Building A Base

This initial month of my gettin' back in shape program is what I'm calling building a base.  I'm still way to weak to do something like P90X or even most of the N+TC workouts.

My main goal this month is to really focus on strengthening my core and protecting my back, all while starting to build up a little bit of cardio endurance.

Because of the previously mentioned back problems (aka the Babyback), the core strengthening is crucial. I have a little routine I do thanks to my lovely physical therapist Sydney that I supplement with some other stuff taken from here and there.

It varies (because I get bored with routines quickly) but here is what my week roughly looks like:

• Day One:  Core stabilizing routine and abs plus 30 minutes elliptical
• Day Two:  Short core stabilizing routine plus 30 minute treadmill run
• Day Three: 30 minute Core strengthening workout
• Day Four: Core stabilizing routine plus 30 minutes treadmill
• Day Five: 45 Strength and Abs (probably a N+TC workout)
• Day Six: Rest
• Day Seven: Longer run

The short core stabilizing routine involves:

1. Supine pelvic repositioning - 4 times 
2. Core activation - twice with crossed arms and twice uncrossed
3. Toe taps
4. Bird dog - 15 seconds per side, 3 repeats

The longer version includes also:

1. Hip Lifts
2. Hip lifts with alternating legs lifts
3. Bicycles
4. Flutter kicks (still with legs pretty high up to keep back pressed against floor)
5. Forearm planks
6. Squats

Today was Day 3 and I supplemented the Core stabilizing routine with an ab workout from N+TC - Alpha Abs.  It was perfect for me right now.  (At some point, I'll tell you all about my love of N+TC)

I'm hoping to do this for two more weeks and then maybe move on to a specific 30 or 90 day workout block, either from N+TC or maybe PiYo...  Any favourite 30 day workout plans out there?

Where I'm Returning From (Pre to Post Natal)

Well, as mentioned before, it's been a while.  Since I last posted, I've had one kid, recovered my fitness, got back on track, then had a second kid.  Many lessons were learned in the process.  I'm not going to bother recounting that first journey, since I'll cover some of the stuff I learned when I tell you my current Back In Shape plan.

So here I am, 4 months postpartum... How to get back on track? How to get back into shape, start running again, tighten up that baby pooch?

First thing I did learn from last time was to start slowly.  Things don't work quite the same as they used to and if you don't strengthen the parts that need strengthening, when you then start running again, things get hurt.

During pregnancy:
Both times, I ran all the way through the beginning of my 8th month of pregnancy, and then swam laps for the last two.   I did this 2-3 days a week.

In addition, I did yoga and strengthening.  The three workouts I did most were:

• Jane Austin Prenatal Yoga:  This was great and even on days when I was exhausted or felt awful (which sadly was the case for a lot of both pregnancies) I could even just do the first 30 minutes of this and it would help a lot!  I also love that it works the arms hard but then really stretches and relaxes.
• The Perfect Pregnancy- Vol. 1-Sculpting:  I do love this - it feels like a real workout, working on strength and has three levels you can do within the workout.  As someone who was pretty fit coming into the pregnancy, this workout was satisfying.  And the Keep Up arm workout at the end burns!!!
• Prenatal Fitness Fix with Erin O'Brien:  This workout was shorter but also satisfying in that it wasn't too easy and felt like an actual workout.  I didn't do this the first pregnancy but after doing Erin O'Brien's Postnatal Rescue, I found these and added them to the mix this time.

That was my schedule during pregnancy and I honestly do think it helped me make it through both pregnancies, both mentally and physically.

The AfterMath:

Both times, I was careful about waiting six weeks till I was cleared by my OB to workout. I did however start doing Erin O'Brien's Postnatal Rescue stretching before the 6 week mark.  

After 6 weeks, I began the following:

• Postnatal Rescue workouts, 2 weeks on each level of workout
• The Runner's World Guide to Running and Pregnancy plan for starting running again.

But this was not enough either time.  Both last time and this time, I have had severe lower back pain that made it difficult to stand up, bend over, pick up my baby... So I needed to step up my back and core rehabilitation.  That's where I'll be starting from... Next post :)

Can Fitness Be Sidelined?

You might think you know the answer to that question. Fitness can be sidelined, we say, because Crazy Job, because New Relationship, because Babies Be Babies*.

