Tag Archives: exercise

Stretch Gooder With a Simple Mind Trick

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If you are like me, stretching is not one of those areas you can excel in. I will never make to the level of a Yoga Master, Exercise Training Specialist, and no where close to the rubber like flexibility of a baby.

Stretching has always been work for me. Touching my toes after my Teens was moved to a personal olympic event. It was too painful on the backs of my knees. Almost every doctor I have seen has told me I am way too tense. If this sounds like you, help is on the way.

I have recently discovered how to make stretching easier. Making stretching easier increases individual stretches to levels I never thought I could achieve. It does this painlessly to the point, I surprise myself with the new angles of stretch I am able to reach.

While each of us have our own built in limits to what we can do with our bodies, I can quickly explain how you too can stretch farther, easier, and with less effort than you could only a few minutes ago.

Here is a sample to get you started. Keep your personal safety in mind, and do not stretch any body part you normally do not stretch. Pick any simple stretch that you normally do, which you know you do not do as well as others. Read the next paragraphs before continuing and  be careful not to overstretch. You do not want to hurt yourself.

The idea of this first stretch is to set a median stretch for you to compare to after you try using the method I will explain to you when you stretch a second time.

Stop stretching where you normally stop, do not try to achieve a new personal best. The purpose of this first stretch is find your normal stretch or twist limit, not to set a personal record, or to prove me wrong. I do not want you to hurt yourself, and my feelings won’t be hurt if it does not work for you.

Notice your body position if you are twisting your torso in some manner for your stretch, if that is a common stretch for. Pause as you reach your stretch limit and notice your body position in relation to something you can use to measure against.
If you are doing a different type of stretch, notice where your fingers touch your body or other surface. If you are doing a more general stretch, say touching your toes, or bending sideways watch where your hands, fingers, or finger tips stop against your legs.

Do not hold the stretch or struggle to stretch a little bit farther.

Over stretch and you could hurt yourself, and we do not want that to happen. Slowly move back the position you started from.

If something does not feel right, stop now as what I am about to suggest is not for you.

If you feel the same as before you stretched, here is what I suggest you do, and see if it makes a difference.

The first time I tried stretching while focusing on other things the length of my stretch improved a lot and without tightness or pain.

When you begin to stretch think about doing the stretch safely. Think about some part of your body that is not involved in the stretch, say and ankle or elbow that is not part of what you are stretching. Concentrate on the body part you picked, and ignore the body parts and muscles being used in the stretch itself. It also helps if you direct your focus on something away from you, look at a pattern on the wall, ceiling, or floor. Keep as many of your senses focused on something besides the muscles you are using for the stretch.

I think what is happening is by thinking about safety, a part of your body not being used in the stretch, and keeping your eyes busy is this:

When we think about something, that thing has our focus. In the case of our body when we focus on some part of it, that part gets ready for action, it gets ready for a change in state. The muscle is no longer loose and relaxed.  Our awareness of that body part is heightened.

Think about going to your Dentist for dental work. If we know we are going to get a tooth drilled on, our complete focus is on that tooth. We wait tensely for the smallest sign of discomfort. In short we overcompensate instead of relaxing and ignoring.

So it is with our muscles. When we stretch and focus on our thigh for example, our thigh is not as relaxed as it would be when we think about our ankle while we stretch our thigh.

We can imitate a magician and use misdirection. Our mind is focused over there, but what is really happening (the stretch) is over here, and we are not paying attention. I discovered this during my own stretching a few months back. I have found it does make a difference having something else for my mind to focus on while I stretch, than if I place my focus on my stretching.

I have better results when my thoughts are other places than the muscles I am stretching. I hope you have the same experience and find more satisfaction in your stretching without pain or discomfort. Good exercise does not hurt.

* The misspell in the title is intentional.

 

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How To Feel Better About Your Community And Yourself

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feel goodI was out walking last evening, and thought up another use for my rule of three. Perhaps it will change the world too, or at least your little slice of it. As I mentioned before, I enjoy doing things by three.

The number three is important or valued in some areas, a powerful number. The Christian bible being a good example. When there was a battle, and the good guys won, the army is a number divisible by three. On the other hand the defeated is usually a number divisible by four. The Trinity is another good example, the Stations of the Cross, and I imagine the list goes on and on. Three is thought to be a powerful number. I happen to like using three because it feels like a little more than one or two, but not as hard to remember as four or more.

I thought late last night, why restrict doing something good to just where I walk. Why not bring that thought or act into the rest of my life? I went through a number of ideas, and came up with this one. It will take some time to get it moving, but I think people will catch on and help because it makes our world a cleaner prettier place to be.

As I walked to the park yesterday, I slowed down where some tumbleweed was growing in the rocks next to the sidewalk. As few cars approached I saw my opportunity. I bent over and pulled some tumbleweed out and placed it on the curbside of the street.

