I recently posed this challenge to one of my clients, and for her, it worked like a charm. Hey, some of us are motivated by having the ante upped, including yours truly. Do more (exercise) this week than you did the week before.

So here is how it works:

For one week, tally the number of minutes you spend doing physical activity.

1. Record time spent doing cardiovascular activity, such as walking, jogging, swimming, aerobics, and so on.
2. Record the time spent doing other activity, such as gardening, housework, painting a room, or whatever.
3. Record time spent sitting.

Then, create a chart with a weekly goal. For instance, you might list physical activities separately, followed by “household chore” activity, job-related activity, and sedentary activity.

In the next column, record last week’s minutes spent doing those activities and non-activities, then up the ante for this week. A good rule of thumb is to add 2-5% more to each physical activity (if you want to be conservative), or up to 10% of you really want to challenge yourself.
In addition, make one goal to reduce time spent doing sedentary activity, like TV watching.

Create a column for each day of the week and at the end of each day, tally your minutes. On the last day of the week, do a quick tally to see if you will reach your goal. If you are at risk of falling short, see if you can squeeze in extra minutes of activity to help your reach your goal.

Refer to my simple chart here if you need a visual. You might have more activities on your own chart, and be sure to include all 7 days  (i.e, don’t think weekends don’t count, ’cause they do!)

Hopefully, if all goes well, you will see your hard work paying off. Each week, you can create a new goal. Obviously, you can’t add time to your minutes forever, but you could eventually create a goal for, say, adding a new activity, or maintaining max heart rate for a certain number of minutes, and so on. It is a little hard to see the numbers on this chart, but I basically added time to each physical activity, and reduced the time spent in sedentary activity. For example, if I ran 120 mins last week, this week I’d aim for 130 or 140. If I sat and watched TV 200 mins last week, I’d shoot for 180 or less this week. Hopefully this all makes sense.

If you try this, let me know how it goes…
And if you have your own chart that you’d like to share, fire it my way and I’ll post it here on the blog.

(This post is a few months old, but as I try to play “catch up” from a short vacation, I thought I’d cheat and pull it out of the archives. Enjoy!)

I’m a sucker for a challenge. Can’t say no, not even when I’m certain I’ll fail. I figure, better to have tried and missed the mark than to not try at all. I guess the very real possibility of bodily injury would stop me, but I’ll save that for another post. Let’s just say, the Crane Pose won (this time).

photo by Martin Sconduto

Said Loretta, “just lift your toes off the block, if you can, use your core, and place your shins on the back of your arms.” I had to try it. Strong core? No problem. Balance? Got it. Let’s just say, I’m glad I was in the back of the room. The Crane is one of those poses that looks amazing when done right…such as when someone other than me does it. “Graceful” I was not, and my core felt every bit of that pose, as did the top of my head (and that wasn’t supposed to be part of the deal.) To Loretta’s credit – her cues were much better than I just summarized. The problem here was the student (not listening very well, I might add), not the teacher.

The picture above is NOT how I looked. Rather, I was a#$ over tea kettle, but my my point (finally) is this: If you MUST try something just to see if you can, make sure you’re out of eye shot from the instructor (who won’t be able to fight the urge to tweak your form, if said form looks more like Dolphin than Crane), and far enough away from classmates so that if you fall out of the pose, you don’t take anyone else down with you (which didn’t happen to me this time, but it very well could have.)

Crane pose tips:

1. Keep your knees wider than your hips when you lean your body forward onto your arms. This widens your base of support and helps engage the core. In fact, it forces you to engage your core.

2. Use a block if you have access to one. It is better to feel the pose first with feet in contact with the block. Then, when (and if) you are ready, lift the feet up.

3. If you can, get your inner thighs as close to your upper body (torso) as possible. If you can get your knees behind your armpits, you’re good to go.

4. Lean forward while balancing your shins on your upper arms, but keep your head up (see photo above). I made the mistake of lowering my head, throwing the whole pose off balance and down I went. Good times.

5. As you balance in this pose, focus on drawing your abdominal muscles toward your spine, but also point your tailbone toward your toes. There will be a slight upward curve in your back, and this is good.

Note: this pose does put a lot of strain on the wrists, so be sure to release the tension in these joints after the pose.

Check out Yoga Journal for more “challenging” poses.

Last fall I challenged several of my clients to achieve a certain number of cardio minutes each week. The ultimate goal was to increase the number of minutes each week for about 15 weeks. They all did wonderfully! One of the unforeseen outcomes of this “test,” was that all of these ladies had to find time where they didn’t know they had it (lol). When crunched for time, it turned out that “pockets” of time could be created out of down time, such as reading a book, watching television, waiting for a child’s soccer practice, and so on. Ordinarily, they might have spent the time idle, but with a challenge to accumulate minutes of movement, they each turned this time into “up,” time – i.e, they got up and moved. A half-hour television show turned into  30 minutes of marching in place, doing jumping jacks, pop-squats, push-ups, and crunches. A favorite book was as easily consumed while riding an incumbent bicycle as it was sitting on the coach. And a daughter’s hour-long soccer practice turned into a heart-pumping power walk around the track.

Do you have down time you can turn into up time? I challenge you to try.

Bonus: each of these ladies lost weight! In fact, one lost 20 lbs over the course of the challenge – about 15 weeks! Way to go Kim, Jen, and Maria! And you can do it too!

I’ve noticed a common theme lately among clients, neighbors and friends who are trying to focus on making healthier choices every day, but are somehow falling short of their own expectations: lack of focus. Perhaps the bar is set too high, or your time and energy are spread too thin? There could be many reasons for those days, or even weeks, when you just aren’t as motivated to do all of the healthy things you know you should.

My advice:

• Don’t beat yourself up. You’re entitled to a little down time, and I think it is healthier to take a break and get back on track when you’re good and ready, than to fall off the wagon completely and never get back on. Use the down time to re-assess your goals, your motivation for adopting a healthier lifestyle, and no matter what, don’t give yourself a bad grade.
• Change can be scary, but it can also breathe new life into your workout routine and get you excited about exercising again. A recent article in Forbes magazine highlighted fitness trends for 2008 – why not try one? Forbes – Fitness Trends
• Try a new recipe — even mixing up what you eat and when can motivate you to keep making healthy choices. Check out Eating Well for ideas.
• Challenge yourself. If you stick to your routine faithfully for months, only to completely burn out and lose interest, maybe you’re not challenging yourself enough. Re-evaluate your fitness goals, or train for an upcoming race, or learn a new sport, such as rock climbing, boxing or soccer.

Check out these websites for inspirational ideas:

Women’s Sports Foundation

Beginner Triathlete

Hal Higdon – a great resource for marathon training from one of the most highly respected experts in the running world.