the fitness thing: health pillar

the fitness thing

an integral part of our health pillar

this is the cover of a book circa 1976, about restoring oneself. The woman was in her early fifties. Her exercise was walking, surfing, and yoga - the sort of a yoga where you do a pose for a little bit, then rest before doing the next one. 

Inspiring.

If I only achieve one thing over the next twelve months, please, please, Powers That Be, let it be that I reach a good level of health and fitness. Again. Not just for my age, but for any reasonably healthy and fit woman. I'm not after crossfit levels, my standards are a bit lower than that (!). If my other life plans don't work out, I'm okay with that, as long as I get fitter and healthier. Especially in the new normal of times.

I seem to have lost many of the gains that I made with my health pillar - and it was just due to a crazy life and very little time for moi. Which is okay. Sometimes life just happens.

lifestyle

I've been looking at the long term: 

• what can I do, habitually, to achieve my goals? 
• 
  
• and what can I do to maintain whatever I am achieving, bit by bit? 

As a lifestyle.

And, herein, I do believe, lies the essence and reality of it all.  If I can't maintain as I go along, how can I possibly hope to achieve?

So, I straight away did the extremist thing: went to look a the new gym in the local shopping area. I had in mind getting up at 5.30am (as if!) each morning for the walking equipment one day then the muscle building machines the next day. Guess what? After I explained my goals etc, a very young man told me that I could try the classes for older people.

Oh my freaking equilibrium. Just hold fast whilst he talks. Smile and just be nice. He so needs to learn what older people actually can do, if given the chance. 

I really do not like group exercise. I taught yoga in gyms for years, and tried valiantly to go to classes at the yoga school which I was part of. I totally dislike being part of a class. And I decided that I would not Just Get Over Myself  and do the group thing (for oldies or otherwise)

I've trained hundreds of yoga teachers in my life, including anatomy and physiology as applies to yoga; how to "tone" with yoga: yoga for spirituality; etc etc; and also trained gym personnel in specific yoga stretches to use after exercise. So why oh why did I decide to do the gym thing? Which I'm not doing, now, by the way.

However, I did go to a gym before lockdown last year and even fitted in one last session at the machines before everything got closed. I did get great gains from the machines. Honestly I did. Maybe I'll change my mind in the future, and go back. Or not.

I know how to do opposite muscles groups. Rest and recovery. And all of that.  A couple of years ago, I was doing twenty repetitions of light weights body tone, last year, followed by yoga poses, with short walks. It maintained everything really good, but just didn't affect my weight nor add good muscle tone. As the years pass by, I do believe that we (or me, anyway) need stronger "stuff" for muscle tone and fitness. 

new routine

Firstly, because I am quite aware that I always do overkill, which just doesn't work for me, I have gone for structure and regularity. I know that Life often messes up our plans and that's okay, because with my new routine, because it's not "all or nothing", which seems to be a fault of mine, a missed out day here and there won't be The End Of The World with my goals.

basic daily minimum:

** do pushups (against a bench) asap I wake up. To wake up my muscles for the day ahead

** fitting in walks as often as possible  Whether it's a couple of short walks, or a longer one, each day. Whatever. This is for cardio.

** some yoga poses before bed. For glands and winding down. And no, I wouldn't be doing stretch. Stretch is stretch; yoga poses are for something else.

I'm going to go for variety. 

I've sussed out some parks and nearby beaches so that I can take little fur madam with me. I've still got asthma from that awful cold respiratory virus that I had. So flattish land is best at the moment. And I'll just build up the length of the walks over time.

Time to get back into fantastic-ness. Looking and feeling good.

And of course, Yoga poses such as the dreaded down dog, and low planks - aarrgghh - horrible, horrible. But hey, they really work to tone muscles and strengthen our bones. I really like vinyasa, power, and flow yoga (all moving forms of yoga), so I'll be doing these sometimes. 

Yep, so this is me. Moving onwards and upwards with health, specifically fitness. One of my beloved sisters sternly told me I needed to walk more, so that's what set me off planning a decent fitness routine. Shamed into it, you might say.

I have a ten minute flexibility and tone routine - link here. For when I run out of time for me. I think that it's important to have these sort of backups for when life gets crazy. 

I was wondering - what do YOU do for health and fitness??

** another off-the wall post on my spiritual blog, here

** a post about muscle memory, here

** and another about muscle memory, here