On an almost weekly basis, I hear clients or strangers at dinner parties make the following statement:

I mean I can’t even do a push up. Or a pull up!

They’re often surprised at my response.

It took me a year to work my way up to a push up from the floor, and I can’t do a pull up….yet. (Keep that mind open.)

Yesterday I put up a social media post about push ups - and one of the comments I received was perhaps the most telling:

"I hate push ups....they make me feel so defeated."

I’m not exactly sure why so many people, women in particular, use those two exercises as the gold standard of fitness, but I’m going to blame it on Dwight Eisenhower, and his implementation of the holy terror that was known as the President’s Physical Fitness test.

My memories of this torturous misery largely revolve around trying to run a mile in jeans when I was eight years old. (Chaffing. So. Much. Chaffing.)

There was also the goal of climbing a rope without using your legs.

As an athletic kid, I learned two important lessons from this challenge - running was God’s punishment for not listening to my mother and I didn’t know much about Ronald Reagan, but hated him for making me do distinctly not fun things in gym class.

While doing push ups wasn’t part of the President’s challenge, it was still a measure of fitness prescribed to many of us by well-intended coaches and gym teachers. I remember my college lacrosse coach telling us to do 25 push ups at the end of many sprints - and there I’d be trying my damndest to do some measure of push ups from my knees and wishing that we could just switch to the 50 sit ups already.

Between these coaches and the media’s portrayal of the push ups in many sports movies (Remember Rocky doing one armed push ups??) we are mostly made to feel that an inability to perform a push up from the floor means that we’re weak.

When really it means that we are just human.

That's because, according to MRI's, females have 40% less upper body mass than men. So yeah, not many females are going to just drop to the floor and bang out 25 push ups, despite our experiences with gym class and even some sport preparation.

Now don’t get me wrong, if you are looking for a performance goal to strive for - the push up is an incredible place to start. The exericse requires core strength and can help improve muscular endurance with the upper body. But what nobody tells us, is that being able to perform a push up with proper depth and proper form takes time and hard work. And a lot of both.

So how can you train your way to a proper push ups?

Check back for part II and I’ll give you a couple of exercises to help you build towards that goal.

Do you want a nicer butt?

No, not like a friendlier butt, but..let’s say…a stronger butt?

Sure you do, even if you don’t know it.

Aesthetic qualities aside, strong glutes and hamstrings can help improve posture, alleviate lower back, hip and knee pain, and, perhaps most importantly, can take your Pickle Ball game to the next level.

Boom.

And if I had to choose one exercise that almost everyone can benefit, it would be the single leg Romanian deadlift - or - in technical terms, the Drinky Bird.

This guy does a single leg deadlift flawlessly.

First of all, the Drinky Bird is a unilateral exercise (one leg at a time), and there is a ton of benefit for including single leg work in your workouts.

Walking, running, and taking the stairs all require single leg movements, so aside from training your posterior chain (back of your body), single leg work is also very functional. Training one leg at a time can also help us address movement and muscle imbalances, which can sometimes lead to poor compensation patterns.

The trouble for many clients though, is that single leg work can often be irritating on the knee. While split squats, lunges, and step ups might aggravate an already grumpy knee, the Drinky Bird requires only a slight softening of the knee, so even people with chronic knee pain or discomfort can perform some variation of the movement.

This exercise also gives you a lot of bang for your buck, as it is a full body movement that makes your obliques (part of the core) work very hard as well. I’ve never met anyone who couldn’t benefit from more core work, especially core stabilization (think plank versus sit up).

And lastly, though I could go on and on, the Drinky Bird forces you to work on balance. When you try this exercise for the first time, you’ll want to hold on to a bench or a squat rack - and don’t be surprised to find that one leg feels more stable than the other. That’s part of the imbalance that you’re working on with this exercise.

Ready to give it a shot? Ok - here is a variation to get you going - it’s called a braced SLDL.

In this variation, here are a few cues to get you started:

• Squeeze your armpits hard enough to hold a piece of paper in them - this will keep you from rounding your shoulders.

• Maintain a flat back - you don’t want to round through your lower spine.

• Engage the core. Suck that belly button towards your spine and keep it there.

• Allow soft knees. While this exercise is a hip hinge (movement initiated through the hips), it’s okay to bend the knees a bit.

