Mad About...

From time to time, I read some of the mass-market fitness magazines.  Sometimes I learn a new exercise or two, or hear about a new trend in workouts.  A lot of the time, I just get mad. 

Here, in no particular order, are things that annoy the heck out of me when I read magazines.

 

People “working out” without sweat.  The bulk of us do not look Insta-worthy at the gym and we really don’t need another layer of gym anxiety about how we look.  This also applies to people with super double extra fancy workout outfits.  (If cute workout clothes motivate some of us, I am not here to yuck your yum.)  If we still look picture-perfect at the end of the workout, we’re not working hard enough.

 

Product “solutions” for stuff we can do free.  I recently saw an article touting some kind of essential oils that mimic various locales in nature like forests.  Go outside, people!  (Yes, if you don’t live close to a forest, that might be a challenge, but nearly all of us live where we can go to a park.)

 

Scare articles.  Most articles about rare weird conditions fall into this category as well as most of the stuff about supplements.  The great majority of us get plenty of nutrients from our diets and can cover gaps with a basic multivitamin. 

 

Stupid recipes.  I confess, I’m a little judgy here.  Who needs a recipe for avocado toast?  On the other extreme, who has time to make tiny pancake sliders with an individual blackberry and blueberry toothpicked through each one?  And what was the person smoking who decided to do a multi-page spread on “healthy” yogurt popsicles for breakfast?

 

Individual solutions for systemic problems.  The articles and ads touting weight loss drugs spring to mind as a shining example of this.  (I am not judging those of us who find the new generation of weight loss drug to be a Godsend.  As should be clear as I keep writing here…)  We live in a society where it is harder to eat real food than it is to eat super processed stuff.  It is harder to be healthy than to be unhealthy.  Our culture pushes us to run on sugar, caffeine, and alcohol as well as other drugs and then offers us more drugs to combat the problems that ensue.  It’s real work to unplug from our unhealthy systems and magazines are not likely to help us with that because unplugging does not usually involve buying a bunch of products.

 

What makes you annoyed when you read fitness magazines?

 

Time and Energy

Obviously, there are an infinite number of possible workouts out there.  What we choose to do on any given day depends on a lot of different factors, but let me suggest that there are two that we particularly need to pay attention to:  time and energy.

When we have plenty of both time and energy, we can do whatever the heck we want.  Those days we can go on that long run or that endurance bike ride or take forever working up to our one rep max lift on a number of exercises.  That one’s easy to figure out.

 

When we have not much of either, it’s also pretty easy to figure out.  That’s a great time to do half an hour of yoga or cardio (and, hey, that cardio might just give you a little more energy!).  We stretch a bit, move a bit, and get on with our days.

 

When we have a fair amount of time but not a ton of energy, we can try a class to reduce the mental load.  We can lean into our flexibility work, yoga, or Pilates.  We can go for a walk or choose some less-vigorous version of our cardio.  This is also a good time for social workouts, like finding a friend to play pickleball or bike to the farmer’s market.

 

If the energy is high and the time is low, we can go with interval training or Tabata-style weight workouts.

 

One note:  there are certainly days when the energy level is so low that the right answer is to work out by rolling over in bed.  Rest is as important to our fitness and our health as working out.

Monday Workout: Switch!

Month end means a little tweak to the workout!  Four rounds.

 

1 min cardio
plank jacks	30
pushups	10
gorilla row	20
overhead curtsy	30
curls	20
brains	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Lateral Plank Walk

The Amazing Stickie, as we know, loves her planks.  Today, she is taking her plank for a little lateral walk.  We are looking down at her from above in the drawing.

She begins in plank position.  Then she takes one arm out to the side.  The leg on the same side moves out next.  Then she shifts her weight to that arm and leg, bringing the former still arm and leg in to return to regular plank position, one body width to the side.

 

Stickie does about 5 shifts to one side and then works back the other way for 5.

Dress for Success

I’m going to go a little off-topic today for a moment, but I promise to come back before I’m done.  Girls, on the whole, are less likely than boys to meet the recommended daily targets for exercise.  Add in school uniforms and, according to a study from University of Cambridge, that gap tends to get bigger.  The study is not definitive enough to imply causation, but there is a correlation.

On some level, this seems like a bulletin from Captain Obvious.  Of course girls are less likely to run around doing all the things when they’re in dresses or skirts.  That kind of clothing just increases the societal pressure to be “ladylike” instead of active.  However, documenting the potential effects of what girls wear is a good first step in changing things up so that we raise our girls to be at least as healthy and active as our boys.  (Note:  not all boys are hitting the activity targets, either.  We have work to do to build healthy bodies for all our children.)

 

I am, by virtue of my occupation, allowed to wear play clothes most of the time.  I don’t think twice about lugging stuff around or needing to walk a fair amount or getting down on the floor.  On the rare occasions when I get dressed up, I notice how much harder it is to do the activities of daily life.  What if we were all free to move on a regular basis?  How would life transform?

 

Let’s advocate for comfy clothes for everyone.

POWER!

So I try to keep my posts the right amount of technical because really, nobody wants to wade through a bunch of jargon.  Today I’m going to talk about power, though, so I need to clarify the difference between power and strength.  Strength is how much we can lift.  Power is how much we can lift fast.

Because of the speed component, we don’t really try to do much with power when we first start working out.  We want to be sure that our form is ready to deal with speed.  However, power is pretty fun as an element in our workouts.  Here are a few ways to incorporate power into what we’re already doing.

 

1.     Plyometrics.  Plyo- is a fancy way to say “with jumping.”  When we trade our step ups for box jumps, we’re going plyo.  Side lunges become side hops.  We get a boost to our cardio and we learn to deal with some impact when we do plyometrics.

2.     Ballistic Exercise.  The goal with ballistic exercises is to move or launch the weight as fast as possible.  When we do medicine ball slams, we’re working ballistically because we have to move that ball fast and hard enough to bounce back to us!  Kettlebell swings also have some ballistic qualities.

3.     Dynamic Exercise.   When we do dynamic exercises, we do a slow prep and then an explosive movement.  For example, we lower slowly into a squat and then explode up.  Things like golf swings are another example of this kind of work—the slow backswing and then the powerful stroke.

 

A few notes:  Form is super important.  We have to know that we are using proper alignment because otherwise we’re basically saying: I feel like getting hurt today.  Also, when we work on power, we don’t want to use the very heaviest weights.  Going with about 60% of the heaviest we can do is the best option.

 

Try it!

Monday Workout: Plenty

We’ve got plenty of compound exercises going today!  Three rounds.

 

suitcase swings	30
underhand row	20
Arnold press	10
squat to leg lift	30
bench press	20
reverse fly	10
overhead high knees	30
flies	20
pretty princesses	10