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Lifting for the stressed
Nov. 7th, 2010 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minxyIt is a horrible myth that the only way to work out is to be hours about it, and the reason this is horrible is because many of us don't have hours available (except on weekends, perhaps, and the weekend warrior technique is not such a good one.) A weights workout by itself can be far more varied, allow you to fit a workout in during your lunch break without sitting with sweaty hair and skin for the rest of your day, and can be an incredibly useful tool for maintaining health and sanity.
My chiropractor and cranio-sacral massage therapist (who treat me for migraines and stress) will corroborate that last point.
So, in the interests of presenting a workout designed to combat hunched shoulders, uneven use of the mouse arm, tension in the neck and over-strain between the shoulderblades, I give you:
( Lifting to maintain healthy range of motion in muscles associated with stress and tension. )
I can generally manage this workout in 20-30 minutes, absent the brisk walks to and from the gym building. It's adaptable enough that if I'm feeling very low-energy or fragile, I can lighten the weights and focus on the stretching, but it's also capable of burning off excess energy if I'm nervous about something or feeling energetic. It also presents much less of a block in a busy day if you're only trying to find half an hour (which one might otherwise spend surfing the internet if one hasn't left the office for lunch) and you don't feel obligated to commit a huge amount of your energy or resources.
I can report that I consistently feel magnificent (I've also described it as: exuberantly jello-like) after a bit of weight-bearing work and stretches, without the kind of discomfort during the workout that I use to associate with competitive 3-4 hour long practices. So it's the high without discomfort or huge amounts of time, and that's a big reason I continually return to it and maintain 1-2 workouts a week even in my craziest times. It doesn't hurt that I so significantly improve alignment and circulation doing this that I get migraines in far more managable doses than I used to do, either.
Cheers! And thank you in advance for any variations on these themes that you can offer: I'm on the lookout for ways to keep my routine interesting.
My chiropractor and cranio-sacral massage therapist (who treat me for migraines and stress) will corroborate that last point.
So, in the interests of presenting a workout designed to combat hunched shoulders, uneven use of the mouse arm, tension in the neck and over-strain between the shoulderblades, I give you:
( Lifting to maintain healthy range of motion in muscles associated with stress and tension. )
I can generally manage this workout in 20-30 minutes, absent the brisk walks to and from the gym building. It's adaptable enough that if I'm feeling very low-energy or fragile, I can lighten the weights and focus on the stretching, but it's also capable of burning off excess energy if I'm nervous about something or feeling energetic. It also presents much less of a block in a busy day if you're only trying to find half an hour (which one might otherwise spend surfing the internet if one hasn't left the office for lunch) and you don't feel obligated to commit a huge amount of your energy or resources.
I can report that I consistently feel magnificent (I've also described it as: exuberantly jello-like) after a bit of weight-bearing work and stretches, without the kind of discomfort during the workout that I use to associate with competitive 3-4 hour long practices. So it's the high without discomfort or huge amounts of time, and that's a big reason I continually return to it and maintain 1-2 workouts a week even in my craziest times. It doesn't hurt that I so significantly improve alignment and circulation doing this that I get migraines in far more managable doses than I used to do, either.
Cheers! And thank you in advance for any variations on these themes that you can offer: I'm on the lookout for ways to keep my routine interesting.