Move Your Body ~ LOEWEN BEHOLD ~ Move Your Life

Its Spring here.  Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.  In part because I spend inordinate amounts of time preaching about how winter here is really only a couple of days, not an entire season, but mostly because the snow has thankfully changed to rain.  Perspective is interesting; Isn’t it?

And so today I’m walking (No, that’s not a misprint.  Will someone please convince my Illiotibial Band to stand down from its valiant protest) through the forest tiptoeing on rock islands in a running steam of water that’s normally a trail, when it occurs to me this avoidance dance is ridiculous.  Particularly given rain is falling from the sky, and dripping from the canopy of Douglas Fir.

So I decide to screw it and begin walking like I normally would in the absence of liquid sunshine.  I feel myself smiling, and not just my face.  The feeling of grinning way deep inside is soooo worth the wet socks and shoes, and far surpasses any sterile satisfaction I have found whilst pumping away on indoor cardio equipment.

In what ways can you use fitness as a training ground for fun and play in your life?  Go ahead – tell me.

I completely fell off my yoga mat in September. As in falling off the wagon kind of falling.  I started a new job with a commute long enough for two travel mugs and a thermos, consequently somehow over 20 years of practicing nearly every day just vaporized. 

I have to tell you it hurts in ways I never imagined.  It hurts in my hips, the sides of my legs, my neck and my back.  Its as though I aged 10 years in three months.  I swear.  I have come to believe all people over 40 should do some sort of yoga every day, and so today is my first day back.

Coincidentally, I had two different conversations with two different people today about beating themselves up over falling off of the exercise wagon.  I am here to tell you it happens, and its no big deal, you just get back on. Life is not over.  You are still a good person and people will still love you.  Just stop the berating voice in your head, you know the one (and if you asking yourself which one, that would be the one) and get back at it.  Channel the energy you want to use to beat yourself up into building yourself up.

On that note, I am about to go unroll my mat…

Sometimes the Fitness Movement is dumb, says the consummate fitness professional.   Dumb because in the myriad of options and gimmicks available, the joy of moving for its own sake gets lost.  If complex periodized programs, fancy gyms or expensive equipment work for you, then great, keep it up.  If not, simple unstructured activities like blasting  Santana and boogeying around the living room, running through every puddle you can find, or yodeling like tarzan atop a big hill are fun, cheap, easy and great exercise.  Plus it feels great to let ‘er rip.

What about you? How might you bust a move?

Earlier this year I wrote about the joys of running at 5:00 AM in the dark with my Petzl headlamp. Yes, I was serious and yes I did admit to being a wee bit mad.  Sadly,   its all irreleavant now anyway as I started a new job this past September – one that involves a commute long enough for two venti-sized travel mugs full of good strong tea – and  my whole life has been turned upside down.

I love my new job, but the culture where I work highly values commitment and dedication.  So much so that booking an hour a day for lunch, (which for me means exercise) has been a real struggle, and I find myself often feeling as though I need to defend it.

The past few weeks have been chockablock full of meetings (which means way too much time sitting) with no time to think, reflect or plan, except when I am exercising. And so it has struck me that this one hour a day I set aside has become extremely valuable not just for my own personal health. Its also enhancing my work productivity significantly by creating space where I can think, sort through things, really consider options, proritize, plan and reflect. Consequently, I feel way more vibrant and alive in the afternoon. Well until about three anyway, when my chin inexplicably and involuntarily finds its way to my chest.  Coincidentally, it seems to happen at the same time my eyelids close. In a meeting no less.

I”d like to tell you that I take off out running out the door and immediately loose myself in the sky, the trees and the fresh air, but the truth is I do some of both. I sort, file, organize and create space in my work brain, and I have some truly zen-fully-present-fully-alive Eckart Tolle moments.

The bottom line is my time huffing and puffing on the exercise bike, rowing maching and trails actually makes me better at my job.  Its not only good for me, its good for my work.  Nevermind that no one would work with me if I didn’t exercise an hour a day because I’d be so intolerable.

I miss starting my day off feeling like a  Bering Sea Crab Boat Captain, but I am finding real joy and relief in exercising midday to. Our bodies were meant to move, and God knows my brain can use all the extra oxygen I can circulate. I think we should celebrate some form of exercise or movement as a necessary part of our work day, don’t you?

Yesterday over tea, I had a wonderful, beautiful, vicacious friend tell me how depressed she feels because she’s put on weight and nothing fits.  Ohhhhh, who hasn’t been there before? My experience is even stocking your closet with closes ranging over several sizes doesn’t help.  Nor does trying harder.  It just makes it worse.  Much worse.

The problem is that as women, we seem to attach most, if not all, of our value as a person to our dress size and a number on the scale, yet I can’t imagine ever loving someone less because they are a size 18, instead of an 8. (I only do this to myself, don’t you?) Just like I can’t imagine ending a relationship (well first I’d have to be in one) with someone because he lost all his hair.  Its ludicrous.

