Getting Started

I play pickleball.  (Go ahead and judge me.  I don’t care.  It’s fun.)  I play at the community courts where people at all levels can show up depending on the day.  In the last while, a person has been coming who has never played any sports before, ever.  She is learning a ton and, I think, having some fun.  It has made me think about the learning process for fitness generally.

Trying a new thing can be baffling.  All of a sudden we have way more body parts than we thought we did and they’re not where we thought they were and what is the score again?  We don’t want to make fools of ourselves (well, except me.  I’m good at it.), so we push ourselves to learn all the things at once.  This usually does not work.

 

Here’s what does work:  encouragement.  When we are new at something, we need to know that we’re doing something—ANYTHING—right.  Maybe we didn’t get the ball over the net, but we did hit it solidly.  Maybe we tried hitting the ball backhand instead of panicking.  Maybe we hustled to get to the ball.

 

Another thing that works:  focusing on one part of the task.  We can’t think about how to grip the paddle and where our feet are and bending our knees and keeping the paddle face in the right place and watching the ball all at the same time.  We need to pick one thing, maybe two.  We decide:  today I’m going to watch the ball hit the paddle and I’m going to follow through on my shot.  When that gets easier, we can try another thing.

 

One more thing that works:  forgetting the bad bits.  The last 27 serves went into the net?  So what?  We take a deep breath, we concentrate, and we hit the next one. 

 

Go play.

More about pain.

I’ve done a couple of posts recently about pain and discomfort, but I realized that I have a bit more to say about the recovery process.  Just like we need plenty of strategies for getting through our workouts, or even getting to our workouts, we need a toolkit to deal with the inevitable soreness.

Please note:  I am not a doctor or a physical therapist.  Actual injuries require actual medical treatment, not just some advice from a personal trainer.

 

Traditionally, trainers recommend RICE for dealing with soreness and injury:  Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation.  Those are all useful things to try, but they’re not the only things we can do.

 

For one thing, we can take Ibuprofen (if it is appropriate for us) to reduce inflammation and pain.  (There is no added moral benefit to suffering when there are helpful drugs available.)

 

Ice is great for swelling and it can reduce pain, but if we’re just sore and not swollen, heat can be helpful as well.  Personally, I find that when I have to ice some part of my body, the whole rest of my body tenses up from the cold so I have to be really hurting to be willing to do that.  On the other hand, I love adding heat, either via a heating pad, a microwaveable gizmo, or a hot bath or shower.  Your mileage may vary:  do what works.

 

Gentle movement has been shown to reduce sensations of pain.  This means some stretching or maybe a casual walk.  Again, if it doesn’t work for you, don’t do it.  Rest is also good and useful.

 

Our friend hydration also has a role to play in recovery.  Water is essential to so many body processes, including coping with the waste products of exercise.  Drink up.

 

Appropriate nutrition also helps us recover.  We need enough calories.  It can also help to avoid excess sugar, which can contribute to inflammation.  We also need enough protein, but basically none of us needs to worry about that.

 

Self-myofascial release using foam rollers, tiger tails, or yoga tune-up balls can help with those very very tight places.  It can be uncomfortable at first for people who are not used to the feeling, but most people find it to be a “hurts so good” kind of thing.

 

Possibly my favorite way to deal with soreness is massage.  It will be obvious if I ever win the lottery because I will get a massage every day.  Finding a massage professional who gets your body is worthwhile.  Different people respond best to different levels of pressure.  It is important to communicate with your massage therapist about what hurts, what level of pressure you like and can tolerate, and what your priorities are.

 

What are your favorite tools for dealing with the results of workouts?

Monday Workout: Old and New Friends

This week we have a bunch of compound exercises (no surprise).  Some of them are old friends, like burpees, and some are newer friends like skier jumps.  All of them will challenge us!  Three rounds. 

skier jumps	30
kb hammer curl	20
V sit press	10
squat heel lift	30
skullcrushers	20
burpees	10
mountain climbers	30
Arnold press	20
pretty princesses	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Star Plank

Today we see a rare image of the back of the Amazing Stickie!  In this picture, we are looking down on her from above as she does a star plank.