Ok, yeah. But no.

It's been about 5 years since I contributed to this blog, mainly because I stopped contributing to my fitness. After a series of really annoying injuries and issues (at one point I had a tweaky right knee and a painful left shoulder, which pretty much put me out of any game) I decided to hit the pause button. 

Damn that pause button. It's sneaky - it says Pause then changes to Stop, and life doesn't have a helpful transitional screen saver. Eventually I stopped feeling the need to work out, lost the giddiness of a personal best, misplaced the delicious habit of knowing my own metrics by heart. My V02, heart rate zones, target rpms and pace per mile, almost as dead as the dodo. 

Almost. Because the real answer to the question is this: No, your fitness cannot be sidelined.

Once you have a sense of your own fitness, once that is stamped onto your DNA, injected into your bloodstream, embedded under your skin or tattooed on the back of your neck, that sense doesn't leave you. Your fitness habit will slip next to you in the soft gentle light some dawn and like a delicate kiss, whisper "You're going to age really badly and that's not what I had planned..."

Then it will taunt you when you rise from a good night's sleep and don't feel rested, stand accusingly when you notice your gut popping over your jeans and laugh like an ass when you face plant on the sidewalk.

When we interpret fitness as physical beauty, sculpted abs or Perfect-Butt-in-30-Days! we miss a crucial point. Fitness is feeling incomparable. Fitness is being energized. Fitness is balance, flexibility, grace in handling life's weird twists. Fitness is us: happy.

After a frustrating and stressful job, never feeling quite rested, massaging my waist fat like it was bread dough and quite literally falling flat on my face on Howard Street to great humiliation (Hi guys across the street at Kate O'Brien's, drinking beer and watching me bleed) and expense (emergency room, ambulance, stitches), it finally dawned on me during that delicate dawn kiss that I really missed being fit.

So I'm back at it. New personal metrics, adjusted zones, different targets. My former personal best will stand, but not quite as high on the scale as the simple act of taking my fit self off pause.


*My Tiny90 blog partner, Sara, just had her second baby. She kept running until a month before her due date and will likely start running again the very minute she can. Babies be Babies, but Mom Needs a 3-Mile Run, Dammit :-)

WorkTravel Boot Camp

I'm on the road again, and this time I've decided to be even more structured about my workout plan. I've come a long way since my first few trips over a year ago, and have since realized that while I'm here in Cyprus editing I don't have any of the normal every day distractions that I do back home: no errands to run, no shopping to do, no cooking for myself, no house cleaning, no social distractions (well, hardly any)... You get my drift. It's just working, eating and taking care of myself.

I realized that while I could force myself to just plow through entire days of work, I am much more productive when I take breaks mentally and take care of myself physically. In fact, this work-travel scenario is ideal for a boot camp: I can make myself workout twice a day! As I mentioned in the past, I've been limiting myself to workouts that don't involve any equipment. So I loaded up my laptop with my P90X videos (the ones that didn't call for weights), Podcasts and my running buddy, the Nike+ enhanced iPod.

Here I am one third of the way through my trip and so far, it's going swimmingly:

Day 1:

• Woke up far too early (jetlag)
• Morning (pre-breakfast): Did 24 minute pilates routine from a podcast (Fit for Duty: Pilates is the podcast) - Verdict: could feel it wake up my body, could feel my core working, not my favourite workout though... Will keep searching for another good pilates podcast. Suggestions greatly appreciated!!
• Evening (pre-Dinner): Did Yogamazing podcast: 25 minutes of Yoga for Back and Shoulders. It was a decent one, not brutally hard but made for a first day of jetlagged working out.

Day 2:

• Woke up far too early (still jetlagged!)
• Morning (pre-breakfast): Yogamazing Podcast: 25 minutes of Yoga for Abs. This was good, could feel the results, that super satisfying ab burn. whoo!
• Evening: Kenpo X (from P90X). Good tiring sweat-producing workout. YAH!

Day 3:

• Still woke up a bit on the early side despite having stayed out till 1am. Soooo tired :(
• Morning (pre-breakfast): 15 minutes of Yogamazing Podcast: Heart Openers. Just going for stretching here. Since it was Sunday, I decided it would be my day off from working out since it's usually our most productive edit day (what with my director being stuck with me all day) but felt I needed a bit of a stretch from my many hours spent at the computer.

