In the spirit of all the music apps, I wanted to share with you my health and fitness learnings from last year.
Headstands
I like rituals, especially around my training. Most of the time I do the same mobility routine at the beginning and the same recovery breathing exercises at the end.
This year I added headstands to this routine. I don’t do them every time but mostly because I sometimes forget. But when I do them, they are really enjoyable.
It seems to decompress the back in a certain way and the additional blood in the head just feels good. At first I was a little scared of breaking my neck but after realizing that it’s pretty easy to fall safely, I started to enjoy the upside-down time.
1 hour walks
I use my feet to go places most of the time but walking without a goal feels very different.
Especially because I still walk as fast as if I had to be somewhere.
Putting a daily walk into my routine helps me to decompress and just breathe for a bit.
Without a phone, no podcast, or music, just putting my feet in front of each other quickly, looking at trees or the ocean.
Too small shoes
At first, I thought that my new walking habit was hurting my back. I clearly saw the relationship between when I walked and the discomfort the day after. It took me a bit of working on my gait pattern and posture before I realized I could not comfortably roll off the front of my foot.
This was because my toes were cramped and my foot was in a weird ballerina position.
After switching to half a size bigger shoes the difference was shocking.
Morning workouts
I’m still working on solidifying this habit but in the months I managed to start my day with a training session, my overall fitness and mental state was the best.
While I was sticking to it, I was doing a 1 hour training session every morning.
7 days a week, 1 hour every day. Same as with the walking, just blocking the time for myself changes a lot.
8th floor
A big chunk of the year I was living in an apartment on the 8th floor.
I took the elevator twice. Once after a great massage where I was floating and wanted to keep that feeling for as long as possible, the other time because I was so sick that I could not muster the energy. On any other day, I was climbing 128 steps each time I got home, on average 4 times a day. Sometimes slow, sometimes fast.
You know I love movement snacks, small mobility or strength moves to break up the stiffness. This year I got to love exercise snacks, doing small sprint sessions by running up a flight of stairs.
What was your most important fitness epiphany this year?
Shoot me a message!
Until then, start the year strong and keep moving,
Joe
