Troubleshooting 1

Sometimes we get stuck.  We have our healthy routines and we are ticking our boxes and yet we are not making the progress we think we should be making.  I’m going to talk about troubleshooting this kind of thing today and tomorrow.

Today we’re going to look at our performance with a slightly critical eye.  (Critical, in this instance, doesn’t mean that we’re going to be mean to ourselves—that never helps—but rather that we are going to evaluate what we are actually doing.)

 

Often when we stop making progress, it turns out that we’re not doing what we think we are doing.  We may have cut a few corners on our workouts or skimped on our sleep.  We may have declared that we needed a treat more often than we thought we were.

 

Sometimes all we need to do to reboot our progress is to notice what we are doing and align it more with what we think we are doing.  We might be losing because we’re cheating.  That’s okay.  We can fix it.

Monday Workout: Back to Back

This is a great workout for back strength.  Both the kettlebell swings and the good mornings work the whole back of the body.  The tap backs are not far behind (heh).  We need our back strength for the renegade rows and lateral raises as well!  Three rounds.

 

jacks	30
renegade row	20
lateral raise	10
kb alternate arm swing	30
kb hammer curl	20
kb halo	10
tap backs	30
good mornings	20
brains	20

Thursday List: 4

Here are more ways to build in intervals in our workouts:

 

1.     Add hills.  These can be real hills if we are walking/running/hiking/biking outside or pretend ones on the treadmill.

2.     Mix in a minute of cardio when weight training every so often.  This can be something as simple as jumping jacks or we can hop on the treadmill and run for a minute.

3.     Make it complicated.  We can amp up our usual lunges, say, by adding a bicep curl to overhead press.  Squats can acquire an extra leg lift to the side each time.

4.     Change the tempo.  Do most of the workout at an even tempo, but every few exercises make it faster before returning to normal.

More on Interval Everything

Yesterday I wrote about how pretty much all our workouts have, inherently, a relationship with interval training.  I gave some examples of what that might look like, but today I want to talk a little more about how we might use the concept when we work out.

When we are doing our strength training, the exercises we do lie on a continuum from simple to compound.  The more joints we are using, the more compound the exercise.  The more compound the exercise, the more muscle groups we are using, the more calories we are burning, and the more body parts we need to coordinate to move successfully.  In our analogy to interval training, then, our most compound exercises are our intense intervals and our simpler exercises are our periods of relative recovery. 

 

In practice, this can take a variety of forms.  One way to structure our intervals would be to superset an exercise with a more unstable version of the same exercise, such as regular squats followed by BOSU squats, or deadlifts followed by single-leg deadlifts.  Another way to create this kind of interval is to superset a compound exercise with a simpler one, like following squats with bicep curls or Arnold presses with hamstring curls.  (Note:  when doing strength training, there is also actual rest that has to happen.)

 

In Pilates, our interval training would likely take on the character of doing related exercises that build toward a more complex version, followed by an easing off.  So we might begin with chest lift and explore our way along until we are doing something like the long stretch series on the reformer or hamstring 3 on the chair or any of the tendon stretch versions, ending with something that brings us into extension like the rolldown reach on the spine corrector.

 

The common element here is that we understand and plan around the natural flow of our energy to get the most out of our workouts.

 

Go play.

It's all intervals

Over the last long time, I’ve written a lot about interval training because it really is good for us.  (Quick review:  in interval training for cardio, we work really hard for about a minute and then work less hard for as long as it takes us to get our heart rates down a bit.  Then lather, rinse, repeat until we are done with our workout.  It burns more calories in less time and produces quicker results in terms of cardio fitness than steady-state cardio.)

There is an underlying principle, though, that I’m thinking about today.  We can’t always go to 11 (no matter what Spinal Tap says).  This is a built-in condition in interval training.  Our bodies simply can’t go at maximum intensity for more than about a minute because we run out of ATP and have to use slower energy pathways.  (Sorry about the biology flashbacks.  I promise there won’t be a quiz.)

 

When we are doing other kinds of workouts, we have the same limitations on our energy, which is one reason why we rest between sets when we lift weights.  But it is not just our energy systems that max out.

 

A few examples.  Let’s say we’re lifting heavy.  We are unlikely to set new personal records for more than one lift in any workout.  Our bodies use up our energy and strength and general oomph as we go along and toward the end we are not making as much progress.  This is also a good reason to mix up our workouts so that we don’t always do the same thing first.

 

Or let’s say we’re doing Pilates.  While we need to concentrate on what we’re doing throughout our Pilates work, some exercises are more complex than others.  We want to ensure that we have the attention and energy to concentrate on those, so we want some exercises in our series that have a lower cognitive and/or physical load.

 

The short version is that we need to allocate our mental and physical resources wisely as we work out.

Monday Workout: Across and Asymmetric

This week we’re doing some things across the body and asymmetrically, so we get bonus points for core and balance.  Three rounds.

 

ball kicks	30
flies	20
curls	10
alternate knees	30
bench press	20
db thrust	10
1 arm clean and press	30
rows	20
pretty princesses	20

 

Thursday List: 1?

If we find that we want to change our goal, what do we do?  Here’s a list:

 

1.     Change it.  It’s ours.  We can do whatever we want with it.