For years, I’ve been adamant that no living soul with an appreciation for functional sanity should ever attempt to count calories. But I’ve changed my mind.
I still think most people that I work with will do just fine with intuitive eating habits or using hand portions instead of counting calories. But sometimes…
Here’s one scenario where doing the calorie math is likely the better.
Prolonged under eating
When you’ve eaten a very low-calorie diet (less than 1500-1800 calories / day for most) for a long time. Especially if you’ve combined this with a high volume of physical activity. And doubly especially if a lot of that activity’s been the high-intensity sort.
Your body’s hunger signals are all over the place. You struggle with constant cravings, lack of genuine hunger, or feel lost on how much to eat at each meal. It’s often helpful to establish “enough” by counting calories for a week or two.
Estimate your daily calorie expenditure. Plenty of apps and websites out there for this. You’re likely going to be “holy smoke balls!” surprised by how many calories you “should” be eating vs how many you’ve been eating lately.
Aim to, roughly, eat your daily expenditure’s worth of calories each day for a week or two. Roughly, because counting calories is, at best, a game of guesswork.
It’s not unusual to feel you’re forcing yourself to eat. Stick with it. Eat most of the calories from healthy, real foods. Most, not all. Because life.
Don’t add “burned” calories from exercise to your calculations. Exercise. Be active. Do it because it’s good for you, not because you can count how much you’re burning. A solid rule for any occasion.
Imagine how much healthier and more energetic you’ll feel when you’re eating the amount of food and nutrients your body actually needs.
It also gives you a permission to stop restricting yourself with strict, low-calorie diets that are as about as fun as sucking a broccoli florets through a straw.
A stronger (dare I say ‘perkier’) butt leads to a better quality of life. It sounds dramatic, but it’s true. The glutes are the muscle of youth. They are the powerhouse of your body propelling you forward in the world during these uncertain times. If your butt would be a person, it would be a train.
Strengthening the glutes can alleviate back tension, knee problems, and even ankle issues. Sure, it’s not always that straight forward. But you can often see huge improvements in how the body feels and performs by honing in on the butt.
Here’s a progression to make you butt-abled. Start with the 1/2 kneel lift and work your way to 1-leg deadlift. Once you have progressed from one exercise to the next (without butchering the technique) you don’t have to keep coming back to the earlier ones. Unless you feel like your butt needs some reassuring.
I’ve added notes to make these exercises home-friendly, where necessary. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a cable column stacked in a lounge-room corner.
1/2 kneel lift x 8-12 reps x 2-3 sets
Use a band or just a weight of any sort. Keep most of your weight on the down leg, drive the down knee into the ground and keep ribs to hips. Powerful exhale at the top. Work up to an inline stance.
Golfer x 3-5 reps x 2-3 sets
Front leg does the work. Push the front knee towards your little toe. Keep ribs to hips (starting to see a theme?), and push the ground away with your heel on the way up. Those exhales are important.
1-leg hinge reverse reach x 8-12 reps x 2-3 sets
Keep hips level. Most of your weight is on the front leg.
1-leg hinge swing x 12-15 reps x 2-3 sets
Keep hips level. It helps to look at a point a meter in front of you on the ground.
1-leg deadlift x 8-12 reps x 2-3 sets
I’ve had success with looping a resistance band under the foot on the ground. Try it if you don’t have weights. Keep hips level.
You don’t have to do all these in a single workout. Well, you can. But you could also keep doing your usual training and plug an appropriate progression to where you would normally do a hip dominant single leg exercise.
Training goals are typically set in three to six-month intervals. With my clients most goals fall into three somewhat fluid categories: return to activity after an injury (could be a sport, could be gardening), train for a specific sporting event (not always a competition either, but to participate), or look good for Barcelona*.
All great goals for the short-term focus they bring to training. But we can do even better.
What if you’d have an additional long-term goal that makes you feel warm, fuzzy, weepy and all the other overly positive skirmish adjectives one can think of?
Think not in years, but in decades. Lifelong, if you will. An aspiration that can feel slightly out of reach, but provides a framework to guide all your future short-term goals.
To be clear, you will still set three to six-month goals, as hardcore as you might want**. But achieving these goals shouldn’t take anything away from your life-long aspiration.
To give you an example, when I’m 85 years old I want to go for long walks in the nature, carry bags of groceries up the stairs without hips exploding, and throw frisbee and semi-kick football with my possible grandkids. Every short-term goal I set has to fit in within the framework of my long-term vision.
If any three to six month training goal between now and 2069 will make me less likely to move and exists like that 85 year old white haired rioter, the short-term goal is not for me. I have to either scrap it altogether, or adjust the approach so it still supports the future me.
Now, what are you really training for?
*This is not some poor attempt at corona virus related joke. What’s going on in Spain is horrific. Rather, Barcelona really was one client’s goal last year. And he nailed it. **Although, if you’re like me or most of my clients, hardcore is probably not your jam.
Blog idea from Dan John’s long, heartfelt goal on dancing at his granddaughter’s wedding.
