Stressing Fitness!

Moving always makes the list of stressful life events and I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment.  Even a good move is hard on the body and the soul.  However, I am noticing with this current move, the other kind of moving I do helps.

 

Sure, there is the practical bit:  when I lift weights, I get stronger, so I can schlepp more books and boxes and why-do-we-even-have-that-family-gradunzas.

 

The part that seems even more useful right now is what exercise does to manage stress.  I rely on cardio to boost my mood.  I need the weights to take the frustrations that build up in even the best-planned move.  And, of course, I need the exercise to burn off the stress eating I do (hey, nobody’s perfect!).

 

When the move is all over and I’m back to my regular life, I hope I remember how much exercise helped.  I hope I can keep working on my stress-resilience through exercise.

 

Anyone else?

Gratitude!

It might just be me (I doubt it!) who goes around complaining about what my body can’t or won’t do.  News flash:  I am 53 years old, not 23, so some stuff is out of warranty, so to speak.

 

Today, however, it is time for me (and anybody who would like to join me) to express some thanks to my body for all the things it does do.  In some ways, I could kick my own 23-year-old butt thanks to the workouts I’ve put in over the last 30 years, but that’s not even what I mean.  All by itself, my body remembers to breathe.  It keeps my heart beating and processes the food I eat.  When I work it, it recovers and repairs whatever I break.  It carries me from place to place.  It lets me experience this magical world.  What a gift!

 

What I can give my body back is some decent care.  I can feed it healthy food and give it rest when it needs it.  I can remember to stretch it.  I can reduce the bad kinds of stress I put on it and increase the useful, exercise kinds.

 

I am grateful.

Monday Workout: Body Weight

I’m not at work this week because I’m working on moving.  In other words, my personal workout will involve hefting eighty gazillion boxes.  Assuming everyone else would rather have some other kind of workout, I offer this one in my absence.  It is all body-weight exercises, so there is really no excuse.  A sturdy step is useful for this circuit, but if one is not available, substitute marching or running in place.  Three or four rounds, depending on energy and time:

 

step ups	30
squats	30
pushups	10
jacks	30
1 leg squats	10
lunge punches	20
pretty princesses	10
brains	10

 

The clothes make the worker-outer?

Let’s talk about workout basics, like what the heck we’re supposed to wear.  Short answer:  whatever we want, as long as we’re safe.  Longer answer:  here are some things to consider:

 

1.     Shoes.  We don’t have to wear them if we’re doing yoga or Pilates or various other kinds of exercise, but if we’re playing sports or biking or running or lifting weights, it’s a good idea to wear supportive and comfortable shoes.  It is worth experimenting to find the right shoes because nothing makes a human miserable faster than blisters.

2.     Socks.  They help with that blister thing.  They also add some cushion.  Some people love their cotton socks, but there are some spiffy new athletic fibers that can help with the stinky feet thing and also keep our feet feeling drier.

3.     Pants.  Or shorts.  Old-school Rocky-style gray sweats are certainly an option, but again, cotton tends to get wet, heavy, and smelly as we work harder.  Pants can have wicking fabric, extra support, and even pockets!

4.     Shirts.  Again, that ratty t-shirt that the kids gave us as a joke ten years ago is a perfectly acceptable workout shirt, but we deserve something nicer and less sopping if we want it.  I will give a plug here to bike shirts, which very often have big pockets at the small of the back, which are super handy for workouts that don’t involve bikes, too.

5.     Support garments.  I’ll let the male-identifying people discuss their underwear among themselves, but those of us who identify as female need to make sure that we have bras that both allow us to breathe and to feel secure no matter how hard we work or how high we jump.  Also, synthetic fabric undies are less likely to get truly uncomfortably damp and/or baggy.

6.     Other layers.  Folks who work out early or late may want a warmth layer or a visibility layer.

7.     Cute stuff.  No, our workout clothes don’t have to be cute, but it can provide a needed boost to our confidence to have an outfit that looks as good as it works.

8.     Activity-specific stuff.  If we bike, we need a helmet.  Swimmers might want goggles or caps.  We want to get the stuff we need to make what we do fun as well as useful.

 

Go play.

Spinal Tap AND Steve Austin???

Not every workout has to go to eleven.  I say this a lot, but I seem to need to keep saying it.  I blame the white supremacist heteronormative capitalist patriarchy and its tool, the Protestant work ethic.  To be clear:  yes, I want everyone to work out and to do a good job of it.  No, I don’t want every workout to be the hardest one ever or to leave us wiped out for the next three weeks, or worse, injured.

 

We are valuable humans even if we keep lifting the same five pound weights forever.  We are worthwhile whether or not we ever succeed at running around the block, or a mile, or a marathon.  There is no moral superiority to be gained by mastering the secrets of Zumba or yoga or spin class.

 

In other words, there are no grades for workouts.  We do not have to be the six-million-dollar people (better… stronger… faster…).

 

What we do have to do is show up.

 

Get your gear and go play.

Maybe a different kind of rest?

I spend a surprising amount of time, given my profession, telling people to rest.  However, sometimes when we’re feeling low-energy and tired, we don’t actually need rest; we need to get moving.

 

I know we’ve all had days (or maybe even weeks!) where we’ve had a lot on our minds and we feel stressed out.  We may have “treated” ourselves to less healthy foods as a stress management technique, or leaned on the caffeine to make up for the sleep we can’t seem to get.  It is tempting, at that point, to crawl under the covers or cocoon ourselves on the couch, but if we want to get our minds and bodies back to life, we’d do better to throw on some shoes and go for a walk.

 

I am not saying that we shouldn’t sleep when we need to, or that we should go run a marathon to beat the fatigue.  I AM saying that some moderate exercise and maybe a dose of fresh air is the kind of break we need even more.  Cardio, once we get started, increases our energy level and boosts our mood.  Our brains start to work better.  Going outside literally changes our perspective (bonus points for going outside into a natural setting, where “forest bathing” can occur to soothe our souls).

 

It takes determination to get started when we feel blah or worse.  We can talk ourselves into it by giving ourselves stupidly easy goals, like walking around the block one time.  We may discover that that is enough; we’ve earned our nap at that point.  We may, however, realize that we feel better already and we’d like to do another lap or two.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Sneaky!

I love exercises that challenge the core in sneaky ways.  The single arm clean and press, by virtue of being asymmetric, does just that!  Mountain climbers are obviously a cardio move, but core recruitment is definitely happening at the same time.  The row part of renegade rows is actually the easy bit; it’s the balance/core work that makes them hard.  Three rounds.

 

1 arm clean and press	30
flies	20
renegade rows	10
kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s	10
mountain climbers	30
squats	20
Russian twist	10