Friends in shiny places

Meet our new friend:  the mirror.  The mirror is a particularly good friend when we take off the fun-house eyes we often use when we look at it.  I think women are particularly prone to this problem, but plenty of men have body image issues as well.  We see our reflections and our fun-house eyes see the most enormous thighs ever, the rest of our beauty eclipsed by our faulty perception.  Or maybe we see that we are not as tall as we would like to be, or as strong, or as lithe.

Toss out the funny eyeballs with me.  We all have amazing bodies.  Our bodies breathe, circulate our blood, hold us up, nourish our amazing brains, protect us from disease, and more, without even needing us to pay attention.  When we treat them well, they give us a sense of wellbeing.  They expand their capabilities so we can play harder and longer, love our family and friends for more years, create our own particular life’s work.

From a fitness perspective, the mirror is an ally.  While we are moving, the mirror gives us another way to check in with our body position to make sure that everything is in alignment.  Over time, the mirror gives us feedback on our progress.  It also gives us practice at loving ourselves, right now, just the way we are.

So next time you look in the mirror, you can certainly fix your hair or check your knee alignment, but don’t forget to smile at the mirror.  It has your back.

No, it doesn't count when you're dead

What do you do when you have overdone it?

Rest.

This answer works equally well for having overdone cardio, strength training, or cookie jar visits.  Sometimes we need to rest from our exertions.  Sometimes we need to rest from our vices.

If your hamstrings hurt, resting might mean taking a couple of Advil, doing a few gentle stretches, and taking a hot bath.

If your stomach hurts, it might mean taking a break from cheeseburgers or fries or milkshakes.  Also watch out for the cookie-pushers disguised as elves or Girl Scouts.

Whatever you are overdoing, you now officially have permission to rest from it.

Skiing like a moose is fun

Sometimes we need to remember what the goal is.

With fitness, it is easy to get distracted into thinking that the goal is something other than what it really is.  The goal is not to be thin.  It’s not to work out for a certain number of minutes a day or week.  It’s not to be lean or toned or strong or even plain healthy, even though those are all good things.

The goal is to be happy.

Yes, I know that being healthy is a major component of being happy.  Lifting that previously-impossible weight, finishing that marathon, buying those smaller clothes—all good things that can contribute to happiness.  They are not the goal.

So please, when you choose your fitness activity for the day, pick one that will give you joy, either in the moment or in the long term.  Lift weights because you want those muscles to turn your kids upside down as long as possible, even when they keep growing.  Ski because you like to go fast.  Dance because the music moves you.  That is a goal worth meeting.

Unfold like a flower...

You did your cardio workout.  You did your strength training.  All done, right?  Nope.  One more thing.  Time to stretch.

But you have places to be!  Stretching is boring!  It hurts!  You don’t want to waste your time sitting around trying to reach your toes.

Do it anyway.

Maybe you are already perfectly long and lean.  You may have the most gorgeous definition in your muscles ever.  If you can’t move, it doesn’t do you a lot of good.  You are a person, not a sculpture!  Flexibility creates lots of possibilities for movement.  Remaining flexible allows for greater range of motion as you get older, which, in practical terms, means more independence for longer.

Bribe yourself, distract yourself, nudge yourself gently—whatever it takes to spend five minutes lengthening the muscles you are working so hard to build.

Friday exercise: chest lift

I love abs.  I may not love ab exercises, at least not in the moment, but abs are wonderful.

The basic ab exercise is the crunch.  In Pilates, it is called the Chest Lift, which is actually a better name because we really shouldn’t be crunching while exercising, unless we are eating popcorn, which is best done in front of a movie rather than while trying to work.  (Persistence is key when you fall into a sentence like that!)

The exercise begins Lying Down.  Everyone loves lying down!  Even lying down, form is important.  You will want to bend your knees and place your feet in line with your sit bones.  Your spine should feel relaxed, not smooshed into the floor.  Leave a little tunnel under your lower back for passing ladybugs.  If the tunnel is big enough for an iguana, you will need to lower the ceiling.  You will want to support your big heavy head with your hands, keeping your elbows where you can see them; those elbows get up to no good when unsupervised.

Breathe.

Now we are ready to work.  As you exhale, use those abdominals to pull your breastbone down toward your toes.  This will, as a side effect, lift your head off the floor.  Thinking about the exercise this way will help keep your chest safe from evil chin incursions, which will keep your neck safe from excessive flexing.  Since you are a wonderful multi-tasker, you can also think about keeping your abdominals flat and spread out across your body to avoid that little bubble that tends to pop up like an alien fetus.

Curl back down.  Breathe more.

There are lots of variations on this theme, but this is the basic place to start.  Sets of 10 are good, but you know your body; do what works for you.

And the finger flexibility gain from flossing!

Want a good five minute exercise that may contribute to your overall health?  Go brush your teeth.

I am the possessor of a new silver toothbrush, courtesy of my dentist.  That dental visit yesterday may have been as good a contribution to my health as the spin class I took.  It was certainly less sweaty!

Here is a link to the Mayo Clinic’s information on the topic.  It’s not a long article, but for the truly impatient, here is the summary.  Good oral hygiene may prevent a whole bunch of bad stuff from happening to you, ranging from Alzheimer’s to osteoporosis.  Worst case, you get fresher breath, which is not bad for your social relationships, mood, and state of wakefulness.

So:  up, down, side-to-side.  Give me about 100 reps.

Mmmm... bacon!

This week I learned how to use my hamstrings for pedaling a bike.  It was a major epiphany, maybe not as major as figuring out how to create world peace or to eliminate traffic, but major.

Hamstrings are the muscles in the backs of your thighs that complain when you bend over to touch your toes.  They have plenty of reasons to complain.  They get tight from sitting, since they are responsible for flexing your knees, and bored because they help unbend your legs at the hips, which you don’t do much when you are stuck at your desk.  We all love our quadriceps more and tend to focus on working them instead.  Hamstrings feel like Clark Kent to the quadriceps’s Superman.

Strengthening the hamstrings helps with posture.  Strong hamstrings keep your knees safe.  And, when biking for long distances, hamstrings save your quadriceps’ bacon, so to speak; those front-of-the-thigh muscles get awfully worn out and appreciate any other muscle group that might be willing to take over for a while.

Even more important than what I learned was that I learned it.  Fitness is about the brain, too.  Conscious movement strengthens your body’s ability to understand where it is in space.  Your muscles work better when the connections between your nervous system and your muscles are active and quick.  This is why I love to take classes and get personal training sessions—I learn stuff that makes me a better mover.

(And, for those of you who have not already figured out how to use hamstrings in bike pedaling, the key, for me, was thinking about pulling the pedals down from the back of my thighs rather than pushing them down from the front.  Some people find that thinking about leading with their heels or focusing on pulling backwards works the same way.  Go try it out!)