Today I present: 10 things that are better than junk food:
1. Hugs.
2. Baths.
3. Good books.
4. Dogs/cats/other critters.
5. Flowers.
6. Crisp apples, which are now in season.
7. Walks.
8. Sex. (Maybe this should have been higher on the list?)
9. Blue skies.
10. Comfy clothes.
Uncle Joe (Pilates) was an interesting fellow. He had some unusual ideas about cleanliness and sleep and a few other things. But he also was good at noticing the subtle little things that make big differences. Pilates exercise instructions all include breath. How and when we breathe can promote or inhibit our movement.
Now, when we are first learning an exercise, we might have plenty to think about with all our too many body parts to consider our breath. This is fine. As long as we do continue to breathe, we’re going to be all right. However, once we’ve sorted out where our knees go and we’ve figured out that ears and shoulders are not the same thing, we can begin to notice our breath, too.
Our inhalations help us when we want to control the “easy” part of an exercise (the “eccentric contraction” in fancy trainer-speak, or the part where we lower a weight or work with gravity rather than against it). They help us when we want to extend our spines, as we do when we bend backwards. Inhalations help us find length in our bodies and space.
Exhalations help us on the “hard” parts, the pushing parts. We exhale to contract our cores for chest lifts, roll-ups, and the like. Those exhalations help us flex our spines, bending forward.
If you don’t believe me, try it out! There are a few folks out there whose bodies don’t follow the general rules and you might be one of them. But most of us will find that Joe has a point. No matter what: keep breathing!
A lot of people I talk to lately have weight loss on their minds. Maybe it is because the weather is starting to change and we’re all putting on clothes we haven’t worn in a while. Before I talk about weight loss, I need to get one thing out of the way: YOU ARE FABULOUS JUST THE WAY YOU ARE. You will not be a better person or more loveable or more intelligent or more capable if you lose weight; you will just be less weighty. Pardon me for the yelling, but the fitness industrial complex and our capitalist overlords are very loud on the subject of thinness equating to virtue, spice, and everything nice, and they are not right.
Now, fabulous people, if any of us in our fabulousness want to lose weight, we need to approach the process with love. I am not here to take away anyone’s cookies or to chase anyone around a track with a whip. Shame and humiliation do not work to motivate people. Deprivation is not a way of life. So, how do we do it?
First, we give our bodies good food. This might take some experimenting and we might have to remember some stuff about the long term when our short term brain is screaming for Twinkies. (I don’t happen to like Twinkies, but we all have cravings for things that pretend to be food, like Twinkies, Jack-in-the-Box tacos, movie popcorn…) Good food does taste good, but it also makes us feel good, not sluggish or hung over. After a whole chunk of time spent studying fitness nutrition, I will only say with certainty that we should all eat our veggies and drink lots of water. The rest of our consumption really depends on personal chemistry and preferences.
Then we give our bodies good movement. Good movement means we burn some calories with cardio and we change our body composition with weights. We toss in some flexibility, some core and balance stuff, and a touch of relaxation, and we call it a day. Unless we are professional athletes, we should be able to get our movement done in an hour or less a day, on average. Good movement will sometimes leave us a little sore, but we will know it is good movement because we will find our energy levels rising, our brains working better, and our bodies working better.
I will not lie: weight loss is hard. Our bodies have to work against centuries of evolution plus the pressures of agribusiness, modern life, and pandemic bonuses. It can be done, but it is best done slowly and with love.
This week we’re going to do something a little different. We’re going to do a single rep maximum workout. That “we” is important because lifting heavy is not something to do all alone. (If you do not have a partner, you can still lift heavy-ish, but please do NOT try to go to a single rep max without a spotter.)
Here’s how it works: for each exercise, we begin with ten reps of a weight we can do easily. The exercises I’ve listed below are in pairs, an upper body with a lower body. This is so we can do more work in less time: the lower body rests while the upper body works and vice versa, although as we get closer to our single rep max, we will probably want plain old still rest between sets. So: we do a set of the lower body exercise, then a set of the upper body exercise. For the next set, we increase the weight. After a couple of rounds, we will find that we want to reduce the number of reps. This is good. Eventually, we will increase the weight to the point that we can only complete one beautiful rep. The “beautiful” is also important: when we are lifting heavy, bad form can hurt us. Our partner can help us keep an eye on our form so that we don’t start doing things ugly.
Lifting heavy can take a long time. I usually only do one pair of exercises per heavy workout because it can take 45 minutes to an hour to go from my warm-up weight to my single rep max with the appropriate rest intervals. Also, whichever pair of exercises we choose to do first will be our best. All those max weights add up over time, so we shouldn’t expect the same performance from the last pair as the first pair if we keep going. This is also why it is a good idea to rotate what we do first.
As always, if what I’ve said doesn’t make sense or you have questions, ask me! I’m here to help.
Now: here’s the list.
Basic Heavy Workout | ||
5 minute cardio warm-up | ||
Start | Finish | |
squats | ||
bench press | ||
deadlift | ||
flies | ||
lunges | ||
rows | ||
abs | ||
SMR and stretch |
When I meet with clients for the first time, I ask them tons and tons of questions. Some of them are the expected health questions about heart disease and injury and other important stuff for safety. The more interesting questions, however, concern history and preferences. When we are getting back into working out, here are some questions we can ask ourselves:
1. What fitness stuff have we done in the past? Maybe we played softball when we were nine, or did gymnastics, or lived to tackle quarterbacks. Some of us rode bikes everywhere or swam as much as possible or danced all night. Even if we haven’t done whatever it was in a long time, the body remembers and has built patterns around that activity that we can use or reprogram.