To do the star plank, Stickie begins in plank position:  hands directly under her shoulders, legs out long.  She makes sure that her body is a nice straight line from the top of her head to her heels.  Then she moves her arms out into a V position on the floor and spreads her legs into another V.  This will lower her body toward the floor a bit.  She holds the position for as long as she can manage without losing good form.

 

Thirty seconds is a good first goal.

How to Deal with Discomfort

In response to a post last week about pain versus discomfort, I was asked about how to cope with discomfort during workouts.  It’s a good question.  And, like all good fitness questions, the answer is to experiment and see what works. 

No, I’m not going to leave it at that.  That would be mean.  I’m going to offer some suggestions that we can try.

 

My first suggestion is that we find something we love to do.  When I am biking, for example, I can tolerate way more discomfort than I can if I’m stuck in traffic.  The sheer joy of biking helps me deal with the burning in my thighs and the breathless feeling and the way my hands eventually stop working altogether.  (OK, that last part is why I keep my bike rides short nowadays; that hand thing edges over into the pain and damage thing I talked about last week.)  Maybe for some of us we find our joy in dancing or in heavy lifting or in swimming or skiing or roller skating.  All of those things can bring on discomfort if we are working/playing hard.

 

Sometimes, though, for our own good we find ourselves facing the parts of workouts that do not bring us joy.  We need to get through those parts, too.  Don’t worry:  I have yet more suggestions!

 

Most of those come down to treating ourselves like fractious toddlers.  We can try distraction (hey, listen to this great song while we do our lunges!).  We can make sure we’re hydrated, fed, and rested to minimize the energy crashes (filling up a water bottle is a totally allowable rest period during a workout).  We can figure out what the absolute minimum goal is and stop then (Just one more lunge; you can do it!).  And we can use bribery (after this workout, I get to take a long, hot shower with the good-smelling soap!).

 

One other non-toddler friendly technique that we can use since we are grown-ups is keeping our eyes on the prize.  When we focus on why we are suffering through these lunges (to look cute, to climb Machu Picchu, to reduce our body fat percentage, to impress the boys, to have strong bones for independent living in old age, whatever…), we are more willing to undergo the hard parts.  A caveat:  it has to be a real reason, not one that we think we should have.  This is not the time to pretend we have some noble reason like being able to rescue baby animals from burning forests when what we really want is to make the mean girls at the high school reunion jealous of our awesomeness.  No one has to know our reasons.  No one gets to judge them.

 

A final thought:  for most exercise goals, there are lots of ways to accomplish them.  It is possible, oftentimes, to avoid exercises we truly hate by doing one we hate less.

 

Go play.

Vacation workouts are fun. Unless they're not.

I spent last week on vacation, so I’m thinking about vacation workouts.

For some of us, the whole idea of vacation workouts is oxymoronic.  Or just plain moronic.  It’s a vacation.  Nothing work-like or workout-like about it.  I am actually totally fine with the idea of going on vacation and not working out.  We all need rest times and seasons.

 

Then I go on vacation and… I want to work out.  Maybe I don’t want to do heavy lifting and it’s not like I can pack my Pilates equipment to take with me, but I want to move.  I now always travel with a yoga block and some yoga tune-up balls.  I have done yoga and mat Pilates in hotel rooms, at my mom’s house, and in the slightly-larger-than-a-folding-table space in our trailer.

 

Depending on the vacation, I may also walk a lot more than I do in my regular life.  I love to explore new places on foot, poking around in shops and trekking through museums.  I love strolls on the beach and hikes in the hills.  On other vacations, I get to swim.  Skiing is a vacation and a workout at the same time!  This last one, we got to play some pickleball.

 

What I’ve learned is that I personally do better when I get a bit of movement in, even if I spend most of the day sitting in the sunshine reading.

 

As always, my guiding principle for everyone is experimentation.  We need to do what works best for our own unique and wonderful selves.

Monday Workout: Abs

This week we’re keeping our abdominals engaged by doing asymmetrical exercises and exercises with a plank element.  Three rounds.

 

1 arm clean and press	30
bench press	20
renegade rows	10
woodchoppers	30
flies	20
kickbacks	10
squat to leg lift	30
deadlifts	20
star plank	10