What to do

Today’s list is pretty simple:  what areas we need to consider when we plan our fitness.

• Cardio.  This is where we start.  We get the blood pumping.  We breathe hard.  Cardio builds our basic endurance, improves our mood, and makes our brains work better.  We need at least 150 minutes a week.

• Weights.  Once we have basic cardio fitness under our belts, it is time to address our body composition.  Building muscle mass strengthens our bones, improves our metabolism, and shapes our bodies.  We also have more everyday strength for things like opening jars and lugging groceries.  We want to do two or three weight sessions a week for optimum results.

• Flexibility.  We Western-types are at a major disadvantage in this area because we live in a chair culture and not a squatting culture.  Worse, we often work in sedentary jobs that we have to drive long hours to reach.  When we work out, we get stronger, but also less flexible unless we put a priority on it.  At a minimum, we need to stretch after our workouts when our muscles are warm.  At best, we include some flexibility-enhancing practices like yoga and Pilates into our fitness mix.

• Balance.  One of the major risks we all face as we get older is falling.  Falling can lead to injury, hospitalization, and loss of independence.  Balance is a skill we can practice.  When we target our abdominals, work on unstable surfaces, do asymmetric exercises, or engage in balance-building activities like dance, yoga, or Pilates, we are increasing our ability.

Let’s do it!

Obstacle Course

Working out is supposed to be a challenge.  We are setting out, on purpose, to give our bodies work to do.  We want to get breathless and tired and probably even a bit sore.  The goal is to make sure that the actual workout is the only hard part of the process.

That means we need to remove as many of the other obstacles that we can.  Different people will find different obstacles, but many of us share similar ones.

Time pressure is a big one.  I am big fan of planning as a way to reduce this one.  I believe in alarm clocks, getting out our workout stuff the night before, meeting a friend to work out or take a class so we have accountability, making grocery lists, and the like.  Maybe we need to do a little advance thinking about how much time we fritter away on things that don’t give us a lot of joy, like the fourth episode in a row of that show we’re addicted to, or the ninth funny cat video online (please note:  I’m not saying we don’t get joy from shows or cat videos, just that we don’t need to overindulge!).  We also might want to consider that the science suggests we will actually get more done in the long run if we invest time in our fitness—it makes us more energetic and sharper.

Some of us think of money as an obstacle.  News flash:  walking and running are free.  Sure, we can spend money on gym memberships and classes and personal training, and I am the first to agree that making an investment in health is worth it, but when money is tight, we can work out on the cheap using nothing but our own marvelous bodies.

Other people can obstruct our workouts, directly or indirectly.  When we have small children, sometimes we struggle even to get a shower, so a workout seems totally impossible.  The good news is that babies and toddlers love outings and, as mentioned above, walking is free exercise.  We may have a partner or spouse who is less than supportive of our fitness goals.  In that case, the first thing we need to strengthen is our backbone—we deserve to be healthy and strong and anyone who does not want that for us is not loving us the way we deserve.  Sometimes we can recruit the obstructive person to join us.  Sometimes we just have to do the right thing for ourselves, even if it is hard.

Then there is the part where we obstruct ourselves.  We may be afraid of getting stronger or more fit or thinner because it is a change and change can be hard.  Or we may know, intellectually, that fitness is good for us, but we don’t like it much.  In either case, we need to figure out what we want fitness for.  It is not an end in itself.  Maybe we want to be fit because we want to outlive all our relatives.  Maybe we want to impress the mean girls at the high school reunion.  Maybe we want to play with our puppy until the puppy is worn out instead of until we are.  When we find a real reason to work out, we’ll do it.

We can do this.

Douglas Adams says...

Travel can wreak havoc on our fitness routines.  Well, unless we happen to travel with a gym and a personal trainer (and, while we’re at it, we’d like a pony…).  Here in Reality Land, I happen to take a personal trainer with me wherever I go, but even so, my routines get disrupted.  What to do?

First, in the immortal words of Douglas Adams, don’t panic.  Disruption is, occasionally, good for our routines.  When we are outside of our usual habitat, we discover new things and often new ways to get in those important fitness minutes.

If we’re on vacation, great!  Maybe we’re having a relaxing beach vacation?  No problem:  long walks on the beach happen to have fitness benefits, as does the ionized sea air, and we can run or swim or kayak or surf or paddleboard if we’re feeling like kicking it up a notch.  If we’re having the sight-seeing kind, I can pretty much guarantee that exploring the local cathedral/museum/national park/shopping district will get us enough steps to count as our exercise.  We’ll probably burn enough calories to justify sampling the region’s best cuisine while we’re at it.

Traveling for work can be a different story.  The good news is that most hotels have fitness centers.  A lot of them have pools.  We can squeeze in our weights and cardio around our jobs like we have to do at home.  The challenge with work travel is usually more about finding healthy food amid the airport fast food and Frankenbreakfasts.  Packing nutritious snacks can make a huge difference.

Back to the first point, though.  Worst case, we still don’t want to panic.  Even an entire week of missed workouts is not the end of the world.  We are more than our workouts.