2. What do we do in our spare time? (“Spare time”—that’s funny!) Do we like to cook? Watch movies? Garden? Shop? Read? Build battle-bots? Please notice that this is not about fitness or fitness-related activities, just stuff we like to do. When I ask clients this question, I am looking for information about things like whether they like to be inside or outside, sitting or standing, intellectually challenged or soothed. This helps me plan workouts that meet them where they like to be.
3. What fitness activities do we actually like? Very few people hate every single possible kind of fitness activity. And most of us can get all the fitness we need without having to suck it up and do unpleasant things most of the time (there will always be a few necessary evils, but we try to minimize those). There are approximately eighty-seven gazillion kinds of cardio with new ones springing into existence every moment. Trainers and instructors everywhere constantly come up with new kinds of classes that blend cardio and weights and flexibility and all kinds of good stuff. With all those choices, we can find something that is fun, even if the usual choices don’t do it.
With the answers to these questions, we can begin to piece together workouts that feed the body and don’t deplete the soul.
Bridging is one of my favorite exercises. It occurs in both Pilates and yoga in a lot of different variations, but all of them help with spine flexibility and mobility. More importantly, bridging feels good.
First, the disclaimers: people with osteoporosis can still do bridging, but they should not do the versions in which the spine peels up or down one vertebra at a time. In their cases, they should keep the spine moving as a unit. It is also worthwhile for people with high blood pressure, glaucoma, any spinal injuries, or difficulty with weight bearing on feet or shoulders to check with their doctors about the advisability of doing this movement. ALWAYS prioritize safety and STOP if a movement feels wrong.
Now that that is out of the way: how do we do it? Good news! We get to lie down! Find a firm but comfortable surface to lie on. A bed will work, but a carpeted floor or a yoga or squishy mat on a hard floor is better. Face the ceiling and bend knees so that feet are flat on the floor. Take a couple of breaths. Gently encourage the shoulders away from the ears and towards the hips. Feel better yet?
Then we start to move. I am going to describe the articulated bridge first; if you have osteoporosis, don’t do this kind. Inhale. When it is time to exhale, pull the belly button down toward the floor. This will tilt the pelvis so that the tailbone comes a little away from the floor. Continue to tilt the pelvis until it lifts the spine, vertebra by vertebra, into the air. This means that the feet are supporting more weight. The knees may want to splay out or knock together, but work to keep them in line with the hips and ankles. As we reach the end of our range of motion, our hamstrings may cramp a little (or a lot). While this is painful, it is not actually harmful; hamstrings are really good at whining. To reduce the suffering, press the knees away from the head to give the hamstrings a little more space. Eventually, we will find ourselves with our pelvises in the air, our feet pressing firmly into the ground, and our head, neck, and shoulders supporting the other end of our bodies. Ideally, we are a fairly straight line from our shoulders to our knees; in real life, many of us have very tight hip flexors, so we may not be able to lift our hips that high.
Take another breath in. Now we reverse the process to come back down. Exhale and lower the body back to the ground, focusing on the vertebra closest to the head first and then continue on down the chain until the pelvis is back on the ground. I particularly like to focus on pulling the hips away from the head during the lowering process because it adds some length to the parts of the spine that get compressed with all the sitting we do. (If we have a friend with us, we can help each other by gently pulling the hips toward the heels during the lowering phase.)
Ta da! We did it! Do a couple more just for fun. Your spine will thank you.
Now for the variations:
“Lunar lift.” This is the osteoporosis-friendly version. Instead of peeling the spine up and down a vertebra at a time, the pelvis “blasts off” straight up, keeping the spine moving as a unit.
“Chip and dip.” Peel up to the top of the motion as usual. On the way down, imagine there is a tortilla chip on each hip bone. Scoop up imaginary salsa and guacamole with each hip as the spine lowers down one vertebra at a time.
“With block.” This is my new favorite version. At the top of the motion, take a yoga block and slide it under the hips so that the pelvis can rest on it. This gives a bit of traction to the spine and really allows the compression to relax out. Stay for a few breaths before taking the block out and peeling down as usual. Note: the orientation of the yoga block under the hips will depend on the flexibility and size of the human doing the motion; don’t overdo!
Go try it out!
As I’ve been talking about over the last few weeks, I’ve been moving. Moving definitely counts as workout. I can’t even describe how many times I’ve gone up or down stairs, how many boxes I have lifted. Then there is the stretching—I’m short and shelves are often not—and the bending, because boxes to be unloaded hang out on the floor when I get tired of lifting them.
Which brings me to today’s topic: repetitive stress. I am a fitness professional, but this does not give me immunity from injury or stress, sadly enough. Due to my dissolute previous life in office management, I have threatening carpal tunnel in my wrists. Add in some years of long-distance biking and the result is: forearm tendonitis. I’m not here to whine (well, maybe a little…), but to talk about what to do when we have to do stuff that is not entirely good for us. I am just an example in this case.
So. The first thing to do with repetitive stress stuff is to figure out what support structures we can use. In my case, I wear wrist wraps and elbow wraps (what they advertise as support for tennis elbow) whenever I am going to do a bunch of lifting or I need to bear weight on my arms (like in yoga) or I have to do grip things (like biking or carrying boxes). This is not unlike a person with a complicated knee wearing a brace.
The second thing to do is to treat the body with respect. I kind of fail at this, until I am forced to concede. Do not follow my example in this. Sometimes respecting the body means getting help. Sometimes it means setting limits: I can lift that lighter box, but not that heavier one. Sometimes it is about knowing when to call it a day.
The third thing is to know what to do if we happen to overdo it. This might include ibuprofen, ice, heat, massage, foam rolling, and screaming loudly. We want to rest sometimes. We should pay a little bit of attention to hydration and eating decent food.
When the big event is over, it is important to thank the body for what it managed to do. And then it needs a real rest.
