I’ve written about how I really like the Wii for a substitute exercise from time to time. Yesterday, Diet-Blog posted about the upcoming WiiFit, which promises to extend the exercise and fitness options to Wii owners.

The base games provided with the Wii is the WiiSports package, which includes tennis, boxing, baseball, golf, and bowling. Most are just fun, but boxing will kick your butt, assuming you do it right - actually ‘throw’ punches, bounce, and duck. It’s something I’ll do on a rainy day, or if I get home late and don’t want to go for a walk in the dark. Plus, it’s just different, which helps body and mind.

I wouldn’t want a video game to replace the exercise options for myself or my kids, but having a tool like this to substitute and shake things up from time to time is a big help. Having more options in WiiFit will help even more. Can’t wait for May to get here!

Lifehack published an article recently titled “13 Tips to Actually Enjoy Exercise“. It has some solid idea, things I used to do but I’m not doing right now. It might be time to take a look at things that worked for me in the past and start replicating them.

Here’s Lifehacker’s tips:

1. Make it a Habit
2. Get a Partner
3. Tune Your Challenge Level
4. Set Goals
5. Get Past Your Comfort Zone
6. Experiment
7. Music
8. Short Workouts
9. Daily Challenges
10. Reward Showing Up, Not Weight Loss
11. Make Exercise Your Stress Relief
12. Record Improvements
13. Make Time

Check out the original post, there’s some good stuff there.

Starting exercise after a layoff, I always have back trouble. The muscles in my lower back hurt and the pain radiates down my butt to my thighs, because the back is compensating for weak abdominals and hip muscles. So, I focus on the core muscles for several days when starting back to exercise, then work them twice a week. Here’s what I do:

• Crunch - Just a standard ab crunch, no muss, no fuss, done til I can feel it burn.
• Air Squats - When I was a kid, we called them ‘deep-knee bends’, but I guess we aren’t allowed to refer to knees anymore. Knees offend easily.
• Stairs - No, not “I must have walked the stairs 20 times today”. It’s lacing up the shoes and heading up and down the stairs ten or twenty times without stopping. The heart pounds and the sweat drips.
• Lunges - I typically do these before my walks a couple times each week to warm up the muscles.

After a couple weeks, I add a few more varieties of crunches - twisting, raised legs, etc. Trying to work and balance the muscles more. I also focus on “Balance” with a big “B”. Place an object on the floor. Stand on one foot. Pick it up. Stand straight up, still on one foot. Put it down. Repeat 10 times, then switch legs. You’ll feel it.

What do you do?

I like to take time to read through Matt Cutts’ blog. Not for diet and exercise tips, but because Matt is the guy that heads up Google’s search algorithm team. But, Matt posted a glowing review of an Omron Pedometer, so I thought I’d give it a mention.

What tools do you use in your daily exercise?

I use the AllSportsGPS for my cell phone. I have the Sanyo Katana, which is a slim design, and carry it in my pocket or wrapped between two wristbands.  The margin of error continues to improve, and has always been better than any other manner of route measuring with the exception of the measuring wheels used in road races. I love it for the freedom I get - I can walk anywhere I want and know exactly how far I’ve gone. Good stuff, and if your phone is enabled for this product, I can recommend it.

I’m still out of commission, but I came across a solid article from Dr. Sheri about exercise for kids. It mirrors my own thoughts on getting my kids moving throughout the week. Here’s an excerpt of her suggestions:

Additional suggestions to get your kids moving more:
# Whenever your kids have ten free minutes, encourage them to walk around instead of sitting down.
# Get your kids more involved in helping doing physical chores around the house, like cleaning, sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, and washing dishes.
# Make a game out of raking the leaves in the yard.
# Take your kids with you when shopping for groceries (as an added bonus, use the time to teach them about which foods are healthier to eat).
# Put on some music and have an impromptu family dance.
# Send your kids outside to kick or hit a ball around or throw a Frisbee.
# Get a basketball hoop to set up in your driveway and send your kids outside to play regularly, or walk to the nearest neighborhood school and use theirs.
# On nice days, take your kids to the nearest park to walk or play.
# Encourage your kids to take the dog out for a daily walk (it needs exercise, too!).
# Always have your kids walk around the house while talking on the telephone.
# Have your kids walk in place, dance, or simply move while watching TV – at least during the commercial breaks.