Day 4:

• Early morning: Back on track! Got to bed a bit earlier and had a pretty solid night sleep.
• Morning (Pre-breakfast): Cardio X (from P90X). I was FIRED UP! I love this workout! I felt all worked out and awesome afterwards and absolutely scarfed down my breakfast. (which by the way is the typical Cypriot Breakfast: tomato, halloumi cheese, olives first, then a slice of toast with some homemade fruit preserves and a slice of Anari* cheese on top. Yum!)
• Midday (pre-lunch) - 8 minute Office Stress Relief yoga session from Yoga Today Podcast. Feels good... My neck, shoulders and back were getting a bit pissy from all this editing.
• Evening (pre-dinner) - Yogamazing 17 minute yoga for neck and shoulders & Yoga Today Deep Core Strengthening for 10 minutes.
  

My plan for tomorrow is to go for a run (ideally about 40 minutes) in the morning and do yoga workout (this time with an upper body strength focus) in the evening.

So the working out is going according to plan. Meanwhile, the eating part is pretty much going as expected: I mean clearly, it's a great thing to have a fabulous Cypriot cook (my director's mother) preparing meals for us all the time, but everything is so yummy, I seem to be eating quite a lot. At least her style of Cypriot cuisine is chock full of veggies and salads and is generally quite healthful. Or at least, that's what I keep telling myself.

*God, I wish we had Anari in the states. It's basically the leftover whey water from making Halloumi (which gets all the fat), so it's kind of like a super fresh ricotta, a bit softer with slightly bigger curds, very low fat, pretty high protein, which makes it an awesome healthy breakfast cheese.

EA Active - Over and Out!

Well, I made it through the 30-day challenge for the EA Active Wii game and... it was OK. Towards the end of the challenge, I'd primarily done workouts in the Advanced category, with only a few Intermediates snuck in when I didn't have time for a fuller workout.

The four main elements that every workout uses are:

1. Cardio: there were several things that were slipped into this category.
   
   • My favorite was the boxing (no surprise here): alternating between punching targets, punching the bag and standing on the balance board and kicking the bag. Good stuff, always raises my heart rate and gets me sweating. Also good for getting out that aggressive energy.
     
   • Also quite good: the track running, high knees, and kick backs. The track workouts were surprisingly good for what is essentially just running in place. The high knee and kick back intervals particularly really got my heart pumping and I'd be sweating by the end. The visuals were fun and having other people run on the track actually worked to make me speed up to pass them. No interval was ever longer than 6 minutes, but as long as I don't use EA Active as my primary source of cardio workouts, that's just fine.
   • My least favorite here was the Dance. So lame. It was basically a much less exciting version of DDR (either just upper body with the Wiimotes or upper and lower using the balance board). Sorry, it was just super lame and no matter how vigorously I tried to do the moves, I still didn't feel particularly worked out.
2. Upper body strength: a variety of the standard either isolated or combined strength moves using the band. They were pretty good, I've definitely felt a difference in my upper body but the band isn't great for all the moves. Also, I think it would have been a smart move to add some pushups or something along those lines which I feel is much better for ramping up the upper body strength. One thing I really didn't like here was that with two workouts in a row, 2 days back to back, it had me do one workout that focussed on upper body the first day, but then still had me doing upper body strength the second day, instead of resting it. Not cool.
   
3. Lower body strength: decent array of squats, lunges, with some interesting challenging moves thrown in, like the jump squats, the stationary squats and stuff like that. In general, this focus felt effective. I definitely had days when I was brutally sore after a lower body focus workout.
   
4. Sports: Now this part is just fun. I really enjoyed all the sports (tennis, basketball, volleyball, baseball and skating) and they typically felt like a good distraction from the focus of the workout while still doing something of a workout.
   

Having completed the challenge though, I don't know that I would do it again, since it doesn't seem to scale to my ability level. One of the things I liked about Maya and Yourself! Fitness (aka My Fitness Coach), was that there was a check in each workout to see how it was and if it was too easy, the program would adjust to make it harder. There were also fitness tests every certain number of workouts to gauge my improvement. With Wii Fit, while the workouts aren't as challenging as EA Active can be, I can both track my ability to do certain moves and see improvement, as well as track my weight.

