When the Amazing Stickie wants to work on movement integration without going to Pilates, she chooses exercises like the split squat pulldown because lots of body parts have to move in a coordinated fashion.
She begins holding light dumbbells overhead, one foot forward and one foot back. Then she bends both knees and lowers the weights to her shoulder level by bending her elbows. She returns to the starting position.
Stickie likes to do sets of fifteen on each side.
I talk a lot about reasons to work out. Today I’m going to talk about reasons not to work out. (Yes, I believe we are all better when we work out, but why we do it matters.)
It’s a bad idea to work out because someone else thinks you should. Even me. When we work out for someone else, we resent the process. Working out is hard enough as it is. We don’t need to carry somebody else’s goals for us, too.
It’s a bad idea to work out because we think we are inadequate the way we are. We’re not. We are worthy human beings whether we do a single rep or not. People who go to the gym are not better than people who don’t. When we do go to the gym, we do better if we go because we know we are worthy of care.
It’s a bad idea to work out when we are sick or hurt. Rest is as much a part of health as working out. Working through pain is just… painful. There is no virtue badge for doing the work anyway.
We can do this.
Don’t get me wrong: I like working out. Cardio is my favorite mind-altering drug. I love the feeling of efficacy I get from lifting weights. My Pilates practice keeps my body actually capable of moving. I would be an even more stressed human being without my yoga practice.
But.
When people tell me about their hours and hours of workouts, I’m not impressed. I think: but don’t you have other stuff to get to? Don’t you have a life? (I’m not trying to harsh anyone’s happy place. If the gym is yours, you go!)
What impresses me is people who get their workouts done efficiently and effectively. They don’t screw around with half-baked systems. They work hard and they go home.
Go play.
It may be hot outside, but we’re pretending it’s Christmas inside this week. Here’s how the twelve days of Christmas workout works. On the first “day” we do one push press. On day two, we do two goblet squats and one push press. Day three is three overhead presses, two goblet squats, and one push press. And so on. Yes, I do know that this means we will have done 42 burpees before we are done. Yes, I also know that I’m not really your true love. Have fun!
1 push press |
2 goblet squats |
3 Overhead press |
4 1 leg squats each leg |
5 deadlifts |
6 burpees |
7 pushups |
8 renegade rows |
9 mountain climbers |
10 jump lunges |
11 kb swings |
12 plyojacks |
The Amazing Stickie wants to work her abdominals, get some cardio, and get stronger, all at the same time. So today she is doing skier jumps. She has no idea what this exercise has to do with skiing.
She begins in plank position. Then she jumps both feet to the left and back to the right.
Sets of 30 are good.
Most of us don’t have to remember to brush our teeth. It’s just something that happens automatically. This is the power of habit. It took me a long time to admit it, because it’s really not very sexy, but I thrive on habits and routines. I suspect I’m not the only one.
When we have the habit of fitness, it doesn’t take as much energy to get to the workout. We just go, like we always do. We know where our shoes are and we know, more or less, what we’re going to do. The mental load is low.
This means we can use that energy toward the workout itself.
This is a win all the way around.
Let’s have a little chat about perfectionism. Even the rebels among us are susceptible to its messages—we have to rebel perfectly to show how little society’s emphasis on perfection means to us.
Perfectionism is not our friend. It’s a tool that the cis-hetero-white-supremecist-imperialist-capitalist-patriarchy uses to keep us working and working and working some more. We can never work enough to make the system happy with us. We can only work ourselves to death.
So. In a fitness context, this has a couple of implications. One is: take the time to work out. We are worth it, no matter what society tells us. We can take back that much of our time to do something that makes our bodies feel good.
Another is: we can work out before we have the perfect body or the perfect workout. It is all right to show up at the gym in whatever clothes we happen to have on. We don’t have to know all the things to do from the first day. We are allowed to try stuff out and be bad at it.
And: the fact that we’re never going to be perfect does not mean that we don’t want to work hard. The fun in working out comes from learning and growing and getting better at stuff, which only happens if we show up and play hard.
Go play. It’s gonna be perfect.
