Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Basics: Cardio (1 of 2)






It’s a new year, so we’re going back to basics.  This week I’ll spend two days going over what we need to know about cardio.  Next week, we’ll talk about weights.  The week after that, we’ll discuss Pilates.  Then stretching the week after that.  Finally, in the last week of January, we’ll put it all together and talk about goals.  Why this way?  Because it’s hard to set goals when we don’t have basic information.  It’s worth waiting until the end of the month to set goals because we’ll be equipped to set better goals than we can right this very minute with the knowledge we have.  Ready?  Here we go.

I’m starting with cardio because cardio is a good foundation for everything else we do.  It’s also easy to get started with cardio because nearly all of us can go for a walk.

 

Let’s define what we’re talking about here.  Cardiovascular exercise is movement that makes our hearts beat faster and our lungs work harder.  The benefits of cardio exercise range from boosts in mood and cognitive function to calorie-burning to improved heart health to the ability to go upstairs without feeling like we’re going to die.  We can get cardio exercise by walking, running, skiing, swimming, biking, dancing, skating, and playing a variety of sports.  This list is (obviously) not comprehensive.  If it gets the heart rate up and keeps it there for a good while, it counts.

 

To be effective, we want to get our heart rates up to 65 to 85% of our maximum heart rate.  Those of us who wear fitness trackers or smart watches can ignore the following math:  our gizmos do it for us.  The rest of us can get out the calculator app on our phones.  The quick-and-dirty math for calculating our maximum heart rate is to subtract our age from 220.  I will use myself as the example.  I am 55, so my max heart rate is 220-55, or 165.  Then I use that number to calculate my training range, which is a heart rate between 107 (65% of 165) and 140 (85% of 165).  I can take my own pulse for a minute during a workout to check that I’m working hard enough.  In my experience, it is rare for people to work too hard; when we get above 85% of our maximum heart rate, we feel terrible and slow down.  However, any special snowflakes out there who like to feel terrible might want to check the heart rate to make sure to stay on the safe side of the max.

 

Now that I made everyone do math (sorry!), I will suggest that we don’t need to pay too much attention to the numbers.  As we get moving, we get a feel for how hard we’re working on a given day.  When we quantify that, we get a scale of perceived exertion, which ranges from 0 (equivalent to lying on the couch) to 10 (please shoot me now).  (No, those are not the actual descriptions for the scale numbers, but they get the point across.)  We want to aim for a 7 or 8 (working hard, but we can still cope).  More simply still, we can assess how hard we are working by talking.  If we can still mostly carry on a conversation, we’re all right.  If we can sing, we’re not working hard enough.  If we have to pause our clever response to breathe, we’re working too hard.

 

How long we walk (or run, or rollerskate, or swim, or bike, or Zumba) is another factor we have to consider.  If we haven’t hoisted ourselves out of the comfy chair for the last couple of years, we’re going to start with less time than those of us who just chilled out for a few days over the holiday.  It is better to start slow and easy.  In fact, I’m in favor of the stupidly easy beginning.  So, couch potato friends:  walk five minutes to start.  Ultimately, we want to work up to about 150 minutes per week, which is 30 minutes per day, five days a week.

 

Go play.

Monday, January 1, 2024

Monday Workout: Happy New Year!






Welcome to the new year!  We have a pretty comprehensive whole body workout to get us back in gear.  Three rounds.

 

mountain climbers

30

flies

20

pushup renegade rows

10

 

 

push press

30

deadlifts

20

YTA

10

 

 

leg kicks

30

bench press

20

pretty princesses

10

 

Thursday, December 28, 2023

The Amazing Stickie and Saw






The Amazing Stickie knows that being able to rotate her spine and to bend sideways help keep her mobile.  This is another exercise that involves some spinal flexion, so it is best avoided by people who have osteopenia and osteoporosis.

She begins seated on the floor with her legs extended out in front of her about as far apart as a yoga mat is wide.  She holds her arms out in a wide V at shoulder height.  Stickie inhales to lengthen her spine.  As she exhales, she rotates her torso toward one side, simultaneously bending so that her arm comes across and down toward her opposite ankle, as if it were a saw chopping off her foot (no, I did not make that particular gory image up myself.).  Then she returns to the start position and repeats on the other side.

 

Four or five repetitions to each side are good.

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

No magic wand






So yesterday we started thinking about goals by figuring out what we want.  We have tuned into what makes us feel joyful.

That joy is the motivation to do the hard bits.  Which is what we’re going to talk about now.  Sadly, I do not have a magic wand.  This means that when we set goals they have to be more or less realistic while still bringing us toward what our little hearts desire.

