Thursday List: 7 More

So:  it’s time to recover.  What are we going to do?  Here are some ideas:

 

1.     Sleep.

2.     Eat.  Preferably something with actual nutrition in it, but something is better than nothing.

3.     Chill.  The fancy term for this is “quiet wakefulness.”  It can mean anything from meditating to reading to staring into space.

4.     Light movement.  This would be something like gentle stretching or a bit of a stroll just to keep the muscles limber and lithe.

5.     Hot or cold.  Or both!  Some folks like alternating sauna and cold plunge.  Some folks swear by ice.  Others are all about the heating pad.  Do you, but consider that ice is generally great for reducing swelling and heat is generally very soothing.

6.     Stuff that pushes on the body.  On the expensive end, we have massage.  Somewhere in the middle we have percussive therapy (the massage guns range in price, but the most expensive ones I saw in a quick visit online were about $150 and most were significantly cheaper).  For the budget minded, we have foam rollers and all their various relatives.  All of them help our bodies release tension and allow us to build flexibility.

7.     Other stuff.  That can be things like acupuncture or going outside or doing puzzles or looking at art.  If it feeds your soul, it’s good for recovery.

Recovery and Healing, Part 2

When we are “just” sore from whatever kind of movement we’ve been doing, whether it is our first steps around the block or our hardest, heaviest weight workout to date, we need to take some steps to recover.  Heck, even if we are not sore, we need to make sure that we give our bodies space and time and care for recovery.  Bodies like that.

The low-hanging fruit of recovery is pretty much stuff we should be doing anyway:  eating food that is good for us, getting enough sleep, and taking time for mental relaxation.  (This may be time to give ourselves a pat on the back:  we were doing an awesome job without even thinking about it!  Go us!)

 

If we need something a bit more direct, we have even more fun options, ranging from light movement (think yoga and stretching of a very gentle stroll) to massage to foam rolling. 

 

I want to be clear about something.  Often in our hustle culture, we absorb the attitude that we don’t have time to recover.  Our societal anxiety about being and doing enough can make us feel like rest is a waste of time and frivolous.  This is not true.  All of us deserve to rest and recover because we are valuable humans even if we do exactly nothing more with the rest of our existence.  And, if that turns out not to be convincing, I’ll give y’all’s Protestant work ethic a reason to recover:  it will make us more productive in the long run.  (I like the first reason better.  We are all beloved children of God or essential parts of the universe or however you prefer to phrase it to yourself.)  Bottom line:  work and then rest.

Recovery and Healing, Part 1

Another aspect of wellness is how we deal with recovery and healing.  That’s the focus for this week.

When we start getting more movement into our lives, we sometimes get sore.  And most of us, at some point in our lives, will have to deal with some kind of injury that requires us to pay attention to healing.  Recovery and healing often have similar aspects, but they are not entirely the same.

 

Today I’m going to be Captain Obvious and say:  if you are injured, seek medical attention.  DIY is all well and good, but most of us aren’t actually doctors.  Get a professional to check you out and then follow their advice.

 

Tomorrow:  dealing with non-injury recovery.

Monday Workout: Bonus Core!

This week, we have a bunch of exercises that work the core while we do other stuff.  Bonus points!  My favorite!  Three rounds.

 

suitcase swings	30
flies	20
renegade rows	10
db circles	30
bench press	20
front raise	10
mountain climbers	30
skullcrushers	20
brains	10

 

Thursday List: 7

Because there are so many kinds of movement out there, here are some general ideas about kinds of movement we might want to try:

 

1.     Outside:  walking, hiking, running, kayaking, skiing, swimming, frisbee golf, tennis, pickleball, rollerblading, etc.

2.     Teams:  baseball, softball, football, hockey, soccer, field hockey, basketball, etc.

3.     Solo:  running, biking, swimming, skiing, gym machines

4.     Mindful:  yoga, Pilates

5.     Heavy:  lift, lift, lift!

6.     Classes:  Zumba, aerobics, HIIT, core, TRX, etc.

7.     Lifestyle:  housework, gardening, dog-walking, kid-wrangling, etc.

Movement, Part 2

Yesterday I talked a little about the difference between movement and exercise.  We may want to start with movement and dip into exercise later, but we might have some beliefs that hold us back from doing either one.  Let’s talk about some of those and see if we really need to keep those beliefs.

We might think that movement has to be hard or painful to be effective.  I personally would like to have words with the person who came up with “no pain, no gain.”  Pain is an important message from our bodies that we are doing something potentially dangerous.  We do not want pain while we are moving.  In fact, doing some moving can help us reduce the amount of pain we have in our bodies. 

 

(I’m not going to lie and say that all exercise is always super duper fun and never ever uncomfortable because that’s just not true.  Discomfort is not the same as pain.  Our hamstrings will pretty much always complain when we do hamstring curls.  I will always hate lunges.  But, in general, most of the time movement and exercise should be somewhere between tolerable and great.)

 

We might think that we have to join a gym and figure out all those weird machines and fling dumbbells and make grunting noises to get in our movement or exercise.  Nope.  Things like dancing count.  Half an hour of tag is a great way to move.  Team sports count.  So do swimming and skiing and hiking.  Gardening definitely counts as movement, and, depending on what we’re doing, may be exercise, too.

 

We might think that we have to be good at whatever movement we do.  I can say for a fact that I am a terrible swimmer.  And I don’t care.  I love swimming.  My swimming counts as movement. 

 

A related belief might be that people will make fun of us for being bad at whatever we are doing or for how we look while we do it.  I can’t promise that people will always be kind, but I can say that most people are too busy worrying about their own stuff to pay much attention to anybody else.  Also, blowing off jerks probably counts as movement.  And do we really want the Mean Girls and Boys out there to keep us from feeling good?  Don’t let them win!  (Please note:  gym anxiety is real and serious.  It is totally all right for us to prefer to move by ourselves in private either forever or until we build up the confidence that we need to move with other people.)

 

Perhaps there is a theme here and that is:  there are lots and lots of ways to move.  It’s a fair bet that most of us will be able to find some kind of movement that we don’t hate.  I’m also willing to bet that all of us will feel better when we do make the effort to move, even just a little bit.  Experiment!

Movement, part 1

Over the summer, I worked on a certification as a Wellness Coach.  It is not surprising that movement is an important aspect of wellness and one that plays well with what I already know and do.  However, movement for wellness is a little different than what I usually do with my personal training and Pilates clients.  I’m going to explore what wellness-directed movement looks like in my posts this week.

 

The basic distinction I want to make is between movement and exercise.  Movement is the larger category and includes exercise, but you don’t have to do exercise to get moving.  One way to think about the two is that often exercise has a particular goal—to improve strength or cardio, to get more flexible.  Movement is a little more free-floating.  A stroll around the block at a leisurely pace is movement, but it may or may not be exercise, depending on the level of fitness of the walker in question.

 

Movement is really good for us.  Our bodies work better when we move them and our brains do, too.  I know there are a lot of us who don’t like exercise, whether it’s because we had a terrible experience in gym class or because we think it has to involve giant weights and big sweaty guys or any of a million other reasons.  But movement can be as simple as dancing around the kitchen with the kids when our song comes on, or taking the dog around the block, or challenging your partner to see which one of you can slide farther down the hall in socks.

 

Especially when we’ve been best friends with the couch for a long time, it’s important to realize that any movement, even a quick stand-up stretch between meetings, will help us.  We may find that we want to move on to exercise eventually or we may not, but we’ll be better for the effort.