Arvind Ashok: Fitness & Nutrition Simplified

A few weeks back, I wrote a train­ing post, about start­ing trou­ble in get­ting back into a work­out pro­gramme. This is part of the same series — how can you kick­start your jour­ney to bet­ter health and fit­ness — home­maker edi­tion. Don’t stop read­ing if you aren’t one though — you will find this post use­ful, I promise.

The Pro­file

• You are around 35 years old.
• Pre­sum­ably female, but hey, am not gonna exclude guys. Noth­ing wrong with being a “house-husband” — rais­ing kids and run­ning a house­hold is no mean feat. There are just a few sub­tle dif­fer­ences between a per­son going to work, and a per­son not going to work — as far as their exer­cise, nutri­tion, and stress are concerned.
• Your stress lev­els are high in the morn­ing, and in the night — with prep­ping every­one and kick­ing them out of the house, and the reverse in the night. But you have a good amount of free time in the after­noons.
• You sleep around 6–7 hours a night, and some sup­ple­ment this with an after­noon nap.
• You go to the gym, and do some ver­sion of what every­one does. Or maybe you do aer­o­bics or joined that fancy new yoga place — so many new things to try eh?!
• You prob­a­bly don’t care much about strength — c’mon, mus­cles are for burly men, right?
• You might be rea­son­ably flex­i­ble, but you have mobil­ity and sta­bil­ity prob­lems — can you stand on one leg, or hop, or squat, with­out any of it hurting?

This can apply to peo­ple who work as well — except the schedule’s dif­fer­ent. In that case, I would rec­om­mend lighter work­load, and more sleep. And an even more grad­ual process to get stronger.

The Plan

Exer­cise

The mobil­ity drills you can do are shown in the video below. These mobil­ity drills can be incor­po­rated by any­one — start your day with these, or do them before your work­out (see, I told you every­one would find this post useful).

Drill 1 — the knee-bending action is straight, then towards your lit­tle toe (harder), and then towards your big toe (eas­ier). Do 5 for each one, and repeat on the other foot. You can slowly increase this number.

Drill 2 — lat­eral leg swings, the aim is to keep the heels par­al­lel to each other, and swing well within your com­fort zone. You should not feel a stretch at all — as you swing more, you will feel it open­ing up. Start with 10 on each side. And as you get bet­ter, you can increase the height, the num­ber, and you can also slowly wean your­self away from the wall.

Drill 3 –The hip thrust — remem­ber to keep your trunk sta­ble, feet flat on the ground, and squeeze your butt. It shouldn’t hurt you at all — if it does, take it easy. Try to keep a 5-second hold at the top, and do 5 of these. And slowly increase it to a 10-second hold, and 20 of these.

Drill 4,5,6 — the three squats — split squat, lat­eral squat, and rota­tional squat. I would approach these with cau­tion, as they are a bit more com­plex than the oth­ers. Be care­ful, and slowly try to get to the full range of motion. Do it slow, keep­ing your trunk sta­ble to give you bal­ance. Do 5 each to start off, and you can increase it to 10 as you get better.

Drill 7 — The wall slides are great for the joints around the shoul­der — they pro­vide your gleno-humeral joint mobil­ity, and sta­bil­ity to the scapula (the bony bit that moves on your upper back. I think of them as the place the wings would attach). Your elbow and wrist should be touch­ing the wall at all times, and you should pull your scapula back and down. If you can­not do this, turn around and face the wall — same deal — elbow and wrist touch­ing, stand as close to the wall as pos­si­ble and move the hands up and down.

Now, on to some strength and con­di­tion­ing.This will aid in get­ting stronger, and burn­ing fat.

Cir­cuit A: Step-Up, Knee Pushups, Rear Lunge, One-arm DB Row

Cir­cuit B: DB Step Down, T-Pushups, Front Squat, Lat Pull­down

• Rep­e­ti­tions — Start with 5 reps for each move­ment (on each side, where applic­a­ble), and work your way up to 10. That’s one set for that exercise.
• Sets — Start with 1 set, and increase by one set every week (or every two weeks), and aim for 5 sets (of each exer­cise) as a goal.
• Weight — Start the exer­cises with body-weight, and slowly start using weight once you are able to do the work pre­scribed (5 sets of 10 reps).
• Pro­gres­sion — Once you are able to do it with lighter weights, go up to the next level of dumb­bells. Keep pro­gress­ing, slowly!
• Rest 60 (start with 90) sec­onds between each exer­cise, and 2 min­utes (start with 3 min­utes) between each round.

Piec­ing the plan

• Do the mobil­ity drills EVERYDAY — it should take only 5 min­utes. Do them twice a day if you can.
• If you can work­out 3 days a week — do cir­cuit A on Mon­day, cir­cuit B on Wednes­day, A on Fri­day — and rest* on other days. Next week, it will be B-A-B.
• If you can work­out 4 days a week — do A on Mon­day, B on Tues­day, and A on Thurs­day, B on Fri­day — rest* on other days. Start every work­out with the mobil­ity drill, and a light warmup.
• If you cur­rently do yoga, or aer­o­bics — incor­po­rate the cir­cuits once a week. For exam­ple, Cir­cuit A on Mon­day, aerobics/yoga on Tues­day, Cir­cuit B on Thurs­day, aerobics/yoga on Fri­day. Rest on other days. If your yoga is the peace­ful type, you can def­i­nitely do it more often, and on your work­out days.

