Reflections: on Movement

I grew up in a family of hard workers. We labored -- gardening, caring for animals, carrying in firewood, mowing. Both of my parents have physically active jobs/lives. As a child, I loved sports, playing outside, and dancing. It kept me active and made life enjoyable for me. But "exercise" felt like.. a punishment. I started running with my sister prior to my senior year in high school and kept running for track and then intermittently in college and into my 20s. I felt like cardio was good enough. I stayed out of the weight room because it felt "boring" and "wouldn't really get my heart rate up". These were my perceptions. Flash forward to *you guessed it* 2016 and I had three kids and wanted to be able to move and keep up, but didn't know where or how to start. I felt tired, running was sorta painful, and I didn't have hours of time on my hands. First habit? Balance 365 presented a walking challenge. So simple. Yet it changed my trajectory, again! 

May 2017 

 I had recently found out I was pregnant with child #4 and the last pregnancy had been rough. What could I do? Well, I could walk! And I did. And I just kept going. In the book "Built to Move" by Kelly and Juliet Starrett, which my sister gave me in 2023, Vital Sign 4 is entitled "Walk this Way" and is all about daily movement. They talk about how it may be good to put in a hard workout for 30 min. every day, but if you're sitting for the rest of the day, your body is going to deteriorate (my paraphrase). So I got a pedometer and aim for an average of 8,000 steps a day. Sometimes I bring my kids along on a walk if I know I need some extra steps for the day. Sometimes I go for an alone walk. I will often meet up with a friend to walk and talk. I park further from the door at stores and places I'm going. It all adds up to more overall movement. 

Walking is essential, I can see myself doing it the rest of my life. But I began to learn more about functional mobility and started to think more about my longevity and the fact that I want to be able to move well as I age. This led me to read Younger Next Year and start reading stories about people who were moving well late into life. They were consistently saying the same things: you have to move now if you want to move later. Strength training is crucial. It doesn't matter if you feel like it, just do it. So I started. 9Round served me well for a couple of years -- I loved hitting and kicking those punching bags!! I enjoyed having the workout pre-programmed and trainers to motivate me. But I realized I wanted to be able to work out around my kids so they could see what I was doing and join me sometimes. So I got a Y pass and that was a flop! I had no idea what I was doing in the weight area and ended up using the track mostly. My sister saw me flailing and on my 38th birthday she got me a very confusing gift :P It was called Street Parking and I questioned why she would give me a pass to park downtown when I don't like driving down there to begin with! But I found out it was a workout program. The people who created it are CrossFit trainers who wanted to make something accessible for people to be able to workout from home with a set of dumbbells. And I fell in love! My biggest obstacle had been not knowing how to come up with a workout of my own -- and this solved that problem. My next obstacle was not knowing the terminology -- what is a hang power clean? a snatch? a turkish get-up? They include videos for all the moves! Can a pair of dumbbells really be enough to get in an adequate strength training session? They can! I've seen progress -- I look and feel stronger. I can do more than I used to. When I saw that progress shift was when I transitioned from three workouts a week to four or five. Initially, that felt like too much of a time commitment. I thought I needed to read through each new daily workout and figure it out and sometimes that felt like too much work. But when they suggested saving your favorite workouts and repeating them, that was a game-changer for me. Last September, I looked at my trophy case and decided to set myself a goal of hitting my first 365 workouts by my 40th birthday: meaning I would have worked out every other day for 2 whole years! I'm not going to quite make it, but I'm super close. As of today I have worked out on 337 days over the past two years.  

Something I've come to love is rucking. Very simply: carrying weight in a backpack while you walk. In "Built to Move" it is described like this: "It's strength and cardio in one. It's cardio for the person who hates running, and strength work for the person who hates lifting." p. 125. I did it for over a year with a backpack, a 10# dumbbell, and some towels. You truly don't need to buy anything to start! After I realized this is something I wanted to keep doing, I decided it was time to level up with an actual weighted vest. Now nearly every Tuesday you can find me out for a 20-30 minute ruck. I don't have to change my clothes or set aside a bunch of time. I put on tennis shoes and my vest and leave. Sometimes I just barely squeak it in between teaching piano lessons; sometimes I bring it along on a walk with a friend; sometimes I go the full 30 minutes and other times it's a quick mile.  It doesn't add anything to my mental load for the day because I've already pre-decided that it's what I'm doing. The benefits for me are many. Plus it's fun and accessible to do with others. My sister and I try to go for a long ruck once a month which is a win-win because we both care about movement and spending time together! 

Street Parking has changed the way I approach resistance training. I feel supported to be able to move consistently. They remind us frequently that it's simple, but not easy. My mind has become more tough through these workouts as I coach myself to just do the next move and the next one and then the next. I tell myself it doesn't matter if I am slow, I will keep moving and I will keep trying and it won't kill me like my brain seems to think. I am stronger and tougher than I thought. 

To movement... and building tenacity!