I’ve written only a handful of posts in December, so here is a smorgasbord of random thoughts for you on this Christmas Eve morning.

1. Doing lunges at a rest stop is weird, but not impossible

The trip from Maine to Pennsylvania begins with busy highways, three lanes of traffic, and the claustrophobic feel of the busy New England life. Gradually, as Massachusetts and Connecticut give way to New York, the exits get further apart, the highways merge to two lanes, and eventually, we’re making the final two hour drive on Interstate 80 to get to State College.

A Bonnie Raitt squat is a bodyweight squat. The rest of these exercises can be found on my YouTube Channel.

And I’m going batshit crazy because I’ve been in the car for too long. Sheila does all of the driving since she gets car sick, so I vacillate between singing Barry Manilow songs and trying not to puke in stop and go traffic.

It’s delightful.

By the time we hit a rest stop, we park far away and I lunge to the bathroom, jog back and forth a few times, and do wide stance t-spine mobilizations in front of vending machines. 

Strangers make a wide arc to go around me. “I don’t know what you’ve got,” they’re thinking. “But I hope I don’t catch it.” 

2. I travel with my grid stick

My friend John always told me to travel with a mag flashlight, as it could be used to break a window should my car get submerged, or take out a stranger at the knees, but in a pinch, a good whack with my grid stick would at least stun someone.

Both of us like to be prepared, ok?

But that’s not why I travel with it. I use my grid stick to get the blood flowing when we get to the hotel or our final destination. I can use it in the car, and it feels good to aggressively work on some of those knots when I just. can’t. Listen. To. NPR. For. one. More . minute. 

3. Something is better than nothing

Yesterday I popped into the gym with my little brother for a quick workout. I was tired, hadn’t slept well in two days, and the last thing I wanted to do was train. But we both went anyway, and I got in a solid 45 minutes of work. I only did six exercises after a brief warm up, but it got my blood flowing and improved my mood. Sometimes I struggle to train if I’m not following a specific program, so it’s good for me to remember that doing something is better than nothing.

It was also great to see my brother isn’t doing any of the program I wrote for him, so it was a good reminder that I’m not necessarily a “coach” but just someone who makes suggestions to family members when they ask and then they largely ignore them.

Cheers :-)

4. Training during the holidays helps to promote kindness

You know that I believe in kindness as a core value for everyone. Well, we’re all less likely to get in screaming matches over politics or the last piece of monkey bread Christmas morning if we’ve done a little workout to get those endorphins flowing. Or to work out aggression. Either or.

And when I say workout, I mean you can go outside and take a walk.

5. You don’t need a gym to train

Sure I practice deadlifting my dog into the car, up the stairs, and onto the couch, but even if you didn’t have to lift your 55 pound hound, you can still get a good bodyweight circuit in. Follow the circuit on the picture to get your heart rate up, your endorphins going, and make people at rest stops stare at you sideways.  

Cheers. 

Wishing you the happiest of holiday seasons.

Sometimes as fitness professionals, we train a new client on a Monday and then Wednesday watch them shuffle back through the door for another session.

“How are you feeling?” We ask this with a little glint in our eye.

“I ripped the toilet paper dispenser out of the wall trying to get off the toilet yesterday,” they say. "Other than that, amazing."

The sarcasm is thick, and we chuckle a little.

“I’m billing you for the repairs.”

I have no statistical proof, but dressing like Jane Fonda may also help reduce soreness. 

We chuckle less. 

That soreness that you experience is known as delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). This type of soreness is different from acute soreness, which is pain that develops during the actual activity. Delayed soreness doesn't hit you for the first few hours. It's the next few days that has you cursing a blue streak every time you go down stairs or get up from your chair. 

If you want to add a little science to the sauce, soreness develops as a result of microscopic damage to the muscle fibers involved in the exercise. DOMS is a side effect of the repair process that develops in response to microscopic muscle damage. 

This soreness isn't limited to folks who are new to working out. I've taken the last 10 days off of lifting and decided to celebrate my Thanksgiving Day with a two-hour workout that included clusters of squats. 

All you need to know is that clusters of squats after a few weeks out of the gym was a bad idea. Because walking. 

You are bound to have some soreness when you start a new workout program, but there are a few things you can do to help reduce the soreness after. 

1. Ease into the routine

If you’ve been relatively static for a long time and then someone drags you to an hour-long advanced spin class, you can be sure that you’ll have to roll out of bed the next morning. In my case, I could have gone with four sets of five squats instead of four sets of 20 squats.

That was stupid. I knew better.

And now today I'm going to go cut down a Christmas tree and scream my lungs out trying to get up from the ground. As Sheila tells me often, this fitness thing is going to kill me.  

If you've got a program that calls for four sets of nine different exercises, start with two sets on day one. By the end of the week you'll be ready to add that third set. Allowing your muscles time to adapt to the new stresses can reduce the severity of the soreness you experience in the days following. And the best news is that once you get through that first bout of soreness from those squats, you'll not experience that level of discomfort from DOMS again, until you take another long break from lifting.