Once on the walking path, I picked up some paper trash as two people were walking towards me. For my third act, I again pulled some tumbleweed and set it to the curb as a car drove by and a walker was walking towards me. I used three timed opportunities to attempt to influence neighbors and fellow walkers. If I do this every time I am out over the summer, say sixty times over the next months, I am providing almost two hundred people the opportunity to be influenced into doing something good for themselves and their community.

That is great for the few blocks to the park and the walking path, but what about the rest of my day. That is when I decided it was time to turn it into three. Three times during my day, I am going to look for opportunities to do something positive and helpful, in an effort to influence other people to do the same. I think it is a great grass roots movement in the making!

Doing something good in front of other people is modeling a behavior we all should be doing, but for various reasons do not. Some of us have become shy about standing out in a crowd and doing anything that makes them stand out and be noticed. Being noticed for role modeling a good action is a great thing.

I think it is time to end those behaviors and do something good for all of us at the same time. The rule of three can be a guideline, but by no means a stopping point if opportunities present themselves. For example today, I told a worker at a local salad bar, that I hope their boss notices how hard they work, and what a good job they do. I commented on a pretty blouse a woman was wearing who looked up as she ate, looking tired from carrying life’s burdens.

Please join in by looking for three opportunities every day to model a positive behavior in front of others or by doing something for someone else. Pick up a piece of paper on the ground, pull a weed from a city flower bed, offer to help someone with something simple, like carrying their books as you both walk home. I do not think it has to be anything big to start making a big difference.

It may feel awkward at first, but the feelings of happiness and contentment that follow later on make up for any feelings of standing out. Plus picking up a few pieces of trash and throwing them away where they belong will make your neighborhood a more pleasant place. And you will feel good about what you are doing!

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Don’t Spring Into Spring

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Spring time is here in New Mexico, and I know if it is not yet spring where you live, it will be soon. From my time in the military I know that spring is a time when people hurt themselves. We go out and start doing things we have not done since last fall, or maybe even before that. We remember we used to run, jump, skip, hop, lift weights once upon a time and we are suddenly in a hurry to get right back into it.

There is a small issue though. Our bodies are a number of months older, and we have not done a lot other than hang out on the couch and snack over the winter. If the young men and women in their late teens and early twenties were hurting themselves when I was in the military, and they are in better condition than most of us, what do you really think your chances of surviving your spring weather exercise plan is?

exercise4Surviving a hastily put together exercise plan is not as good as the chance of hurting yourself. I joined a gym for a year some time ago, and I had the good fortune of spending an hour with a trainer who really cared about proper training. After listening to me and what I thought I could do, he instructed me on what I should do.

I should start out slow. After all it took me many years to arrive at whatever physical state I was in, and there was no rush to get into top physical condition in the next few weeks. What surprised me the most was the amount of weight he had me start out with for my ten or so weight machine exercises. I was to start using ten pounds

I thought that was silly, after all I was used to lifting much more than ten pounds going to the pet store for cat litter and cat food. I humbled myself though, and told myself he was the expert, not me, even if I did not believe what he was telling me. Then he said, “No pain, no gain was a lie.” What!? No pain no gain is a lie? I could not believe that one, but he promised me it was true. A few months later, I had passed the average person on the weight machines, and never had as much as a sore muscle.

It was well worth it to listen to an expert and heed their advice. Unfortunately I am not that expert. But I do know from the experience of watching others hobble around with a bad leg, or sporting a half cast that starting slow and doing less than you think you can is the best method.

When spring fever hits you, and you get the urge to get out there and get back into shape, whether pounding the pavement, or swimming across the ocean, take it slow. The race goes to the surest. The fastest usually end up on the side lines, hurt. Take your time and be around to enjoy the summer rather than watching it pass you by from the porch.

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What are you worth to you?

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What are you really worth? As a society we like to think that the value of any human life is infinite, and very difficult to place a price tag on. With that thought in mind, the medical field followed closely by numerous non profit organizations, work twenty-four seven to keep us alive and fix us if we hurt ourselves.

Medicine aside, there are right to life organizations, organizations for children, mothers, teens, and the elderly. We collectively spend an enormous amount of effort and money preserving and protecting human life. Many charities have been formed to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and educate the illiterate.

If I were to become incapacitated, some institution will pick me up and charge the collective governments thousands of dollars a month to keep me alive if I can not pay for my own care. The governments will happily pay any reasonable fees for my care and hopefully my well being.

We have passed laws and created barriers to ending our own life. Those laws we have agreed to, silly as they are, make suicide a crime. We have social and religious mores, with strong family values programming us against suicide. For most of us, any serious contemplation of suicide has never been entertained. It is a category of thought we are programmed to flush out of our thoughts if it ever makes an appearance.

