Joe Knows

One of my favorite concepts from Pilates is the idea of the right amount of effort.  When we move according to Joe’s principles, we use only the muscles we want to work and we exert the exact amount of force we need to accomplish our task.  It’s both beautiful and efficient.

 

In practice, this means that we don’t do a gazillion half-hearted reps of an exercise in Pilates.  We do five or six good ones.  We pay attention to things like letting our neck relax and not help with every single movement, no matter what.  We unclench our eyebrows and open our fists.

 

This does not mean that we are not strong.  It means that we are strong in smart ways.  We know how to use our powers for good.

 

Go play.

Get used to it...

I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of trying something and… hating it.  It’s hard.  We don’t feel competent.  Our feet (or arms or legs or whatever) hurt.  We are out of breath, and we want a snack, and now would be a really good time for a nap.

 

Sometimes that first impression is right and we are going to hate that thing forever.  But sometimes, we just need to give ourselves a chance to get used to whatever it is we are trying.

 

I’m a practical person, so I want to know how much of a chance is needed.  For a person starting from the couch, it will take about a month to work up to the recommended 5 days a week for 30 minutes of cardio exercise, or possibly longer.  That said, a month in it should feel a lot more manageable.  With weight training, it depends on how many times a week a person is lifting and what kind of weight training they’re doing—a simple endurance routine twice a week will probably be all right before a month is out.  A person doing max strength work may take a little longer because the challenge placed on the body is more.

 

No one likes a good dramatic stomping-off more than I do, but let’s make sure we really want to do it before we go.  (It’s really embarrassing to come crawling back afterwards…)  Let’s give our workouts a chance to work before we give up.

 

Please note:  this does NOT mean that we should not stop immediately if something is actually painful, not just unfamiliar and uncomfortable.  We do NOT want to be injured, nor do we want to get used to working impaired.  That is not fun.

 

We can do this.

Monday Workout: Burpees are back...

This week, burpees return.  We don’t do them that often because almost everyone hates them, but it’s time to kick things up a bit.  I promise there won’t be any next week.  Three rounds.

 

standing mountain climbers	30
rows	20
1 leg deadlift	10
woodchoppers	30
kickbacks	20
burpees	10
squat to leg lift	30
curls	20
pretty princesses	10

How to...

Falling asleep is not always easy.  Here are a couple of things to help with it:

 

1.     Practice.  Having a bedtime that we stick to trains us to get sleepy.

2.     Keep it dark.  We tend to respond to darkness by getting sleepy.

3.     Keep it cool.  We sleep better in cool rooms.

4.     Eat lightly.  I think we’ve all had the experience of a big dinner that made us sleepy at first and then awake later.

5.     Make it comfy.  A good pillow, a blanket that works, a tranquil room, good smells.

6.     Reduce or eliminate the caffeine and alcohol.  This one might be tough on us, but both caffeine and alcohol change the quality of our sleep.

 

Snooze happy!

Take your teddy...

Most of us don’t get enough sleep and a lot of us don’t get enough rest, either.  It is not easy to do, in part because our culture glorifies busy-ness and stress.  We look askance at anybody too relaxed—don’t they know how difficult it all is?

 

I’m not downplaying the difficulties we are all facing in these uncertain and plague-ridden times.  And I hesitate to suggest yet one more thing to add to our endless to-do lists.  Except that this one helps with all the other ones:  go to bed on time.

 

I’m not saying that we all need to be tucked up virtuously by 8 p.m. or anything.  That would be silly.  We all have different rhythms to our lives and some of us are just hitting our stride then.  What I am saying is that we do better when we have a bedtime and stick to it.  Ideally, that time should be seven or eight hours before we have to get up again.

 

We might have to do some negotiating with ourselves and other people to make this work.  Maybe we’ll have to stop after two episodes of that great show.  Maybe we’ll have to explain that it is all right to do a few dishes in the morning instead.  At first it might be hard to go to sleep at our new bedtime.  We might lie there resentfully feeling like a fractious toddler who is definitely not tired, not one bit, no way.  We’ll have to practice.

 

But once we start getting the sleep and rest we need, we might find that we’re not so crabby, we make fewer mistakes, and we feel better.  We find focus that we’ve been missing.

 

I could be wrong.  Try it out and see.

Not nice

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just figure it all out, even if it took a while?  Then we’d be done with the figuring and we could get on with the doing.  Sadly, it does not work this way.

 

For one thing, change happens.  The workout that transformed us over the first few months is too easy now.  The stuff we used to do when we were younger and indestructible is Not a Good Idea nowadays.

 

For another, boredom is the enemy.  We need to strike a balance between having good habits and falling into autopilot ruts.  When we manage to bring both our bodies and our brains to work, we do better.  There are days when we simply have to run or bike or walk a different route or we will explode.

 

Finally, we want to use feedback.  We learn new things from reading.  We discover new stuff about our bodies as we work.  We want to incorporate new knowledge into what we are doing, experiment, evaluate.

 

So, as usual, I’m suggesting a more difficult path than just showing up and doing the same thing over and over and over, but my way is way more fun.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Jump!

This week we’re taking our squats up a notch by adding the jump.  If your knees don’t like jumping, just use weights and do regular squats, or do squats to side leg lifts.  Three rounds.

 

jump squats	30
bench press	20
round lunges	10
overhead high knees	30
flies	20
pushups	10
jacks	30
deadlifts	20
Russian twist	10