The Amazing Stickie loves different ways to work her body. Today she is doing the frog reverse hyperextension on the bench.
To begin, she puts her torso on a bench, holding on with her hands, knees bent and feet together hanging off the end. Then she extends her legs straight back behind her until she is a straight line from head to heels. She lowers back to the starting postion to complete the repetition. Sets of five are good.
Recently I was watching a webinar about Pilates topics. Most of it was not super engaging, to be honest, but one concept in particular stood out: neutral, in our bodies, is dynamic.
I think that most of us conceive of neutral in our bodies kind of like that poor guy in the Operation game, except standing up. We’re still, arms at our sides, facing front. That’s just not real.
Our bodies are constantly moving. Don’t believe me? A hand on our chest or belly while we inhale and exhale should convince us. Our outsides may be relatively still, but inside all kinds of stuff is rushing around: blood, food, air, lymph, nerve impulses.
Neutral, in this context, is a place of rest amid the busyness. Neutral is where we don’t have to do a bunch of work to hold some arbitrary position. To paraphrase Anne Morrow Lindbergh, we need to find our still axis within the revolving wheel of our movements.
This is where we breathe and come home to ourselves.
Burnout is real. The Mayo Clinic talks about signs of job burnout here. But we get it in exercise, too. When we find our workouts end up giving us less overall energy, when we stop making progress, when everything hurts, when we can’t sleep well or recover well, we might be looking at a burnout situation.
Usual disclaimers here: I am not a doctor, physical therapist, psychiatrist, psychologist, or nutritionist. Those are useful professionals to consult. My specialty is exercise.
The first thing we want to do when we suspect burnout is to stop. Yes, I know this is very very hard. We have real pressures to keep going. There are a couple of ways to address those pressures. One is to be countercultural by remembering that we are valuable intrinsically, not just because of what we do or accomplish. Another is to Jedi mind-trick ourselves by remembering that taking a break now will improve our overall productivity. Maybe we use both?
How long we stop will depend. We need to take a moment or two, while we’re not doing All the Things to take stock of the situation. Here are a few questions to ask:
Am I eating foods that are good for me? In appropriate quantities?
Am I getting enough sleep?
Am I having any fun?
What is important to me?
The answers to those questions might reveal some interesting pathways to get out of the burnout hole. We can’t get anywhere without decent fuel. We require rest. Not everything has to be difficult and painful and unpleasant. Some things that we do might not be in line with what we really want.
We only get one life. Let’s do our best with it.
We’re working on coordination and control today! Three rounds.
woodchoppers | 30 |
kickbacks | 20 |
Arnold press | 10 |
| |
kb swings | 30 |
kb twists | 20 |
kb 8s | 10 |
| |
squat heel lift | 30 |
underhand bent over row | 20 |
windscreen wiper | 10 |
Sometimes the Amazing Stickie wants to use All The Things. Today she’s doing dumbbell knee-banded hip thrusts, for which she needs a bench, a dumbbell, and an exercise band.
She secures the exercise band around her thighs just above her knees. She holds a dumbbell by the ends with both hands at her waist. She sits on the floor next to the side of a bench with her shoulder blades against the bench. From there, she lifts her hips until she herself is bench-shaped, keeping the exercise band taut around her legs. Then she lowers back toward the floor without actually putting her behind down on the floor. A set of ten is good.
Since we’re into fall now, let’s talk about falling. As we age, falling can become more and more of a risk. Unless we work really hard, those of us who are over 30 are losing muscle mass, a process which accelerates as we get older and older. Our balance may get more precarious. Our bones get more fragile. All these things put us at greater risk of falling and of having injuries that are difficult to recover from.
Interestingly, in a small study done on Pilates for people classified as high risk for falls, the greatest predictor of actual falls was fear. Having positive movement experiences that were not targeted at improving balance or strength or even core control moved people out of the high risk group. There was no significant correlation between strength and risk in this study.
What does that mean? It means that we are people who need to keep moving. We need to keep our focus on doing what we can do rather than dwelling on what we can’t do. We need to take ownership of our experience. (Yeah, it sounds pretty darn woo-woo to me, too, but it turns out to work.)
Don’t know where to start? Poke me. I can help.
Good news for women! Apparently women’s bodies work smarter. According to a recent study (link here!), women get “maximal survival benefit” from about 2 ½ hours of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise per week (that’s a half an hour per weekday with weekends off, y’all!) while it takes men about 5 hours to get the same benefits.
That said, everybody still needs to get out there and do the work. Even if we don’t hit the targets, doing something is better than doing nothing.
Go play!
