Monday Workout: with a new exercise in it!

Back to reality!  I have a cold, so I am not actually testing this one today.  I’m sure it will be fun by tomorrow or Wednesday.  (Which reminds me:  resting is allowed when we are sick.  Do only as much as creates energy and health, not more.  No one is helped when we hack and cough and suffer and drip all over everything.)  Anyway, by now you can guess that there are four rounds since there are six exercises. 

The new exercise in the bunch is the suitcase swing.  Stand tall with a pair of dumbbells at your sides.  Squat as usual, but instead of letting the dumbbells hang, keep them in line with your torso (like a backswing).  As you come out of the squat, swing your arms overhead.  Make sure to maintain lovely posture and engaged abdominals throughout.

1 min cardio
back lunge with foot on bench	10/side
suitcase swing	20
pushups	10
plyojacks or crunch jacks	20
side plank with arm raise	10/side
pretty princesses	10

This is a tiki for no reason

I didn’t blog yesterday because vacation and because I spent the day snorkeling at Molokini crater.  Just because I am on vacation doesn’t mean I am not thinking about fitness, however.

Snorkeling, as demonstrated by one of the lovely crew members of the snorkeling boat yesterday, is not a labor-intensive sport.  Pretty much we lie face down in the water staring at fish and flapping our arms and legs a bit when we want to move from place to place to see other fish.  The fitness component comes at a different point in the experience.

The particular boat we took was a catamaran that pulled up to the beach.  No easy walk down the gangplank.  Getting on and off required wading through waves.  While the crew helped out, a certain basic stability was required. 

We may not need to be strong to do the things we really want to do.  But we may very much need to be strong to get to the point where we can even try to do those things.  I saw beautiful fish and floated in clear water and tasted salt and got a little sunburned yesterday because I could get on and off the boat.  I know people who can’t do that.  Let’s stay strong so we can be amazed by life.

Why?

Perhaps I write the same things over and over.  Maybe it is because I need reminding and maybe I am not the only one.

Fitness is not an end in itself.  Fitness is for doing things.  While the hours we spend in the gym can be fun in themselves, the point is to enable fun in other contexts.  All those elliptical workouts translate into victory on the hill hike.  The work on the agility ladder turns into good foot placement between roots and stones on the path.  The view can take our breath away instead of the journey to get to the view.

Work out and enjoy it, sure, but let’s figure out why we want to be fit.

Monday Workout: Even on vacation

On vacation, you say?  Workout, you say?  Of course!  But all body weight exercises because who packs weights on vacation?  It is vacation, so only 3 rounds.  And we’ll try to get some cardio swimming or hiking or something.

squats	20
1 leg squat	10
lunges	20
pushups	10
plank
side plank with rotation	10

Friday Book Report: Sugar Impact Diet

One of my clients passed J.J. Virgin’s book Sugar Impact Diet on to me.  In general, I am not a fan of diet books, or of diets.  I dislike motivational stories.  I distrust claims involving losing x amount of weight painlessly in y days.

This book has all the things I don’t like in it, plus the kind of women’s magazine prose that makes me want to go out and stab people, except that I don’t believe in stabbing people.

In spite of this, it is not really a bad book.  Sugar is definitely the major problem in most of our diets.  It contributes to every health problem we face personally and culturally.  Virgin lays out the evidence and calls out labels.  She provides useful lists of swaps we can make.  I tried one of the recipes (many of the recipes are non-vegetarian, so that took a lot of them right out for me) and found it delicious and the other people around here liked it, too.

Those of us who know we benefit from structure could use the system.  Those of us who like to be presented with information to figure out how to apply on our own can parse out some helpful things from this book.

And still more on goals

Sometimes when we get started on new goals, we get over-excited.  We decide to do All The Things right now.  That can be very empowering and we can often take out a large chunk of the to-do list by massive effort.  And then we get tired.

Getting tired is all right.  We are allowed to get tired.  We are allowed to rest.  We are not allowed to quit.

Let’s listen to our lives a little.  When we need a break, we can take one.  And then we can get moving again.

More on goals

Fitness goals come in many guises.  We all know the obvious ones:  lose weight, run fast, go far, lift heavy, collect compliments.  I would like to suggest that there are some other areas that contribute to our fitness goals.  Here are some questions to consider:

What do we want to learn this year?  Our brains are crucial to our fitness goals.  If we are not learning and growing, we are dying.  Let’s think about skills we want to develop, books we want to read, experiences we want to create.

How do we want to connect?  What sort of relationship weight lifting do we need to do this year?  When we strengthen the bonds between people, we create healthy communities and happy humans.

What feeds our souls?  We spend lots of time thinking about what to eat.  What do our hearts crave?  Maybe we need to go outside, or go to church, or hug a dog, or laugh really hard.  Whatever it is, we need to do it to avoid soul anorexia.

Fitness is holistic (I am allowed to use that word; I lived in Berkeley for 20 years.).  Let’s make fitness goals that address our whole selves.