we are going to have to slow down.  We may discover, when we do, that ten reps aren’t all that easy anymore and we really don’t want to do eleven, much less twenty.

 

In a similar vein, we can choose a different tempo.  Most of us default to an even balance between the lifting (“concentric,” for your fitness nerds) phase and the lowering (“eccentric”) phase.  Consciously slowing the lowering phase forces us to control what we often think of as the easy part.  It turns out that trying to control gravity is hard!  We get a lot of work in few reps, get plenty tired, and do not feel all that capable of doing more in the moment.

 

Finally, we are allowed to rest.  Our bosses, families, and friends may not give us this message, but it’s true.  We do better when we rest.  I hesitate to say this because it’s pandering to our culture, but we will actually accomplish more if we rest when we need to.  (This is the part where I remind everyone that we are valuable no matter how much or how little we “accomplish” in our lives.  Our value is intrinsic and has no relation to how much we can bench press.)

 

Do enough.  Be happy!

Back at you!

It’s probably completely natural to forget stuff that is not right in front of us.  “Out of sight, out of mind” is a proverb we all know.  But that stuff we don’t see can sneak up on us!

Which is why I’m going to talk about working out the back of the body today.  Our backs, by definition, are not right in front of our faces so we tend to forget them.  Until they hurt.  Which is not ideal.

 

As I’m sure we all recall from our physics (yes, I am joking right now!), for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  In the body, that means that what bends needs to stretch.  Muscles work by pulling on bones, so one set pulls us one way and another set does the work in the opposite direction.  We want both sets of those muscles to develop in balanced ways to maintain our maximal range of motion.

 

If we only work the muscles in the front of our bodies, we create an imbalance.  The front muscles get chronically shortened and the ones in the back get chronically lengthened.  If this was just about aesthetics, we could probably learn to live with that, but when muscles are too long or too short, they become less strong.  That is not okay.

 

When we work our backs, one of the first things we may notice is that our posture improves.  (All right, the first thing we might notice is that we are sore in new places.  Once that goes away, we notice the good posture.)  Good posture is something we want because it makes our bodies move more efficiently, helps us breathe more deeply, and even makes us look thinner.

 

Working the back of the body also helps, paradoxically, to reduce back pain.  Stronger muscles can do more before they get achy!  This is also the part where I remind us all that our core muscles do not begin and end with our abdominals.  They go all the way around our bodies.  Working our back muscles works our core, with all the implications for excellent function, balance, and general happiness that implies.

 

Those of us who sit a lot (that’s all of us!) benefit from working the back of the body to counteract the negative effects of all that chair time.  Speaking from personal experience, sometimes my hips need to remember what it means to straighten up; those flexors aren’t going to relax themselves!

 

Those of us who have breasts to support will also benefit from working the back.  It takes a fair amount of strength to carry those around without distorting our posture.

 

Now that we’ve gone over some of the reasons to work the back, let’s talk about how.  We want to throw some lat pulldowns, some deadlifts, some rows, and some reverse flies into our exercise mix to get the muscles of the back of the body in gear.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Balance

This week is all about the balance and the asymmetrical movements.  Three rounds.

 

1 arm clean and press	30
1 leg deadlift	20
1 leg squat	10
squat raise	30
rows	20
bench dips	10
leg kicks	30
(lunge to) curl	20
lateral plank walk	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Bridge Chest Press

The Amazing Stickie loves a good chest press.  When she goes to the gym with the fancy stuff, she can do decline presses on a bench, but sometimes she wants to work her lower body at the same time as her upper body, so she gets all the benefits of decline presses plus a bunch of glute and leg work by doing bridge chest presses.

To get into bridge position, Stickie lies on her back, knees bent, feet flat on the floor, with her heels in line with her sit bones.  She inhales.  On her exhale, she tilts her pelvis toward her belly button and peels her spine up until her body is a straight line from her chest to her knees.  (People with osteoporosis should not peel up, but rather lift the hips straight up in the air to keep the spine from flexing as much as possible.)

 

For this exercise, Stickie gets into bridge position while holding a pair of dumbbells.  She holds them over her chest with straight arms.  Then she lowers the dumbbells until they are close to but not quite touching her chest.  She lifts them back up over her chest by straightening her elbows.  That is one rep.  Sets of ten are good.