Moving the hips is one of the best medicines for low back pain from excessive sitting. Ideally served in short bursts throughout the day.
The obstacle I run into with clients is that as great as it sounds in theory, it’s impossible for them to do in their office. Either they feel goofy doing them (fair), or their attire makes it impossible. And I get it. Fancy Italian suits and skirts are less than optimal for exercise in public spaces.
Working from home removes this issue. You can get off the computer and out of the sight of your webcam to get a dose of the movement medicine. Besides, most of us working from home are probably not even wearing fancy clothes. I for one can’t even remember what pants look like.
In a perfect world, you’d do a set of each exercise every few hours. But we both know that won’t happen. Instead, do a one set of one movement. Rotate them throughout the day.
Controlled hip rotations x 3 each way
As big circle as you can without twisting your hips. Think of balancing a glass of midday Scotch on your low back. Stay out of any painful range. You could do the whole sequence, but hips are the most important for our low back pain purposes.
Hip external rotation kinetic stretch x 5
Actively pull chest to knee on the way down. Actively drive the knee to ground on the way up. Push chest forward at all times to avoid moving from your low back. Keep hands on the ground if necessary.
Hip bridge x 10
Drive tailbone to knees, keep ribs to hips, and use your butt to crack a walnut. Or any other nut of your choice. Do a powerful exhale at the top to get the core going.
As long as you keep thinking of training and exercise as “the thing I enjoy doing” you’ll keep running into the mentally barbed wire obstacles of low motivation and diminished willpower. Regardless of how many positive shivers you feel towards training today, there will be days when, much like scooping up strangers dog poop, it’s the last thing you feel like doing.
Instead of trying to break through those obstacles, it’s better to bypass them altogether. To do so, you’ll have to introduce a new way of thinking. You need to eliminate the word “enjoy” from training.
So instead of training being “the thing I enjoy doing”, it’ll become “the thing I do”.
As is with work, you can’t stop going to work (or working from home, as most of us do now) just because you don’t feel like it. Well, you can for a while. But it takes only so long before your employer, clients or your customers will get the shits with your purely hedonistic “here’s what I feel like doing today” pursuits.
Like with work, accept that there will be days when the thought of training and exercise feels like someone asking if there’s a possibility for them to insert a pineapple up your butt. But, regardless of how you feel about pineapples, the feeling becomes irrelevant.
Turn up, do the training, go for a walk, get your exercise in. And feel better once it’s done.
You can easily train most of your body at home without any equipment. But the one most people struggle with is not knowing what to do for the upper back.
Doing any form of pulling becomes tricky unless you have a weight, a suspension trainer, a chin up bar or are willing to risk your face health trying out horizontal rows with a table (I wouldn’t recommend), or some sort of broomstick chair hazard (I wouldn’t recommend this either).
With that in mind, here are three exercises you can do without having any traditional gym equipment. You’ll need a bag of any kind with something added as a weight (how about throwing in those E. L. James novels you’ve been devouring since 2015?) and a towel (ideally not the tea towel you got in your great-great aunt’s will. You know, the one with the yellow flowers? Come on now, the one she bought in Spain?).
Anyways. I told you our garage has a grungy vibe to it.
Bag rows
You could also use a beach towel and put something in it as a weight.
Towel pullapart
Try ripping the towel apart hard enough to make a poop face. I like a wider than shoulder width grip to reduce the tension on the neck. Try 20s max hold with 20s rest x 3 times.
Snow angel in tall kneelingor prone
Tense up the upper back and keep it like that throughout the whole exercise. One reps is all the way down and back up. Do 3-5 super slow. And don’t arch your back.
Emails, calls, (virtual) meetings, keeping up with the 24 hour news cycle. And now that most of us are homebound, another household task is never out of sight. Vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, planning tonight’s dinner, organising that awkwardly shaped cupboard that looks like Dresden in 1945. There’s always more to do.
Learn to live in the middle of the unfinished. It’s not that all the unfinished will never get done. You’ll get to it at some point. If it’s important enough. But not right now.
Right now is for focusing on the present. Not thinking of what’s coming or what has already passed. If your mind is not where your body is, you’re never really here. You’ll end up as a passenger looking out of a window watching your life go by.
You have a choice. Either experience life through a tour bus window. Or step off the bus, put your boots on the ground and interact with all your senses.
Now that your usual work routine is upended and you are trying to create a new one, start by scheduling the breaks. At what times do you usually have your morning coffee, lunch break and training session? Plan those first and guard them as if you just found a lost lick of a Hendrix.
The upside of working from home is not having to deal with the commute. It’s a daily thrill not needing to sit behind that one tradie who hasn’t showered since the invention of bread. But it’s not all unicorns farting rainbows.
The now missing commute was time spent on switching from work to home brain so we could be fully present by the time we got to the front door of our home.
Set boundaries. Have a separate space devoted only for work. It doesn’t have to be a spare room either. You can corner off a part of any room and make it into your office. Leave your laptop there. Even phone if possible. Walking into there is your commute. Walk out of that space and you are no longer working. You are at home.
