It doesn’t have to be much.
The Over 42 Club
In May I got a smart watch because I was interested in how many steps I was taking each day. And I like gadgets. And it looked fun.
Some of the features stopped interesting me after a while. However, one piece of data surprised me. I get 3000-6000 extra steps every day walking my two dogs, Barney and Tessy. The reason it surprised me was that these are not dog walks that I would automatically call exercise. They stop and sniff everything. Barney, the big dog, worries a lot and will stop for minutes looking behind him just because. Tessy, the little dog, barks aggressively at any dog that is bigger than her (all the dogs we see. My husband calls it Tessy’s Enemies List. ) The pace is S-L-O-W. Yet there it is, 3000-6000 extra steps every day. I’ll take it.
And in the spirit of little things adding up, here’s a book review:
This Is A Good Book
Book Review: Strong and Lean: 9-Minute Daily Workouts to Build Your Best Body by Mark Lauren and Joshua Clark, St. Martin’s Publishing Group, New York (2021).
I love this book and these workouts. True confessions, most of the time it takes me 12-14 minutes to do the workouts, but sometimes I do get it done in about 9. The exercises are designed to cover all the muscle groups and joint functions in 3-5 workouts per week. The authors say you don’t need any more than that. I like exercising too much to stop at 9 minutes a day and what a comfort to know there’s something you can do that will keep you in shape during life’s busy seasons.
The authors divide the workouts into 4 cycles of 6 weeks each. You never have to learn more than one movement on any given day. Cycle 1 starts with 3 workouts a week and you gradually work up to 5. The exercises are a lot of fun and I’ve incorporated some of them into my yoga instruction. In summary, very little time and no special equipment is required to do any workout in this book. It’s a winner.
Jay Hiller, July 21, 2022
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