Don't take those long breaks if you can help it.  

2. Move

I played volleyball in high school, and we would start the season in August by practicing from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The next morning involved rolling out of bed and army crawling my way to the bathroom. It always seemed impossible to think I was going to manage another day of practice. But miraculously, as we groaned our way through the warm up laps, we felt better. 

The last thing you want to do when you are sore is actually move. But some gentle stretching and light walking will actually help you feel better. When muscles are in recovery mode they tend to tighten up which is only going to make you feel more sore.

3. Light foam rolling or massage and ibuprofen

My legs were so upset with me yesterday that even foam rolling was out of the question. But what I did do was use the tiger stick very lightly on my quads and hamstrings. Again, it's about keeping the blood flowing to the muscles to keep them from getting too tight.

And if all else fails, a low dose of ibuprofen can help take the edge off. Trust me, I'll be using my tiger stick and then taking some ibuprofen before Sheila drags me all over a rainy Christmas tree farm to cut down our tree.

AND....

Have you signed up for my newsletter? No? Well now you get a free guide to surviving the holidays when you sign up below. 

So you signed up for your first 5K. Or your first 5K since Friends was part of Thursday night t.v. You weren't going to do it, but someone applied peer pressure the way Dolly Parton applies makeup and you crumbled like you were in middle school and everyone said it was cool to peg your acid washed jeans.*

The race is in a month and you’re putting off all of the things you should be doing. Like, I don’t know, running. Or working out at all. 

I’m not here to tell you that you won’t have to run. I mean you did sign up for a 5K. But I’m also here to make a few suggestions about some other exercises you can be doing to help prepare for the run. 

1. Soft tissue work and warm up

Do your foam rolling. Do it! Eat your vegetables and do your foam rolling. If you don't have a foam roller, use your Tiger Stick. (Or use a rolling pin. Just maybe don't tell your spouse). I've posted before on the benefits of foam rolling, and I realize that it can be tough to plop down on a roller before a race (hence the tiger stick). But using the roller to get the main muscles in your leg before a run can help get the blood flowing. 

And don't forget about your upper body. Many runners tend to hunch over and tense up the shoulders during the run, so using a lacrosse ball or baseball to get into the shoulder areas can be very helpful before and after the run.

After you do your soft tissue work, doing a dynamic warm up. In other words, do more than a few arm circles and cursory quad stretches. Deep squats, 90/90 hip shifts, rocking ankle mobs, hip flexor stretch, t-spine rotations are a few good ones to start. 

This video explains how to appropriately use a foam roller and baseball or lacrosse ball to warm up your muscles prior to working out. It’s also a sneak-peak into the type of videos included in my new product “Stronger You” to be released the first week of July.

2. Do some form drills and strengthen the glutes

We've all seen the video of Phoebe from Friends running. And I don't know what it says about me that I managed to make two references to "Friends" in the same post...

What are your glutes anyway? Well, there are three gluteal muscles that form our butt.

• The gluteus minimus, (the smallest), is situated immediately beneath the gluteus medius.
• The gluteus medius is a broad, thick, radiating muscle, situated on the outer surface of the pelvis.
• The gluteus maximus, the largest and most visual of the three. It makes up a large portion of the shape and appearance of the hips. It’s also the largest muscle in your body.

Weak glute muscles can lead to a host of injuries, including the dreaded runner's knee. Glute strength helps to provide stability in the lower leg. And trust me, that's a good thing.

Spend some time focusing on technique. Below are two exercises that can be very helpful in working the glutes and forcing you to concentrate on leg drive especially. No you're not planning to sprint in this 5K, until the very end when you want to catch that one dude that you KNOW you can beat. 

When done correctly, this exercise should burn your butt and get your heart rate up.

A strong butt can also help support proper trunk posture during the run, which leads me to point number three.

3. Don't neglect your core

Pretty much every post I write on everything comes back to having a strong core. A strong core can pretty much stop a zombie apocalypse, make a short person taller, and help you leap buildings in a single bound.  It can help with balance, posture, speed, endurance...a strong core is pretty much the unspoken key to happiness. 

Do your core work. And no, that's not a butt-ton of sit ups. It's some stuff like this: 

Instead of doing a front plank or side plank for time, work on using doing three-five full deep breaths during the exercise.

Be careful about letting your back arch. Pretend someone’s going to punch you in the gut - that’s bracing your core. Totally welcome for that.

4. Run

Last but not least, you should actually get some runs in. Build up slowly - if you're not currently running, start slowly. Follow a format of walking/jogging/walking/jogging. Choose a landmark in the distance and run to that landmark. Walk for a minute and repeat. Keep in mind that you will be ready to run from a cardiovascular standpoint sooner than your joints will be ready. So resist the urge to go from 0 miles a week to 30 miles per week. 

Listen to your body. Don't be like me and run on a stress fracture for a month. If something starts causing you pain stop running; immediately. 

Your 5K will be less fun if you can't run it.

*I'm talking about me here. This is how I signed up for a 10k and a Tough Mudder Half within a few weeks of each other. Also, I did peg my jeans.