To these I’ll add a couple of the things I’ve been doing:

1. Races. My daughters LOVE to race in the yard and around the house. I time them with the stopwatch function on my cell phone and they enjoy hearing that they are getting faster. Timing helps by letting me know when they’ve done enough - if the times start getting longer, they’re tired or hot. Time to stop. In effect, this serves as an interval workout.
2. My oldest daughter likes jump-rope, and can jump for 15-20 minutes at a stretch.
3. Playgrounds! I’m a believer that there is no better workout for a kid. It’s a full-body workout done for an extended period of time at a variety of speeds and levels of effort.
4. We live in Florida, so swimming is big. We don’t have a pool, unfortunately, but we take advantage of every offer to have the girls swim with friends or family. We also have the beach.

It’s summer. Can you challenge your kids to do something physical every day until school (and PE and fall sports!) starts? Can you challenge yourself to make it fun for them? What are your ideas?

Cuzin7 is in:

cuzin7 said…

ok i’m in! todays the day! i’m commited .. i think. i will get up and move my sorry butt, even a walk around the block!

That’s all it takes!

Anyone else?

So, I’ve completed Day 8/100, day 9 is tonight. Did my stretching, and last night’s 3-mile walk felt AWESOME! I could really tell the difference in my core strength - my back felt great and my shoulders stayed back, no rolling forward with exhaustion or anything like that.

Tonight’s strength workout will start to incorporate some upper body movements on top of some core movements. I’ll be doing my own fat-guy pull-ups. A lot of gyms these days use a machine that counterbalances weight so you don’t have to pull-up your entire body weight, allowing you to work up to it gradually. Since I don’t have a machine like this, I do a jumping pull-up, so the momentum from my jump takes some of the weight off my pull-up. The goal is to work up to “real” pull-ups, and in this way you’re working the exact muscles you need in the exact motion you need them.

Fat-guy pull-ups. Know ‘em, love ‘em.

My core strength exercise tonight will be crunches. We talked about those last week. So, I’ll be going from one exercise daily to 2 exercises daily, along with some post-workout stretching.

Day 5/100, yesterday. My wife and oldest daughter tried to go for a walk in a park near the house. As they were walking across a footbridge over a swampy area, they were attacked by yellow flies. Recent rains has caused them to hatch.

My youngest daughter and I humped a bit further than we’d planned. She got 1/4 mile down the road and had to go to the bathroom, so we turned around and retraced our steps. She was holding both her front and back while she walked, as if she could hold it in! After she took care of business, it was back out for the walk, so we went 1.5 miles. Not bad for a 5-yr old.

I also did my Mountain Climbers, which turned out to be a little harder than I expected. I definitely felt the workout in my lower back, with a little additional benefit in my abs from bringing the knee up to my chest. I can easily see it get more strenuous by increasing the angle of the body lean.

This week’s final core exercise is one I’m going back to Crossfit for: Overhead Squat.  Start off with a broomstick. Keep your arms extended above your head with the broomstick, and squat so your butt goes below your knees, like Monday’s Air Squat. You can increase the load you press above your head as your fitness level and strength improve. I managed to get to the point where I was using a cinder block, last year. Today, though, it’s back to the broomstick.

I’m not sure if I’ll be posting or not over the weekend because I’ll be back on the road visiting my father (yes, I remember I owe you a post about his condition!). In case I don’t make it back here while I’m gone, the exercises for Saturday and Sunday will be stretching exercises. Just some simple one’s right now: Toe touches, and hurdler’s stretch. Remember, though, don’t stretch a cold muscle - it’s best to warm up for 5 minutes before stretching. I like to do my stretching at the end of the workout, when the muscle is nice and warm and limber so I get a good stretch and keep the muscles from getting tight.