* — On rest days, con­tinue with your mobil­ity drills. And take a long walk, if you are look­ing for some fat loss. Improv­ing activ­ity level will pay off. But don’t stress your body more than that. Recov­er­ing from the work­outs is important.

Why are mobil­ity, flex­i­bil­ity, and sta­bil­ity impor­tant and relevant?

And what’s mobil­ity in the first place? And why is it grouped with sta­bil­ity? There’s is a very inter­est­ing approach called the Joint-by-Joint approach,

Our mod­ern bod­ies have started devel­op­ing ten­den­cies. Those of us who are seden­tary, as well as those of us who are active, seem to migrate to a group of sim­i­lar mobil­ity and sta­bil­ity prob­lems. Of course you will find excep­tions, but the more you work in exer­cise and reha­bil­i­ta­tion, the more you will see these com­mon ten­den­cies, pat­terns and problems.

The body is a layer of joints — ankle, knee, hip and so on. Each joint has a spe­cific func­tion — mobil­ity or sta­bil­ity, and cor­re­spond­ingly has a related issue — los­ing mobil­ity or sta­bil­ity. The joints alter­nate in func­tion — the ankle joint’s pri­mary func­tion is mobil­ity, while the knee’s is sta­bil­ity, and the next joint up — the hip — you guessed it — mobil­ity. And here’s why this is important —

Pain near one joint could be caused by a prob­lem in the joint above or below.

That weird pain in your knee that just keeps com­ing back in spite of a mas­sage — it could be because of a loss in ankle mobil­ity! By work­ing on your joint mobil­ity, flex­i­bil­ity, and sta­bil­ity (the video above), you could see per­sis­tent pains — knee, or lower back for exam­ple — dis­ap­pear and not come back.

The Nutri­tion

As you are scur­ry­ing around the house, pack­ing lunch boxes for the kid, help­ing the hus­band locate his lucky tie, make sure you set aside 15 min­utes to put together a whole­some, quick break­fast for you and your family.

So, what kinda stuff can you eat for break­fast?

• Some break­fast options — scram­bled eggs with veg­eta­bles with a glass of milk and fruit, egg dosai with chut­ney, sam­bar and a small cup of fruits.
• Or maybe some pan­cakes?

Now that the storm is over, and you have some time for your­self. You decide to catch up on some email, get on face­book, watch some news on the telly. But hey — dont for­get — it is time to work­out! And you have that awe­some post-workout lunch to look for­ward to. Like what?

• Baked Ajwaini paneer, with a side of veg­gies and rice.
• Honey driz­zled chicken, pota­toes, and cau­li­flower! throw in some rice if you want.

Finally, din­ner time!

• If you wanna keep it light — try a salad of veg­gies and greens, throw in some cut fruits, spice it up with pep­per, and squirt some lemon on it. Throw in some boiled eggs, and you have a meal.
• Or you can’t go wrong with some fake pasta!

Some basic “rules”. Start with look­ing at the nutri­tion tem­plate again. And ensure each meal has,

• a chunk of pro­tein — like eggs, meat, seafood, paneer
• a healthy por­tion of veg­eta­bles — keep mix­ing it up
• a healthy por­tion of starchy veg­eta­bles — pota­toes, beets, sweet pota­toes are all tasty option
• throw in some grain, if you want. But only after sat­is­fy­ing the other criteria.
• And switch­ing out your cook­ing oils — use coconut oil, but­ter, and ghee. Yes, that means dump the seed oils.

Putting it all together

• If you are look­ing to get preg­nant — start clean­ing up your diet, and your husband’s as well. The most impor­tant period of a human’s life, the one that has the most impact, is the many weeks spent in the womb.
• Sup­ple­ment wisely. It is bet­ter to get your nutri­ents from food (eat real food!) but some sup­ple­men­ta­tion could be use­ful. Mag­ne­sium, Vit­a­min D, Vit­a­min K2, Vit­a­min B-12, DHA and EPA (omega-3) — these are com­mon nutri­ents that most of us fall short of, espe­cially veg­e­tar­i­ans. Vit­a­min A, and Vit­a­min C are two oth­ers to look into as well.
• The closer you get to menopause, the more impor­tant strength train­ing is. Ladies don’t get big and mus­cu­lar — they get fit and sexy when they lift weights!
• Sleep is impor­tant. Try to sleep for 8 hours every night. But if you cant, and com­pen­sate with an after­noon nap — here’s a sug­ges­tion. Work­out early after­noon, go home, eat a big post-workout meal, and take your nap. The most healthy and stress-free organ­isms I see are dogs — they run around, and go wild, come back in and eat a large meal, and flop in bed. I always envy them, and I used to do this when I worked out late in the evening. Since yours is an after­noon nap, keep it short.
• Put up some black-out cur­tains to improve your sleep. And what else can you do, that’s easy?
• Stress lev­els — it is always impor­tant to keep stress low.
• Cut out sugar, in your foods, and in your family’s foods. The amount of sugar in com­mon foods and snacks is crazy! Instead, try to give them health­ier snacks — fruits instead of juice is a good start.
• Don’t be in a hurry, be patient, and give it an hon­est shot. You have the con­trol over your family’s food sup­ply — a change in your diet means a change in everyone’s diet — for the better!

Try it out, and let me know how it goes. In 6 months, you will be vastly stronger, and more mobile. Be patient, and be con­sis­tent.

If you have spe­cific ques­tions about how you can make it work — ask me in the com­ments sec­tion. Share this arti­cle to some­one if you think it will be use­ful. Take care!