In the end, that kind of interaction with the program makes it something that's worth going back to (and ultimately owning). With EA Active, I'm only likely to do one of those workouts every once in a blue moon, if I'm bored with whatever else I have going on. The awards that the program gives me aren't interesting enough for me to come back for more. The only thing that keeps me coming back is being able to track my progress.

Your Body's Return Policy

Thank you for purchasing your male or female body. We hope you're satisfied with your purchase!

Proper maintenance of your body is key to its proper performance and longevity. Here are a few tips to keep your body happy and functioning for a long time:

1. You must fuel your body! Yes, it's true, your body will cease to function properly if you neglect this step. The best fuels for your body are lean proteins, complex carbohydrates including whole grains and unsaturated fats. 
2. Your body must be watered several times a day. You will release the fluids several times a day, which may seem odd at first, but keeping your body happily saturated makes it function at the high levels for which it was designed.
3. Your body loves to move. Take it for walks, runs and periods of energetic play. If you can make your body sweat a few times a week, your body will reward you with strength, flexibility and a nice frame for tailored cloth.
4. Your body also loves a good rest. Be sure to give it enough time to regenerate. Should you not give your body long periods of rest, it will become cranky and irritable. This is not a design flaw.

It's possible that after several years, your body may become bloated and unable to perform the duties for which it was designed. This is most likely to occur if you do not follow the four steps above for proper maintenance. Remember, you can return to proper maintenance at any point as long as you own your body, and reverse the disfunction.

However, should you decide not to follow proper maintenance steps, we must advise you that there is no return policy for this product. For a list of disposal options, please consult your local medical clinics and waste maintenance and dumpster companies. Please note: you will likely not be able to complete the disposal yourself; please assign these tasks to someone close to you, and warn them of the likely obscene expense of the process.

We strongly recommend proper maintenance of your purchase. Really. 

The Mental Starting Point

I guess I'm pretty smart. I've been telling everyone for months that the New York Times proposed paywall (paying for online content) won't work because no one will go from "this is free" to "OK I'm willing to pay for this." The even smarter folks at Techdirt picked up a quote from an equally smart guy named Dan Ariely, who is a behavioral economist:

The main problem of this approach is that over the years of free access, the New York Times has trained its readers for years that the right price (or the Anchor) is $0 -- and since this is the starting point it is very hard to change it...

First point: It's tough to change established thought patterns. It's something akin to fixing a gear on a bike that's buried in mud beneath a sunken boat in a sea filled with really hungry sharks.

Dan-the-behavioral-economist (cool geek job title, Dan) goes on to point out that if the NYT decided to offer something unique and desireable, the paywall might pay off. But that's not part of their plan. The Grey Lady appears to be submerged in that fixed state mentality of What Was Once Proven To Be True Will Always Be True. In this case, it's "We're the New York Times; we're the preferred source." When print was king, that was true. Now fast, first and accessible rules our news worlds.

Second point: Fixie is good for a bike, not so good for a mind.

The battle against fixed state mentality is ubiquitous and forever, so it's good to practice fluid thinking. Certain professionals - scientists, I'm thinking - know better than to trust static ideas, so they try not to take anything for granted. Is the world round? Yes, but it's also flat.  Questioning even proven truths can bring illuminating results.

A mentality I constantly question is "I'm not the athletic type." As a kid I was lousy in gym, crap on the playground, last to be picked for any team. Lots of kids were like that, but I actually trained myself to fail on the field so that I could quit and go do something else. I'd run slow and get tagged, get hit by the ball I was supposed to dodge, etc. It was an insanely successful device - I suffered far less humiliation than my fellow stumblers, who stuck with it and endured the pain of public failure.

It had a nasty backlash, though. I had created a truth for myself, so that's who I was - the non-athlete, non-competitor, bleacher kid. So in high school, when I discovered that I was really good at running hurdles, my interest hit a brick wall - I couldn't get the gym coaches to take me seriously. Changing someone's fixed idea of me - the idea I created - wasn't going to happen. Not in high school, anyway.

It took a marathon training program, a world-class fitness guru, a couple of kick-ass programs (Jim's Performance Max and Tony's P90X) and lots of brain-bending therapy over many years to finally rid myself of that programming. I still battle it, but I think I should always battle it. Now that I've finally pried that bike loose, it's a really sweet ride.