Anyone with me on this thing? Anyone?

Day 4/100: I did my 20 crunches and walked 1.5 miles very hard.

What did you do?

Today - I don’t know if the kids will join me today or not. They played at the beach all morning yesterday, so they weren’t “made” to exercise with me. My deal is that as long as they’re active and moving and playing during the day, like swimming at the beach, that’s good enough for me. Variety is the most important thing for kids, in my opinion. Plus, I get to use these days as days when I can really push myself, so it works out for all of us.

My core exercise of the day is Mountain Climber, taken from RonJones’ Bodyweight Exercise website. It’s not the mountain climber’s you remember from gym class. This version works the lower back and glutes a lot, and is scalable to your ability by increasing or decreasing the angle of your body. So there’s no excuse not to try.

Start YOUR hundred day head start today!

Had a great walk last night - 2.5 miles and about 45 minutes, and felt tired-but-strong at the end.

The kids had dance class last night. I’ve seen those classes and I’d rather walk. Hard work, that.

Did you anyone else try the lateral step-downs? I’m definitely feeling the effects of that exercise on top of the walk on top of the Air Squats, in my thighs and butt. I’m still working the core muscles this week, but I’m moving a little further up my body to work my one-pack.

My abdominals (altogether now, “Ahhhhh”).

Doing the old-school military sit-up still isn’t practical for me, unfortunately. So, I’ll be doing Crunches tonight. No links, we all know what Crunches are and how to do them.

My belly gets in the way of an old school sit-up. I’m one of those middle-aged farts that prefers them. I just feel like I get a better workout. Back when I was a ROTC midshapman at Vanderbilt, in the best shape of my life, I was doing 5 sets of 50 with a 25 lb. plate on my chest, three times a week.

Those were the days. I sound like Al Bundy, don’t I? “Back when I was a star running back at Polk High and scored 4 touchdowns in one game…”.

Silly. But, I actually WAS in great shape once, making my current fat-ness all the more frustrating. During that same time period, I’d been running cross-country and track for several years and had run a 4:50 mile, a sub-16:30 5k, was benching 225 lbs, cranking out those sit-ups, and weighed 165 lbs.

I suck.

———–

Since this IS a health blog, and not just a diet and exercise blog, I wanted to talk about my father. He’s had two surgeries in the last 3 weeks, and complications will have in the hospital for another 2-4 weeks. Tomorrow, though. It’s been a rollercoaster and I need time to gather my thoughts.

Last night, the whole family went out for the walk, even my wife!

Guilt is a powerful motivator…

Also, I got my girls to try yesterday’s exercise, Air Squats. They weren’t too sure about the whole thing, but gave it a shot when I started calling it the “Egg-laying exercise”. Done properly, your butt goes below your knees, so to get the kids to do it right, I told them to pretend they were chickens and squeeze eggs out of their butt.

Yeah, I didn’t think about the potential for “accidents”, but thankfully there weren’t any.

I don’t know about them, but I’m really feeling it in my quads this morning after only doing 10. But, that would be like doing 10 x 290 lbs on a leg machine, so thinking about it that way makes it make sense.

So, we’re at 2 days now in the hundred day head start.

Today’s exercise is sticking with this week’s Core Strength theme. I found a fitness site through Diet Pulpit, and found lateral step downs as their exercise of the week. I don’t have one of those overpriced steps that they have at the gym, so I’ll use a cinder block or my porch steps. Be creative on this one if you don’t have a step - use a bench or a chair or even the stairs in your house. Try not to hold on to anything if you can because the muscles used to balance you during the movements will help your core strength - but, do so within the limits of safety. You can still get a good workout from this even if you’re balancing, as long as you’re keeping your weight off your arms.