Taking photos of flowers: activity; Walking around to do it: might be exercise

I’m a bit of a word nerd.  I majored in English, so it comes with the territory.  (For reference, my lovely friends and acquaintances who speak linguistics qualify as the real word nerds, in the best possible sense of that term.)  My nerdiness makes me think about the distinctions between words like exercise and activity.

One difference between the two is the point of what is going on.  Exercise, by nature, implies that we are doing whatever it is we are doing to get sweatier, stronger, faster, or healthier in some sense.  Activity can include exercise, but generally the goal is something different.  Take, for example, gardening.  Hefting bags of soil and digging up weeds can certainly make us stronger and get our heart rate up and cause sweat to pour from our working brows, but the point is vegetables or flowers or placating the neighbors who are tired of looking at our wasteland of a yard.

I am all in favor of both activity and exercise, but I need to warn about the danger of confusing the two.  Sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking we have exercised when we have just been doing an activity.  We say, “I gardened, so I don’t have to lift weights” on days when the gardening amounted to deadheading a few rosebushes while knocking back a cooling beverage.

If we have a fitness tracker, it can help keep us honest about what is really exercise.  They count the minutes that we reach our target heart rates and log the number of steps we really took while raking up the debris and hauling it to the green bin.  Sweat is another good indicator for those of us who don’t go in for trackers, unless it is particularly hot out and we would be sweating anyway.  It’s also useful to notice whether we need to stop and rest; if we do, we are probably getting some exercise.

As always, the goal is to maximize our enjoyment of life.  Having a body that does enough exercise to make activity easy and enjoyable helps.

Monday Workout: Balance from Baseball!

This week we’re doing some balance work.  Any time the Bosu gets involved, we are dealing with balance, but for fun we are adapting a baseball catcher’s exercise to work our endurance, coordination, and balance all at once!  Please note that if this is not an appropriate challenge for you, you can play catch standing on one leg with a friend (or a wall).  Three rounds.

kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s or overyets	10
bosu side steps/hops	30
bench press	20
bosu squat catch or 1 leg catch	10
clean and press	30
flies	20
quadruped	10

Friday Book Report: Yogabody

This week’s yoga anatomy book is Yogabody by Judith Hanson Lasater.  It takes a more traditional approach to the anatomy itself, including lots of charts about muscles with origins and insertions.  However, it adds some hands-on explorations both within the text and in sections for the student and for the teacher at the end of each chapter, offering an opportunity to experience, say, how the patella moves, or to observe pelvic alignment.

The prose is clear and the illustrations helpful.  The tone is friendly rather than intimidating, even though there is a ton of information.

I would describe it as a useful reference rather than a page-turner, but it has given me plenty to think about.