40 opposite knees
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20 squats
|
20 punches
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side plank (w/rotation)
|
plank
|
20 deep lunges
|
10 pushups
|
10 femur arcs
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10 chest lifts
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10 obliques
|
Monday, October 31, 2016
Monday workout: body weight
Friday, October 28, 2016
Friday Book Report: Papillon
The latest selection in Andrew
Luck’s book club for adults is Papillon
by Henri Charriere. (Andrew Luck
makes this qualify as fitness reading.
Also, extreme endurance events in the plot.) The book is a memoir written by a man sentenced to life
imprisonment in French Guyana. He
attempts multiple escapes, eventually succeeding and going on to live out his
life in Venezuela.
This was not my favorite
book. Much of it reads too much
like fiction, and some of it like the kind of fantasy a horny con would come up
with. The exploits are exciting,
the prisons are horrible, and the characters are colorful. They just don’t seem all that real and
thus are less compelling. Maybe I
would like it better if I were a male.
Or if I saw the movie with Steve McQueen.
Verdict: Give this one a miss.
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Thursday Book Report: Indestructible
Full disclosure: I went to high school with John Bruning
and I think he is smart, funny, talented, and generally awesome. Now go buy his book, Indestructible.
John tells the story of Pappy
Gunn, a Naval pilot turned airline pilot turned Army Airforce Captain, who, by
dint of extreme endurance and remarkable ingenuity, works to rescue his family
in the Philippines during World War II.
It is all true; it has to be, because otherwise it would be absolutely
unbelievable. With deft prose,
John unfolds the tale of remarkable characters in an indomitable family.
I don’t want to spoil the story
by revealing the twists, but there are many, as well as a flying lizard,
episodes of radical shoe-shopping, and enough airplane details to satisfy the
aficionado in your family (my family has one; doesn’t everyone’s?).
Also, Pappy painted his airplanes
red and therefore was a man after my own heart.
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Unicycles use lots of core muscles, too
More is not necessarily better
when it comes to cardio. This is
good news for those of us who are easily bored.
Unless we are training for a
century ride, a marathon, or something similarly long and endurance-based, we
do not need to spend hours and hours on steady-state cardio. In fact, the data suggests we get more
benefit from shorter workouts with high-intensity intervals.
What does that mean in practical
terms? No more hour-long walks on
the treadmill. Spend twenty
minutes or half an hour. Warm up
for five minutes, then alternate bursts of speed of about a minute with
recovery periods of one to two minutes.
This works with all the cardio equipment in the gym or out in the real
world if you are running, biking, swimming, or pogo-sticking. Then cool down for five minutes.
Not only does this form of
training help our cardiovascular systems learn to recover more quickly, it also
motivates our metabolisms to burn more calories. Win!
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
The philosophy of form...
Emerson wrote that consistency is
the hobgoblin of small minds. I
will use this in my defense should anyone point out that I contradict
myself. Then I will pull out other
rhetoric, winning by boring my critics to death and enjoying the glazing over
of their eyes. Just kidding. Mostly.
I often write that anything we do
is better than nothing. Today I am
going to suggest that we actually have to try to do things well. This would be that place where I appear
to be inconsistent. Both things
are true. Any work we do toward
fitness is good. I will almost
always advocate for getting off the couch, the exceptions being times when we
are sick or injured. Do a little
if doing a lot is more than we can handle.
That said, we have to pay
attention to form. It is better to
do nothing than to do things that will hurt us in the long run. If we consistently (hey, there’s that
word again!) work out without paying attention to our body mechanics, we are
setting ourselves up for future pain and suffering. In that spirit, I offer these suggestions:
Make friends. A workout buddy or trainer can help us
see things we would otherwise miss.
A little reminder that we have to go through the whole range of motion,
or that our elbows are sticking out too far, or that maybe we should use a
lighter weight since we are compensating can save us from weeks of
rehabilitation.
Make friends with the
mirror. When we work out alone, the
mirror can help us correct errors in our proprioception (remember that fancy
word? It means our sense of where
our bodies are in space.) that can lead to bad form.
Use abs. I say some variation of “engage your
abs” to clients more often than anything else. Core strength might be the very best way to ensure proper
form.
(The photo is me making friends with a warped mirror...)
Monday, October 24, 2016
Monday Workout: October Push
This month’s push workout includes one Pilates reformer exercise. If you don’t have a reformer (like everyone does, right?), you get bonus cardio: squat jumps. It’s all about choosing weights that are heavy enough that ten repetitions are as much as we can do at once. Two to three rounds. Let’s be super strong!
1 min cardio
|
|
bar pullup
|
10
|
barbell squat
|
10
|
reformer jumping
|
10
|
barbell bench press
|
10
|
barbell row
|
10
|
bulgarian split squat
|
10
|
lateral raise
|
10
|
dumbbell walking lunge
|
10
|
deadlift
|
10
|
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Rolling Rock, not the beer
In high school, I had several
great teachers. One of them made
me go look up Sisyphus, which back then meant going to the library, not just
whipping out my phone and asking Google, which is probably why I still remember
it. Sisyphus, according to the
myth, was a jerk. The gods
punished him by making him roll a giant rock to the top of a hill only to have
it roll back down for eternity.
Pretty frustrating. He must
have been a really serious jerk for that to seem at all appropriate.
There is one way that Sisyphus
can lift his own punishment. He
can like rolling rocks.
So at first glance, I appear to
be advocating some kind of Stockholm syndrome. Rolling rocks uphill is hard work. Being compelled to do it over and over again doesn’t make it
better. But shifting perspective,
choosing to love the strain of the muscles and the roughness of the boulder and
the moment of success at the top and the careening excitement of the rock
falling back down, can turn hell into something else.
Workouts, I hope, are not hell,
but for those hellish moments, maybe we can try loving rolling rocks.
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