• Press the knuckle of your big toe into the floor to help use the muscles in your feet - which will help you maintain balance.

• You may want to perform this exercise in a minimalist shoe or even barefoot. If you are working out in a thick soled running shoe, you might find yourself struggling against the shoe as you try to maintain balance.

In many cases, clients find it a struggle to maintain a straight lower back and straight leg throughout the movement. If you want to be sure that you are performing the exercise correctly, adding a foam roller can help keep your form in check:

And finally, if the above two versions are too easy for you, check out this variation that I picked up from my co-worker Trent last week.

The pause at the bottom really forced my hamstrings to work harder, and I found that I was able to keep both hips square to the ground. And the next day, but but and my hamstrings were fried, but you know, in a good way.

Cheers.

That’s a line from an Alanis Morissette song.

Some of you reading this might suddenly have a flashback to that time you were on a date with a frat guy named Alan who had a six-disc changer in his car when it was cool and he played the song Ironic for you while you were busy getting homesick at the site of a stop sign because you’d only been away at college for two weeks, and you were thinking that his car smelled like sweaty gym socks and he was wearing too much Drakkar Noir.

I mean, generally speaking that might have come up for you.

Well, I’m just letting it all out here. This is what I dressed like when I was listening to Alanis Morrissete my freshman year of college.

This song lyric is actually not from Jagged Little Pill, which I know half of you out there reading remember as her debut album of the early nineties - but I’ve always liked the phrase - the only way out is through. It seems a milder version of Nike’s Just Do It.

I was reminded of this lyric recently while reading a nutrition article. Like many people, I’m an avid consumer of information, whether that’s through reading or listening to podcasts and books. I just really enjoy learning. One of the challenges of the constant influx of information though, is paralysis. So the other day, when I read this line:

Action is more important than information - I had a mind blown moment.

The article went on to say that no matter how much you know, or how much you want to change, in the end, it’s only action that creates change.

I mean I know that action is more important, I just forget it all of the time.

I think we all do.

I’m trying to apply the action concept to my writing as I work on my second book (the first one is due out in September). On any given day I spend more time thinking about my book, talking about the concepts or reading about writing than I actually spend writing. Which somehow leaves me feeling exhausted without anything to show for said exhaustion.

Sound familiar?

I actually had this conversation with my therapist last week, and so she gave me an assignment, which I’m practicing right now. Write for 15 minutes a day.

I lobbied her to drop the number down, you know, to set me up for success in case I missed a day, but she’s a hard ass and didn’t budge.

Everyday, she said.

And what if I don’t hit that? I asked.

Then we’ll talk about it next time.

So far, I’ve hit my 15 minutes a day.

Because I’m spending 15 minutes a day working on the action of writing. I’m not reading about it, thinking about it or talking about it.

Let me emphasize that last point a bit:

I’m not thinking about it.

Sometimes we think ourselves into exhaustion about any given change on any given day. We’re so toasted from mentally ruminating on something that it wears us out.

But these past few days, I’ve just be shutting up and doing it.

And it’s been ugly.

Stream of consciousness, ranting, no punctuation, lots of ellipses - ugly. But it’s happening. The only way to write is to put your butt in the seat and write.

The only way to change is to take action towards that change.

The only way out is through.

You can’t get through if you’re not moving. You can’t see change if you’re not doing. I know you know this. But since when does knowing mean doing? How many times have you ever said to yourself, or your coach or therapist, I know what I need to be doing, I’m just not doing it?

If everyone did the thing though, I probably wouldn’t have a job because coaching isn’t about telling people what to do - it’s helping them figure out how to do things.

So this is what I want you to do. I want you to, right now, at this very moment, put your phone down and pull out a piece of paper and write down anything you’d like to change in your life.

You’d like to be more physically active, you’d like to clean off your desk, dust your bookshelf, go through one drawer of clothes and go all Marie Kondo on it (does that 15 year old stretched out sports bra give you joy?) - finally make that dentist appointment you’ve been putting off - whatever the task may be, pick one thing and take action on it for five minutes a day.

You can do anything for five minutes.

Ok?

Ok.

Good talk.

P.S. Are you ready to take action with your nutrition, but not sure where to start? Comment below or send me an email at kim@kimlloydfitness.com to find out more about my online nutrition coaching program that starts in July.

**Not open to Spurling Fitness members - we’ve got your nutrition coaching covered :-)