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I've been having a lot of thoughts about my relationship with exercise, of late. Last summer saw the beginning of a real change in my perspective on exercise. The combination of having a mile walk to and from CPE after living in the same building that housed my classes and minyan for several years, and a wellness and spirituality component to my CPE program (as part of some really interesting research on the relationship of wellness/fitness and spirituality/religion) went a long ways towards reducing my former distrust of exercise as something that is inherently unpleasant and without any noticeable result. Exercise towards the goal of half an hour of exercise, five times a week- well, I didn't get there, but it did feel like a reachable goal. And more than anything, walking outside regularly again, and doing Some other exercise made me Feel better, very quickly. Having learned some exercises that were a little different and therefore less threatening than the traditional push-ups and sit-ups helped too.
Then I had a few months at home, and picked up hooping. I got a hoop that comes into 6 pieces, so I could take it with me to Israel. It's been a big help in exercise that isn't walking. I do Tons of walking here- it's a bit over half an hour's walk to school, so that's an hour of walking built into 4 days a week, plus walking to get anywhere else. But as was pointed out this summer, if I'm already doing lots of walking, past a certain point, more walking isn't going to do very much. So the hooping is exercise, and when no-one else is around, it's dancing too. (At some point, I'll get comfortable enough to really dance with it with people around as well- that's a goal of mine, both in terms of skill and competence as well as in terms of comfort with making myself visible and not being shy about things I can do.)
I sort of lost the other exercises I'd been doing over the summer, though. I've done some other things, various hoop tricks, that work some of the same muscles, but I have these nice exercises that I was enjoying and I lost track of doing them. So a few days ago, H and I were spending a quiet morning together, and decided to spend some time on exercise. So I did a bunch of stretching, and then one or two of those exercises from last summer. (He did some rather more dramatic and impressive sorts of exercise, involving push-ups and the like.) IT felt good to be working on those goals, rather than feeling like a burden. Somehow, those exercises have gotten associated with a certain excitement about exercise, which is still something that quite surprises me to find in my own head.
So I'm still trying to build an actual exercise habit, something steady rather than when-I-remember. And I'm not sure how I'm going to accomplish that next year, back in NYC. However, the general progress in that direction is pretty pleasing and impressive, when I look at the last year's worth of change. (It also sends my thoughts in the direction on "gosh, I really am growing into someone much more like my mother. She's been telling me for years that exercise makes you feel better, that she Needs it to be comfortable in her own skin, etc. And I couldn't stand to believe her, for years. I'm growing into a discovery that she's right- I just had to figure it out for myself.)
Then I had a few months at home, and picked up hooping. I got a hoop that comes into 6 pieces, so I could take it with me to Israel. It's been a big help in exercise that isn't walking. I do Tons of walking here- it's a bit over half an hour's walk to school, so that's an hour of walking built into 4 days a week, plus walking to get anywhere else. But as was pointed out this summer, if I'm already doing lots of walking, past a certain point, more walking isn't going to do very much. So the hooping is exercise, and when no-one else is around, it's dancing too. (At some point, I'll get comfortable enough to really dance with it with people around as well- that's a goal of mine, both in terms of skill and competence as well as in terms of comfort with making myself visible and not being shy about things I can do.)
I sort of lost the other exercises I'd been doing over the summer, though. I've done some other things, various hoop tricks, that work some of the same muscles, but I have these nice exercises that I was enjoying and I lost track of doing them. So a few days ago, H and I were spending a quiet morning together, and decided to spend some time on exercise. So I did a bunch of stretching, and then one or two of those exercises from last summer. (He did some rather more dramatic and impressive sorts of exercise, involving push-ups and the like.) IT felt good to be working on those goals, rather than feeling like a burden. Somehow, those exercises have gotten associated with a certain excitement about exercise, which is still something that quite surprises me to find in my own head.
So I'm still trying to build an actual exercise habit, something steady rather than when-I-remember. And I'm not sure how I'm going to accomplish that next year, back in NYC. However, the general progress in that direction is pretty pleasing and impressive, when I look at the last year's worth of change. (It also sends my thoughts in the direction on "gosh, I really am growing into someone much more like my mother. She's been telling me for years that exercise makes you feel better, that she Needs it to be comfortable in her own skin, etc. And I couldn't stand to believe her, for years. I'm growing into a discovery that she's right- I just had to figure it out for myself.)
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Depends on what you're aiming for, doesn't it? I guess if the goal it build muscle tone then you're limited by how much your body can do with the amount of protein you eat each day, but in my experience more cardiovascular exercise tends to mean better cardiovascular health so long as you're not actually hurting yourself.
Last summer I got into the habit of doing some kind of anaerobic exercise right before one meal each day; one of the Israelis I was working with did eighty push ups religiously before lunch, and I sort of fell in with the practice, if not the number. It makes sense when I think about it, since fitness people always tell you to ingest protein shortly after a workout, and scheduling the workout around meals is probably healthier than the other way.