In the mean time, while all this is swirling through your head, have you given any thought to how much is your own individual life worth to you? From my perspective my life is worth much less to me than it is to others. My family will have to get through strong grief and learn a new way to live when I am no longer around.

For ‘care givers’ who would profit from our living body, our body is worth gold, almost literally. Policeman, firemen, paramedics, and who knows who else are standing by at all hours of the day and night to come to my aid. As I mentioned there are hospitals and nursing homes with open beds waiting for me to land in one. While the quality of life may leave something to be desired, the dollar amount for the ‘care’ given my remaining years would cause many to gasp at the total. And it is not over yet once I am dead, the funeral home is patiently waiting for their share.

Yet, we generally give little value to our own individual lives. If you find yourself disagreeing, stop for a moment and reflect on everything you do. Think about what you ate today. Even with the wide array of healthy food choices, chances are food choices were unhealthy to very poor.

Driving to work or two shop is the same with little concern for our singular well being. We only slow down and drive reasonably if we believe finances may be harmed in the form of a ticket, or our insurance going up. Otherwise we drive like we do not care. We also take unnecessary risks at home when we are repairing, fixing, or building something around our home.

In light of how much our life is worth to others, maybe we should evaluate how much our own life should be worth to us? Unfortunately day and time, most of us will not have the luxury of falling over dead. We have a better chance of languishing in a hospital bed for decades than we do of a peaceful exit. If that is not enough with the wide choice of medicines not only curtail or cure also can calm to the point of not caring. We run the risk of becoming voiceless, money machines with no say so of our own.

Think wisely about the choices we are making each day. Try to make choices that others would for us if they were in charge of us. Eat healthy tasty food, and get some exercise. Find things in life that arouse a passion no matter what they may be, and enjoy them.

Diet choices are simple, eat tasty healthy food now, or eat healthy tasteless institutional food later. Exercise is simple, walking every day is a good start.

By valuing ourselves as much as companies and institutions will value our bodies if they get them, we give ourselves a better chance of living a long, healthy, enjoyable life. When the end gets near, perhaps we will get lucky and simply fall over.

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Exercise and stretch into old age

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I was close to my Grandparents, and it was hard watching them slowly lose mobility and the ability to do those tasks they needed to do on a daily basis. Simple tasks we normally take for granted, such as getting up from a chair, opening a jar, lifting a bag of groceries, getting out of a car. Being young, I thought it was just the way things go as we got old. Now I know that does not need to be true.

Once a decade or three went by, I noticed my body did not quite work the way it did when I was seventeen. I could still do all those things I did when I was younger, but I started finding myself sore a few days afterwards (DOMS). Once in a great while I would wake up and have the famous sore back, shoulder, or knees. I realized them that those things I like to do but did not do daily were no longer as simple doing them whenever I had the opportunity.

We grow up learning as children the basics of exercise, but after we become adults most of us seem to forget the basics until we are well into old age. Those basics are, warm up, do the exercise or task, and do a cool down of some sort. As adults I think we need to do a little more. If there is an activity we enjoy, but do not do frequently, it is a good idea to incorporate some exercise into our week, that helps our body be ready for the activity we occasionally do. If you like to ski for example, it is a good idea to do skiing related exercises between ski sessions.

Going back to my Grandparent’s, and their getting old and feeble… My Grandfather worked hard after he retired from his job at seventy. He worked harder in a day than I did. On many days I had a hard time keeping up with him. For my Grandfather everyday tasks and chores did not present much of a problem. My Grandmother was an on again off again exercise person, and she did not have a lot of problems either. A large number of their friends did have problems though doing everyday tasks.

I think we are hard wired to avoid things that we find hard if there is an alternative. We generally drive the car two blocks instead of walking. I think that is just the way we are made. For most of our life we can get away with this behavior because our bodies are somewhat young, and we can sort of cheat our way through. There comes a time if we live long enough that simple chores around the house become hard to do.

When simple things become hard to do, exercise helps, and makes those tasks easier. I believe we should not reach that point until it is near the end of our time on earth. We need to spend our lifetime doing mild exercise to ensure we are fit when we get older. Waiting until you are old is the wrong way to think about exercise. At that point, people are working on a cure, and not a type of prevention. Setting up a lifetime plan of prevention has benefits throughout our lives, and it is enjoyable.

Exercise does not have to be anything exhausting. A mile walked is about the same as a mile ran. Lifting one hundreds pounds all at once, or over twenty times is still one hundred pounds. Some stretching every day, some good walks three or four days a week and some simple strength exercises can do wonders for us. All I have found I need is a pair of tennis shoes. For the strength part, anything in the house or office works fine. Try to twist a broom handle in half for hand strength. Carefully lift a box in your closet a few times. Push apart a door frame with your hands, and try to crush the door with your grip. It does no have to be fancy, but it does make you feel better. We are all headed to old age if we are fortunate. It is a good time to start getting ready. Your body will thank you!

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