And so I remind myself I am a suite of attributes. Okay, that might be somewhat generous, but the point is that we are so much more than our dress size, so we need to stop using it to guage self worth. We need to focus on the whole person and what we bring to the world.

I think the only way to sustain healthy eating and active living is to do it because it makes you feel so damn good, instead of how you hope it will make you look, or as some sort of punishment for dessert. Falling into the vicous circle of I am fat therefore I must eat salad and sweat, pretty much always results in feeling fatter and lazier.

Take a hammer to the scale, rip the labels of our your clothes (carefully) and stop looking in the mirror. Move your body, eat lots of fruits and veggies and guage your self worth on your entire contribution to this life. You are so much more than your dress size. 

And K, I love you just as much as I did when I first met you. Truly, and thank you for the inspiration to get back to my blog.

I’ve been in a slump lately. I was fortunate enough to have four whole complete days off in a row over the Canada Day long weekend. Heaven right? Well its supposed to be, but instead I crashed and burned. I got out of bed on Saturday morning audibly groaning at the idea of running, or doing anything for that matter. Plus my right Achilles Tendon insisted on loudly reminding me that its propelled me through an active life for more than 42 years.

So instead of dragging my sorry ass down the road, I headed for the gym with my IPOD, and jumped on one of the Spinning bikes, something I haven’t done in eons.  The first 10 minutes were so pathetic I may as well have been reading a cookbook, but once Aerosmith started belting out Sweet Emotion, I was pumping my quads like mad to ascend the biggest ass hill I could muster.  Before I could fully recover I cranked up U2, I Will Follow and hummed along as fast as my short legs would go.  And Sia’s Breathe Me?  That’s gotta be the best ride through the desert I’ve ever had.  (Well second best, but that’s another story)

It was 70 minutes later, when I finally dialed in Pearl Jam, Just Breathe and simmered down, my clothes drenched, a puddle of sweat on the floor. It was the best, and toughest, workout I’ve had in sometime, and I felt fantastic – wholly and completely alive.  I went home and thoroughly enjoyed cleaning and organizing closets. Really, I did.

Its so easy to fall into a rut, like a hamster in a treadmill, going, going, going….  heading out the door everyday, running down the same road, at the same speed. Sometimes, like a car that’s idling too high, the best remedy might be to just hit the gas pedal, blow out the cobwebs and go for it.  Who knows where you’ll end up?  It sure worked for me.  This time anyway.  And wow my closets look great.

How about you?  Ever tried this route?

Clothes shopping at Winners makes me feel like a loser, or at least it did last week. I was nearly mowed down twice by an unsmiling salesperson with a movable rack of clothes. I’m not sure exactly where she was going in such a rush, but I was happy to escape with my Achilles tendon in tact. I swear the sterile change room had lighting designed to emphasize every dimple and pucker and the annoying anti-shop lifting devices were attached in places that prevented doing up the clothes. Maybe a mute point because nothing fit properly anyway. Imagine that.

Unfortunately this happens to me a lot, and I’m pretty sure I am not alone.  N’est pas? Somewhere along the way we’ve been brainwashed into believing we need to fit ourselves into factory made clothing of a certain size, namely size 6, or smaller. When we don’t, we either makes ourselves lie down on the bed, exhaling every bit of available carbon dioxide in our bodies and zipping, so we can beat ourselves up over the resulting muffin top, (is it any wonder?) or we buy it anyway, despite the fact it fits in some places but not in others, telling ourselves not eating for two or three days will remedy the problem.

But it doesn’t really, does it? The item sits in the closet never to be worn, instead serving as a painful reminder of how bad we are for not starving away those annoying lumps and bumps. I say its time to stop the torture. The whole concept of size 6 arrived with the mass production of clothes during the Industrial Revolution. Prior to that, we sewed, or had sewn for us, garmets tailor made for our unique shapes. Imagine that?

Obviously, that would get pricey and might not be realistic in today’s world, but about three years ago, I discovered that a good tailor can do pretty much anything, even jeans, and its not nearly as expensive as one might think. So now, when I really like something, I buy a size larger and take it to the Duncan Tailors where they get out the pin cushion and for about $12.00 make it fit me. Sure it costs a little more, but less than spending money on clothes I’ll never wear.

Winners may not be my favourite place to shop, but I am usually able to come home with something I feel good about, knowing a few alterations will make it work for me. I can honestly say I am done with trying to fit into what’s on the rack.  Thank God, because it was a losing battle.

What about you?  What are your shopping experiences?

I find it painful to go to the gym. Not so much because I don’t like cardio equipment, fans and TVs, but because its extremely difficult to watch people essentially wasting time by unknowingly performing ineffective, or worse yet potentially harmful, exercises without offering up some assistance. Especially as I am an extroverted Fitness Yackadactyl (creature defined by a well defined and constantly moving set of jaw muscles, or in this blogger’s case, fingers).