 

What our hearts desire is our compass point, our big picture.  That’s the direction we’re going to go.  But we’re not orienteering to our goals:  we’re making a map. 

 

If, for example, what gives us joy is being able to travel, lugging our luggage, climbing up church towers or cliffs, eating all the local cuisine, and logging miles and miles of walking as we see the sights, our map to get there is going to need to include some strength training (to enable all that schlepping, to keep our bones strong, and to help our metabolisms process all those delicacies) and some cardio (so we don’t pass out when we end up in a hotel with no elevator and we have to take the stairs, or we want to scale the Mayan pyramids, or we want to do a Julie Andrews in an alpine meadow).

 

We want to figure out where we’re starting from (The couch?  Semi-weekly attendance at yoga class?  Trying Zumba once?).  Many gyms and personal trainers offer free fitness evaluations (yes, I do, too!) and that is a useful way to get some data, but it’s not necessary.  Once we have the starting point, we can begin to have an idea about the time it might take to get where we want to go.  We want to meet our goals safely, so we want to be consistent rather than overdo ourselves. A guideline for workouts is not to increase workout time by more than 10%, for example.  That means that this week’s 30 minutes is going to be next week’s 33 minutes and so on.  With weights, we increase our reps until we hit 10 to 12 with good form and then we increase the weight, dropping the reps down and continue alternating like that.

 

Personally, I like the kind of goals that go like this:  I’m going to do cardio five days a week for 30 minutes and I’m going to do one weight work out.  Then I’m going to see how I feel.  I will adjust each week until I am satisfied with my cardio endurance (it’s ok to attach a number to this, or some other measure, like not being out of breath at the top of the stairs) and I can tolerate two or three weight workouts per week.

 

Try it and see how it goes!

Tuesday, December 26, 2023

Joy






We’re getting toward the end of December, y’all, which means it is time to start thinking about goals for next year.  (We all have tons of spare time with the holidays, right?  Oceans of hours in which to reflect…)  This is the first of two posts on setting goals.

The only rule for right now is that we have to tell the truth.  This is not about the goals we should have.  I don’t care what our moms think we should do, or our spouses or our kids or our favorite magazines.  It’s about the ones we actually want.  I don’t care if it is silly or vain or unrealistic.  It just has to be real.

 

This might be harder than we think.  We have so many messages around us telling us how to be.  I’m pretty sure all of us have a knee-jerk answer about how much weight we’re supposed to lose.  I have a news flash:  happiness is not to be found in the number of lost pounds.

 

So.  Let’s spend a minute or two picturing or describing or feeling into the life we want to have in the new year.  Maybe we do want to look better than we do right this minute, but I bet we care more about feeling good and happy and full of energy.  Those of us who feel tired all the time might want to feel rested.  Those of us who get out of breath getting off the couch might want to change that.  Maybe we want to meet new friends playing a new sport or doing a new activity and we need to build a bit of strength to do that.

 

What we want to be able to do and to feel helps us to shape our goals.  We’ll discover that we want to be faster or stronger, that we want more stamina or energy, that we need more connection and more joy.

 

Find the feelings that lead to joy.  Then hold that thought for tomorrow.

Monday, December 25, 2023

Monday Workout: A Game!






For Christmas, we’re doing a workout game.  The only equipment required is a deck of cards, although it is handy to have an exercise ball or a yoga block for the pretty princesses and those of you who want to make things harder on yourselves may want some light weights to hold for the squats and punches.

This game can be played alone or with a friend.

 

One turn involves turning over a card and doing the exercise that matches the suit (see chart below) the number of times that is on the card.  So, for example, turning over the three of clubs would mean doing three pretty princesses.  Face cards can either be counted as ten, or jacks can be 11, queens 12, and kings 13.

 

Continue as long as time and energy allow!

 

(This is a good way to wear out any kids you happen to have lying around!)

 

Cardio Poker

Suit

Exercise

Hearts

squats/jump squats

Diamonds

lunge punches

Clubs

pretty princesses

Spades

pushups

 

Thursday, December 21, 2023

The Amazing Stickie and Swimming






Today the Amazing Stickie is working on all kinds of good things, including spinal extension, core strength, and shoulder mobility.  She is doing all this by doing the Pilates mat exercise Swimming.

She begins lying on her belly on the floor.  Then she extends her arms and legs away from her until they lift up off the floor.  She makes sure that she doesn’t just use her lower back to curve her spine, but also involves her middle back in the work.  From there, she pulses her arms and legs up and down as if she were kicking while swimming and whacking the water with her arms.  As she does this, she pulses her breath as well, breathing out for four counts and in for four.  Eight cycles is enough.

 

She lowers herself back to the floor and takes a rest.