Monday Workout: New Things to Try!

This week we have a couple of new exercises to keep things fresh!  Three rounds.

 

 

suitcase swings	30
rows	20
alternating crossbody front raise	10
woodchoppers	30
kickbacks	20
db pullover with bridge	10
mountain climbers	30
curls	20
brains	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Tick Tock

Today the Amazing Stickie is working on balance by doing tick tock.  She knows that this particular exercise is also a great way to warm up her body before she gets into heavier work.  She begins standing up tall.  Then she leans to one side, lifting the opposite leg up.  From there, she rocks back the other way, lifting the other leg as she transfers her weight to the first leg.  Essentially, she goes back and forth like a pendulum, which is where the name of the exercise comes from.

 

For variety, sometimes she stays on one side for a while, holding her leg up or pulsing it up and down.

 

Thirty or so is a good number to do. 

Effects of Strength Training - 3

Use it or lose it, baby.  When we work with weights, we help maintain our flexibility, mobility, and balance.

Flexibility is how elastic our muscle tissue is.  We think of it, often, as whether we can bend over and touch our toes.  Flexibility definitely has a role in that process—those of us whose hamstrings protest about the process could use a bit more in the flexibility department—but mobility is also key.  If the many joints of our spine or our hip joints don’t have any mobility, we’re going to be out of luck bending, no matter how flexible our muscles are.

 

Balance is what keeps us from falling over when we try.

 

All three of these skills are enhanced when we do strength training.  (There’s a theme here:  we adapt as we work!)  Moving our bodies and our weights through space requires that we deploy our flexibility, mobility, and balance in appropriate degrees to meet the needs of the task at hand.  Practice makes perfect.

 

Go practice!

Effects of Strength Training - 2

Next on our list of effects of strength training:  improved joint function.

How many of us find that we have a knee or a hip or a shoulder that doesn’t always behave the way we’d like it to, or the way it did back in the day?  Most of us, right?

 

Strength training to the rescue!

 

So, first a disclaimer.  We cannot actually strengthen joints.  Joints are intersections where bones come together.  They’re more of a location than an actual thing.  When we talk about strengthening joints, what we really mean is strengthening the muscles and other tissues that surround joints.

 

Many of the joints in our bodies are synovial joints.  We don’t need to go into all that that means, but we do need to know that the way that nutrition gets into synovial joints is through movement rather than through our circulation.  Feed the hips and give them a shake or two!

 

Our bodies, by nature, adapt to the challenges we give them.  When we give our bodies weights to play with, we get stronger and our joints adapt to their new reality.  We want to ensure that we give our bodies appropriate challenges:  no 300 pound deadlifts on the first day, babe.  We increase our weights gradually, allowing our tissues the time they need to grow and change.

 

Similarly, we become what we do.  When we take all of our joints through their full range of motion on the regular, they like it.  They habituate themselves to that kind of movement and it gets easier.

 

Go do it.

 

Monday Workout: New Year!

Welcome to the new year!  Let’s make it a great one by working with compound exercises.  Those who want some extra challenge can add a reverse lunge to the end of the step ups.  Three rounds.

 

kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s	10
step up (reverse lunge)	30
bench press	20
quadruped lateral raise	10
squat to leg lift	30
flies	20
pretty princesses	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Quadruped Lateral Raise

Today the Amazing Stickie is working on multiple things at once, as she often does.  She’s challenging her core strength by working in quadruped position while also working her arms in the quadruped lateral raise.

She begins on her hands and knees, ensuring that her knees are directly under her hips and her hands, holding light weights, are directly under her shoulders.  She raises one arm directly out to the side until it is parallel to the ground and then lowers it back to starting position.  Then she repeats on the other side.  (For less of a challenge, do all the reps on one side first and then switch.)

 

A set of ten is usually sufficient.

Effects of Strength Training - 1

In the new year, I’m going to begin by focusing on the effects of strength training on the body.

Today, we begin with perhaps the most obvious effect:  our muscles get stronger, our bones get tougher, and our tendons and ligaments become more resilient.

 

In theory, I think we all get behind this as a worthwhile goal.  In practice, we come up against a few obstacles.  One of those is that sometimes other people don’t really want us to be strong.  They get invested in our weakness.  We have to decide that what is good for us is more important than other people’s agendas.

 

Another perhaps obvious obstacle is that strength training is work and sometimes we don’t much want to work.  This is another spot where we have to focus on what’s best rather than what is most fun.

 

Go play.