Mustard, pickles, whatever...

Recently, I started to learn how to play pickle ball.  I figured that I could run around waving a paddle and looking like an idiot while making some friends.  Turns out, I was right, especially about the looking like an idiot part.

 

The good thing is that I know about Beginner’s Mind.  It’s one of those Zen kind of concepts that presumably are good for the soul, but that’s not my area of expertise.  I find it to be super useful in my actual area of expertise, fitness.  The short version is that when we start something new, we know we don’t have a clue.  This allows us to be open to new ideas and experiences and techniques.  It frees us from the expectation that we’re going to be good at whatever it is for a good long time.  We can play around.

 

Play is serious.  Just because we’re playing, we don’t throw out effort and rules and everything.  We can try hard, but we have the understanding that what we are doing is intended to be fun.  When it stops being fun, we can stop playing, or change the game so it becomes fun again.

 

When we exercise, we want to give our best shot and we want to pay attention to safety, but that’s pretty much the whole enchilada, right there.  If running isn’t fun anymore, we can try biking or swimming or pickle ball.  Go play.

Monday Workout: Do You

When we have a body part that is not cooperating the way we’d like it to, we want to give it the right amount of movement in the right sort of way to encourage it.  There are certainly times when the right answer is to hold something still (this is why, for example, casts were invented), but a lot of the time, a gentle amount of motion is a good idea.  If, say, knees are feeling uncomfortable, we can bend more at the hips in the clean and press and limit the knee movement and we can make the squat in the squat raise small.  If, on the other hand, shoulders are grumpy, the overhead motions in the various exercises can be less overhead and more lateral.  In other words, modify as needed!  Three rounds.

 

1 arm clean and press	30
bench press	20
curls	10
suitcase swing	30
flies	20
overhead press	10
squat raise	30
1 leg deadlift	20
femur arcs	10

 

Snickersnack!

If we want to cut down on the sugar in our lives, what are we supposed to snack on?  Here are some ideas.  (Sugar hides in an awful lot of things, so this list comes with a caveat:  read the labels on any prepared foods and skip those with added sugars.)

 

1.     Nuts.  They’re a good source of protein and healthy fats.  They DO have a lot of calories, so we need to pay attention to quantity.

2.     Popcorn.  Full of fiber, which makes us feel full. 

3.     Celery and (your favorite nut) butter.  Celery has fiber and nut butters have all the good qualities of nuts.  DO check the nut butter label and choose one that has just nuts and maybe salt in it and not a bunch of added oils and sugars.

4.     Veggies and hummus.  Tasty, fibrous, full o’vitamins, and with a dash of legume protein!

 

Yum. 

Didn't we just do this?

Sometimes I don’t feel like writing yet another fitness blog post.  (And maybe folks are tired of reading yet another fitness blog post from me, or have stopped reading entirely because really?  Another one?)  Fitness is both incredibly simple and incredibly not.  There is plenty to say and plenty worth repeating.  But sometimes I just don’t feel like it.

 

Turns out that working out can be just like that.  We all get tired of working out, or even thinking about working out.  It seems like we just did that yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.  It’s not that hard:  do some cardio, lift some weights, stretch, blah blah blah, except it IS that hard because we have to find our shoes and decide whether to bike or ellipt (that’s a verb, right?) and count reps and get sweaty.

 

However.  Once we’re done?  Oh, yeah!  THAT’S why we do it.  We feel tired, sure, but the good kind.  Our little endorphins are doing their mood-altering thing.  Our muscles are building themselves back stronger.  Our lungs and heart are better at getting the good stuff into our bodies and the bad stuff out.

 

The message here?  Just start.

Hey, Sugar...

Let’s talk about sugar.  I love sugar.  It’s not just me, either.  Babies prefer sweets because hey! calories!  Brains prefer glucose as a source of energy and, like all those -ose words, glucose is a sugar.  (All right, otiose is not a sugar and it’s not sweet either, and I’m sure there are other exceptions, but otiose doesn’t usually turn up on food labels.)

 

However, the thing about sugar is that, aside from calories and some instinctual comfort, it doesn’t have a lot to offer us, all by itself.  This makes it tricky for those of us—ahem—all of us—who need to pay attention to avoiding too many calories.

 

While all sugars more or less process the same in the body, sugars that exist in whole foods already are better choices.  Which is to say a bowl of strawberries is better than a bowl of strawberry jam (processed with sugar) or strawberry ice cream (ditto).  The strawberries have vitamin C, manganese, B9 (folate), and potassium in them, so they’re more than just a pretty berry with a sweet aftertaste.

 

Sugar consumption, of course, is an issue for folks with diabetes (both kinds).  It seems to increase inflammation in tissues.  Some folks find that eating more sugar leads to more hot flashes in populations who experience them.  Also, sugar can be addictive and thus challenging to wean ourselves away from.

 

Please note:  I’m not saying to avoid all sugar everywhere all the time.  Just make good choices.

Monday Workout: Lunges are good for us

Another fun batch of compound exercises for this week.  If your knees don’t like lunges, just do curls.  If your brain doesn’t like lunges, too bad:  they’re good for you.  Three rounds.

 

step up	30
(lunge to) curl	20
Arnold press	10
squat to leg lift	30
rows	20
kickbacks	10
jacks	30
1 leg deadlift	20
brains	10

 

Five Ingredients for Success

Working out is great, but there are some things we can do that are NOT working out to make those workouts better.  Here are five:

 

1.     Drink water.  Hydration is essential to our bodies’ processes.  Enough water will help us work out better and longer and recover faster.

2.     Eat.  Those of us who decide to work out to lose weight sometimes don’t eat enough.  We want to choose nutrient dense foods to fuel our workouts.

3.     Wear the right shoes.  No one wants shin splints or a sprained ankle or plantar fasciitis.  Heck, we don’t even want blisters.  (Sometimes, like when we do yoga or Pilates, the right shoes are no shoes at all.)

4.     Use safety equipment.  Those strong legs we are developing while biking won’t do us a bit of good if we crack our skulls open.  Wear the helmet—or the knee pads, or the life jacket, or whatever.

5.     Have fun.  Most workouts do NOT have to be drudgery.  Take a friend, turn up the music, get silly, whatever it takes to make it more like play.