Feedback

I love food.  I also love movement.  This is good, because healthy people need to eat and exercise.

 

Like all loves, we need to avoid obsessive love of either food or exercise.  We can’t out-exercise poor eating habits and no amount of correct eating can make us fit without getting off the couch occasionally.

 

The good news is that our bodies like to give us feedback.  We do have to listen to them, though, to get the messages.  Sometimes the messages are obvious, like the day after we helped a friend move and our muscles hate us—we overdid it.  Similarly, the day after too much birthday cake, we know we have made a mistake. 

 

Other times, the messages are more subtle.  We’re a little crabby and it’s because our guts aren’t as fond of dairy as they used to be, or we’re kind of stiff and we realize it has been a few days since we remembered to stretch after our workouts.

 

Tune in.  Practice listening to the body and see what happens.

Monday Workout: Go for it

This week we’re doing a pretty straight-ahead workout.  Plenty of compound exercises to burn calories, build muscle, and increase heart rate.  Three rounds.

 

1 leg step ups with weights	30
renegade rows	20
pushups	10
jacks	30
bench press	20
curl	10
(lunge) punches	30
Arnold press	20
brains	10

 

Four Things

Sometimes workouts are not as fun as they could be.  Here are four things to make them more fun:

 

1.     Bring a friend.  Having someone to talk to or suffer alongside helps a lot.

2.     Turn up the tunes.  Loud music drowns out the screaming of muscles, too.

3.     Get silly.  Wear the crazy shirt or the weird hat.

4.     If all else fails and you STILL hate the workout, please try a different one.  There are so many out there!  Keep experimenting!

The one characteristic

If I had to pick one characteristic of a successful workout, it would be… FUN.  Why?  Because we don’t need a lot of encouragement to keep having more fun.

 

Workouts work because we do them, not because they’re the most perfect one ever.  I can design a workout that ensures that every muscle group gets the optimum amount of work.  It might take three hours to complete and a whole gym’s worth of equipment.  A few souls might try it, once, but once would be enough.

 

Now I’m not saying that I habitually design workouts with gaps in them or that none of us should ever do any exercise that isn’t fun (looking at you, burpees!)—I do try to balance the exercises I give to my clients and we all have to do a few burpees—but that we have to work out more than once for it to make real changes.  And to make that happen, the workouts had better be fun.

 

Fun-adjacent workouts also work, once we’re really into the fun bit.  People who love, say, biking, are willing to do some lifting if it means that they can bike better or longer or faster or with less pain.

 

Short version:  start with what you love doing and go from there.

Gloom

So pardon me if I’m a little gloomy here.  I’ve been thinking about death because of family things going on.  And I have some bad news:  there is no fitness routine that will keep us from dying.

 

But it’s not all gloom.  Our workouts make a big difference in the quality of our life as we get older.

 

Left to themselves, aging bodies will lose muscle mass, which means that we get weaker if we don’t exercise.  We also tip our body fat percentage in the wrong direction when we lose muscle, even if our weight doesn’t change.

 

Strong muscles help us have strong bones.  Those same muscles also help protect our bones by keeping us from falling, stabilizing us through life’s many uncertainties.

 

Cardio exercise keeps us happy and keeps our brains sharp.  It’s also often something we can do with friends to keep our connections thriving.

 

We are still going to die, but let’s enjoy every minute up until then.

Monday Workout: Twist!

I love working in various planes (not the flying kind!).  Going sideways and twisting as well as working forward and backward is good for our coordination, our balance, and our core control.  Three rounds.

 

kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s or over yets	10
squat to leg lift	30
bench press	20
lateral raise	10
woodchoppers	30
flies	20
pretty princesses	10

 

Gimme a reason (or five)

Sometimes we just need a reason to work out.  Here are five to choose from today:

 

1.     Because I told you to.  I’m an expert.  I know you should.  Now get to it.

2.     Because you’ll feel better afterwards.  Really.  The endorphins will move in your body and you’ll have a sense of accomplishment.

3.     Because it’s fun.  Fine, you’ll have to pick a workout you actually like.  Go biking, go dancing, play dodgeball with the kids.  Just get sweaty and breathless.

4.     Because you can have a treat afterwards.  (Be careful with this one, because it is hard to out-exercise a whole cake.)

5.     Because you look cute when you work out.  Really.  You do.

 

Go play.