I was reminded of this the other day while driving to work and listening to CBC. I heard about something called ROWE, or Results Only Work Environment.  The tagline, ‘where people are paid for productivity and not time spent,’ expresses the underlying premise of getting the job done, rather than putting in a prerequisite number of hours.

So, how does this apply to fitness you ask? We can increase productivity and decrease time at the gym by applying ROWE to exercise. The key is to select exercises and activities that give you the most bang for your time-spent buck. Here are some tips for constructing your Results Only Workout. 

Build your fitness program around 4 key cornerstones: Cardiovascular, Strength, Flexibility and Nourishment

Cardiovascular – In order to achieve results you must elevate your heart rate to 70 – 85% of your HR MAX. I can explain this at length if you are interested, or you can aim to work at an intensity where your heart and breathing rates are high enough you are able to carry on a conversation, but JUST barely. Never mind all the Fat Burning Zone, jargon, which warrants a post of its own. Just get your heart rate up and keep it up everyday for 30 – 50 minutes, remembering you can do this in intermittent bouts. Heart Rate Monitors are fabulous for helping with this, but if you don’t want to spend $100 ask me about taking your own pulse manually. Its free.

Strength – If you want maximum benefit for minimum time, perform one set of 12 reps of these four exercises: Chest Press or Push Up, Mid or Bent Over Row, Squat or Lunge and Dead Bug.  You will hit all the major muscle groups in the body with these four exercises.  Also, note the single set training has proven to be effectiveprovided your one set is a good one.  Remember, you MUST lift to momentary muscle fatigue in 12 or less reps.  This means you are not able to complete another rep while maintaining perfect form. If you are curling A two LB dumbbell 40 times, its much too light and you’re wearing out your joints, and not making a good use of your time.

NB – Generally weight exercises that involve bouncing, momentum, twisting of the spine, or bending over while hanging on to weights are NOT a good idea.

Flexibility - Stretch each major muscle group in the body and hold for 15 – 30 seconds without bouncing. Emphasize areas that are typically tight – hamstrings, hipflexors, calves, pecs and back of the neck. Yoga Sun Salutations are also a complete practice, so performing four Sun Series A and Sun Series B is a great way to target key tight spots.

NB – Generally, stretches that involve bouncing or wincing are not a good idea. You should never feel pain in a joint, only gentle tension in a muscle.

Nourishment – When it comes to eating focus your efforts on what you need to do, rather than obsessing about what you don’t. Eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Take time to slowly chew your food and pay attention to how what you are eating makes you feel.

And don’t forget to breathe!

I loooove this bag.  I bought one years ago when I was working at the Golden Door teaching a gazillion fitness classes a day. It fits perfectly into a locker without any ramming or jamming, and the front flap, complete with pouches for shampoo and toiletries, opens just like the locker door. The interior of the bag is split perfectly so a breatheable lower compartment perfectly fits my stinky sweaty shoes, and there’s a waterproof outer pocket for a wet swimsuit or towel.

Sadly, I don’t teach fitness all day every day, but I still love, and use the bag all the time.  Its worth noting that I have been using it frequently for almost 10 years and it has endured beautifully. I like to leave the toiletries, indoor gym shoes and a towel inside at all times, and then all I need to do is tuck in some shorts and a top the night before, and I am good to go. Its so easy.  No excuses.

Funnily enough though, someone at work asked me if I had a cat in my bag. She thought I was carrying a pet transport bag.  No, just my gear ready to go!

Over the past 20 years Personal Training I have come to see strengths and weaknesses are not as black and white we might think. Sometimes muscles that appear strong are actually weak, and strong muscles, while looking good in the mirror, are typically tight and short, often leading to musculo-skeletal injuries. Apparently, this blurring of the lines extends beyond just muscles.

I was having lunch with a friend last week and he talked about how sometimes our percieved biggest weakness is actually our hidden greatest strength. I immediately thought of my own body, which after running eleven marathons, teaching literally thousands of fitness classes, pumping countless weights, practicing yoga and Pilates daily and consuming a vegetarian diet, still resembles the Venus de Milo, not Twiggy. What the hell?

We all know Fitness Professionals are NOT supposed to be curvy. Says who? Well, no one actually says it out loud. Instead they do things like suggest playing squash, or cutting down on carbs to help shrink my hips.  Riiiiggght. Do you think if it was that easy I wouldn’t have done it by now? Then there is the ridiculously obvious look of surprise when people discover my marathon PR is sub 3:45. Once in a high school track meet, someone actually remarked, OUT LOUD, that he couldn’t believe someone my size could run so fast. Sigh.

I guess that’s when it became a bit personal mission to show people fitness comes in varying shapes and sizes. Okay maybe its more that ‘a bit’ of a mission. Maybe its a life-driving-all-consuming obsession. I still struggle inside, looking at many of my colleagues with envy, but honestly its what defines my work. Thank you to so many of you who have responded and stuck with me for years even though I am so not a Barbie Doll. You have transformed what I percieve as my biggest struggle into my greatest strength.

Now what about you?  What’s your hidden Golden Achilles Heel?