I like to think of myself as a minimalist. Not a hardcore minimalist who takes only chewing gum and a stapler to go on a zombie hunt. But a minimalist nevertheless.
I have a somewhat nihilistic view towards most of the gym equipment. Although I work at a gym (Except now. Cheers, COVID-19. You dick.) with options galore of training equipment, I often set imaginary restrictions on the equipment I can and can’t use.
Working with these invisible rules is a sort of creative outlet, I guess. Besides, time is of an essence with a young family. One equipment training makes the whole session more efficient. Which is sort of nice now when most of us train at home.
Let’s cover everything you need to have and know to master full body strength workouts at home. Even better, take the kettlebell to your backyard or a nearby park for some rays. If you have the luxury to do so.
Equipment
One kettlebell
A weight that is challenging for 10-12 reps of single leg deadlifts. For most people, 12-16kg will do just fine.
Ideally without any kids, glass, or pets in the immediate vicinity.
Your body
Makes the training somewhat easier.
Warm up
Let’s keep it simple. Repeat the following warm up for 5-10 minutes, depending on how cold you’re feeling on the day.
Snoop Dog doing Spiderman x 5 per side
Squat to stand x 5
Standing march x 10 per side
Strength exercises
Choose one exercise from each column for the day’s workout. Complete them as a circuit:
Lower body → upper push → upper pull → core
Exercises – choose one from each column
Lower body
Upper push
Upper pull
Core
Single leg deadlift
Push up
Reverse snow angel
High tension plank
Swing or 1-arm arm swing
Single arm floor press
Naked batwings
Bear squat
Goblet squat
1-arm press
Split stance row
High tension side plank
Split squat
Half-kneel bent press
1-arm 1-leg row
Crawl
Programming
Choose one of the rep ranges: 6-8, 8-10, 10-12, 12-15*. *Batwings and planks, do the reps as powerful exhales through pursed lips. *Crawls, take one step forward and one step back. Repeat other side. That’s one rep.
Aim to complete as many rounds as you can in 20-30 minutes.
The goal is to do a strength workout, not mindless high intensity I-forgot-my-name-fuck-the-form-I-am-Troy-is-it-Christmas-yet cardio. After completing a set of one of the exercises, wait until you can comfortably talk before moving to the next exercise.
Then take a bit of extra time after completing a full circuit of the four exercises. Get some water and admire your glistening figure in the mirror. Maybe open the curtains to give the neighbours something to look at.
Never lose your form. Even if it means that you can’t complete the rep range you set out to do. You can always try again another day.
Progressing
If you did 3 rounds last time, try to beat it. Again, don’t sacrifice form to get there.
When the weight is good for some exercises, but too heavy/light for others
If it’s too heavy simply do less reps. If it’s too light you can get creative with pauses, increasing tension, or doing 1.5 reps. Since I am all about tables and columns today, let’s make this into one.
Exercise
Pause
Tension
1.5 reps
Single leg deadlift
5 seconds at the bottom
Up to 5 seconds on the way down
n/a
Swing or 1-arm armswing
n/a
Should be tight as it is
n/a
Goblet squat
5 seconds at the bottom
Up to 5 seconds on the way down and up
All the way down, halfway up, down, up
Split squat
5 seconds at the bottom
Up to 5 seconds on the way down and up
All the way down, halfway up, down, up
Push up
5 seconds at the bottom
Up to 5 seconds on the way down and up
All the way down, halfway up, down, up
Single arm floor press
5 seconds in the middle of the rep on the way down
Up to 5 seconds on the way down and up
All the way down, halfway up, down, up
1-arm press
5 seconds in the middle of the rep on the way down
Up to 5 seconds on the way down and up
All the way down, halfway up, down, up
Half-kneel bent press
5 seconds in the middle of the rep on the way down
Up to 5 seconds on the way down and up
All the way down, halfway up, down, up
Reverse snow angel
n/a
Up to 10 seconds per direction
All the way down, halfway up, down, up
Naked batwings
n/a
Should be tight as it is
n/a
Split stance row
5 seconds at the top
Up to 5 seconds on the way down and up
All the way up, halfway down, up, down
1-arm 1-leg row
5 seconds at the top
Up to 5 seconds on the way down and up
All the way up, halfway down, up, down
High tension plank
n/a
Should be tight as it is
n/a
Bear squat
5 seconds at the top
Up to 5 seconds on the way down and up
All the way up, halfway down, up, down
High tension side plank
n/a
Should be tight as it is
n/a
Crawl
Step, spend 2 seconds suspended before touching the ground
Move in slow motion
n/a
Sample Strength Program
6 minute warm up we covered earlier.
10-12 reps of each exercise with a 16kg kettlebell.
You can get heaps done with a whole lot of nothing and a bit of creativity. As long as you have a kettlebell, a small space and a body, you’re golden.
The hardest part of this housebound living is not deciding what to do with training. The hard part is actually doing the training when you’re stuck on your computer and struggling to switch off work.
Or, if you’re like me, you might have a kid demanding some of your attention. And rightfully so. Being a parent is awesome. More the reason to keep the training short and simple to get on with the other things that matter in life.
