Four ways to rest

I might have overdone myself last weekend.  It happens.  Here are some ways to rest:

 

1.     Sleep.  This is the big one and the obvious one and it is always all right to get some if we need it.

2.     Nap.  If we don’t have time to catch up for real on our sleep, we can grab a little bit.

3.     Stroll.  This is not the time to tackle that hike with big hills.  This is just a gentle, short little walk that helps our muscles move enough that they don’t freeze in place.

4.     Stretch.  Again, not the time for three hours of hot yoga.  Just a little bit of movement, a chance to let the muscles relax and lengthen.

 

Go play, but gently.

Success in failure

There’s a fitness phrase that I don’t like much, but I haven’t come up with a better one:  work to failure.  It is when we do an exercise until we can’t possibly do another rep with proper form.  (Some people keep going anyway, with improper form, but that’s just a quick way to get injured.)

 

It’s an approach that we use when we want to determine our single rep max (the most weight we can lift only one time) or what we end up doing when we guess wrong about what weight to use for three sets of an exercise.  We get helpful information from it about our current capabilities.  What I don’t like is the name.

 

When we work out, we are automatically doing something that is a success.  We are taking care of our bodies and training our muscles to be strong and our bones to be dense and our brains to work better.  But I think we’re all at least a little susceptible to the word failure.

 

The reframing comes in when we can’t do that last rep.  We can’t do that last rep right now.  Even unstoppable forces like we are encounter times when the immovable object wins, but then we rest and grow and the immovable object has to shift after all.

 

Up from here.

Two Is Biggest

The hardest workout is the second one.  We can gear ourselves up for the first one and we have that shiny new energy going for us and maybe even a sense of virtue.  We don’t necessarily expect to be good at what we’re doing, so we just go along with whatever happens.

 

Then the time for the second workout rolls around.  Our former blissful ignorance has been obliterated by soreness.  We look at the weights and resent them for their heaviness, their deceptively small size, their treachery.  We have become more familiar with the steps we’re supposed to take, but this does not somehow translate into making us more willing to take them.

 

Good news!  Workouts after the second one are better.  We learn more.  We understand how to keep the soreness afterward to a bearable level.  We begin to associate the work we do with the outcomes we want:  more energy, greater strength, looser waistbands.

 

We can do this.

Monday Workout: MORE Choices

This week’s workout, again, has options to make it more and less challenging.  If you need a less intense workout this week, choose to do just rows, regular pushups, and regular jacks.  As always, choose what works for you.  I suggest three rounds, but that, too, is optional.

 

1 arm clean and press	30
lunge twist	20
Arnold press	10
squat to leg lift	30
row to kickback	20
spiderman pushup	10
jacks or plank jacks	30
bench press	20
brains	10

How to choose

This week’s workout had some choices in it.  Here are some ways to figure out when to make a workout harder and when to make it easier.

 

1.     I’m bored.  Time to make it harder!  It’s hard to be bored when we’re out of breath.

2.     I’m hurting.  Time to make it less hard, at least on the part that hurts.

3.     I didn’t sleep well.  Less hard, or at least a longer warm-up

4.     I’m stressed.  This one can go either way.  If we enjoy taking things out on our weights that we can’t take out on our actual stressors, harder is a good thing.  If we need to conserve energy to deal with life outside the gym, easier might be a good choice.

 

Go play.

Happy Skeletons

We rely on our skeletons, even though we (I hope!) don’t see them.  Keeping our bones strong is a good way to ensure that we have a happy and healthy old age.  I’m here to talk about how.

 

Our skeletons respond well to work.  They also, believe it or not, like gravity.  To keep our skulls smiling, we need to keep all those bones in motion, preferably with a bit of weight or impact involved.

 

The simplest way to make our skeletons happy is to lift weights.  We don’t have to get fancy or complicated.  One or two weight workouts of 20 or 30 minutes a week is enough.

 

All right, maybe that’s not the simplest way.  The simplest way might be to walk or run or play tennis or pickleball or basketball or anything where our bodies impact the ground.  (Sadly, biking and swimming, two of my favorite activities, don’t have enough impact to make a difference for bone health.)

 

The really good news is that what is good for our skeletons is good for the rest of us, too.  That weight lifting increases our lean muscle mass, boosts metabolism, and makes us look good.  The cardio improves our mood and burns calories.

 

Make your skeleton happy!

Let's just leave carrot sticks out of it...

This is an oversimplification, but basically there are two types of motivation:  carrots and sticks.  Carrots are rewards for good behavior and sticks are punishments for bad behavior (unless you hate carrots, like I do, in which case it is punishment or punishment.  I don’t hate metaphorical carrots, though, since they don’t taste bad, so I’ll continue to use the familiar terminology.).

 

Not surprisingly, I have a preference between the two.  Despite the fact that roughly half the people who walk into my studio say something along the lines of “Oh, a torture chamber!” I don’t actually punish anybody.  (I do say, “I charge extra for that.”)

 

The biggest reason for this is that punishments don’t work.  Fear and shame and all those negative emotions don’t make us want to do whatever it is that someone wants us to do; they just make us want to avoid the bad thing that will happen to us if we don’t.

 

Praise, on the other hand, and positive reinforcement makes us feel like we are capable humans, empowered to do hard things.  It draws out of us our best selves.  It feels good, maybe even good enough to make up for having to do things like burpees.  It also doesn’t make us associate our workouts with Bad Things, which is far more likely to help us want to do it again.

 

Go play, you powerful humans, you!