My Life

Feeling a bit sluggish about  now, deprived of gardening for all these months?  Me, too!  But not as sluggish as I’d be feeling if I didn’t have THE PROGRAM.   That’s what I call my ever-increasing compilation of exercises that a bevy of physical therapists has devised for me over the years.

Exercise for the gym-averse

See all my exercise toys?  They’re cost under 150 bucks and with a little training in their use, comprise everything a gardener needs to stay fit – just add cardio.  So if, like me, you’d rather not spend money on health clubs you’ll use for a  month, or even if you DID go to the club you’d really rather not exercise with the sweaty young crowd there, no problem!  Do-it-at-homers can get just as much done – with practically NO excuse for ever skipping a day.

So here’s my routine:

• Every single fricking day, right after reading my email and the NYTimes online, I get on the treadmill, with coffee mug in hand, for 45 minutes of fast walking.  What makes this tolerable – nay, even enjoyable – is the television you see here, on which I play tapes of the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, an assortment of PBS shows and even the occasional network show (I’m loving “Modern Family”).  Oh, and how can I forget Netflix?  Good lord, what a great service!  I’m currently racing through the fifth season of “Weeds”, thanks to those red envelopes of happiness.
• Also every day, I do a bunch of stretches and some Pilates core-strengthening exercises.   (Once you’ve discovered your “core”, you’ll never want to go back to your old, slouching, flaccid-muscled state.)
• Every other day I use those dumbbells and stretch bands and that cool “therapy ball” to staunch the muscle-deteriorating trend that kicked in big-time in middle age.   “Use it or lose it” turned out to be one of the better slogans from the ’70s.

That’s it.  Plus in season, gardening my ass off, as we say in the  GardenRant Manifesto.   So what do YOU do to keep your boding from wasting away in the winter?

Photo above right:  The view from the treadmill.  The TV is mandatory, lazy cat optional.

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Chunky at birth, I was soon sporting thunder thighs, as you can tell by this howler of a beach babe photo. But fast forward to mid-childhood, to this lean kid up a tree, and the fat is long gone, so what happened?  I say it was gardening.  Pay attention, parents of America, because some little-known secrets about preventing childhood obesity are about to be revealed.

First, buy a house on a good half-acre of land, preferably surrounded by lots of woods, maybe in a town near Richmond, Virginia.  Start a large vegetable garden and a larger ornamental garden and assign regular gardening duties to your kids, whether they like ‘em or not.  But to increase their chances of enjoying gardening chores, spend hours and hours outdoors with them tending the gardens, and fuss over the flowers and vegetables their work helped create.

Then give your kids plenty of unscheduled time for exploring those woods and engaging in lots of gardening-like activities, maybe building log forts or digging tunnels.  Sure, you might not think of them as gardening activities, but they involve handling plants and dirt – the very essence of gardening.  Of course, it’s important to give your kids indestructible bikes for exploring the countryside.   And if you have the space and some spare change, how about a swimming pool in the backyard?  Nothing fancy, of course, as long as it’s deep and cold.  (In fact, it can be bare cinder blocks without even a drain in the bottom.  Then every spring get the kids to drain and clean the pool themselves – it’ll be fun!!)

Of course there’s always dancing lessons and the swim team but remember, not too much scheduled time, okay?  Then how about taking long walks with them, one on one.  Call ‘em by the old-fashioned term – constitutionals.  They’re a great time for catching up.

But back to reality?  Okay, I know it’s no longer the ’50s, there’s more crime now, everybody’s busier, blah, blah, blah.  I don’t care; I’m enjoying a nostalgic moment.  I’m remembering gardening with my mom, walking with my dad, cleaning out the pool as a family, and playing badminton after dinner.  And I’m feeling pretty lucky about all that.

[Bottom photo: Bon Air, Virginia, 1958, with my cousin, now living in Seattle.  Hi, Jan! Click to enlarge.]

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Real gardening in middle age and later is a quite a challenge physically.  As in, how much back-breaking work can I do without actually hurting something, most especially the aforementioned back?  And that’s just added to the ordinary hazards to gardeners of all ages, like the accidental removal of digits.  So what’s a gardener to do?  Of course, there’s the boring advice we’ve all read about wearing gloves, and real gardeners resist that as a matter of honor, but the advice I do follow is to try to prevent back injuries.  You know how nothing makes you feel older than having back pain?  That’s the motivation right there.

It all started a few years ago when some now-forgotten injury led me to a physiologist, who referred me to a physical therapist who also does Pilates, and I became a convert.  Not one of those advanced, I’ve-devoted-my-life-to-it converts, just a believer who’s incorporated it into my regular workout.  I started with a class of five on the very expensive and very effective Pilates apparatus, which look exactly like Medieval torture devices but healed me of every ache I’d ever had.  Then, in an economizing move, I switched to a large class of Pilates done on mats, and learned a program of exercises I could do at home, which is the stage I’m at now – no expense at all.  Well, I did buy two things, both recommended by the excellent Roberta at Willow Street Yoga Center in “downtown” Takoma.  There’s The Pilates Body by Brook Siler, and a video I’ve misplaced, but here’s a bunch that are recommended.

So how does Pilates affect the gardener?  I think it’s the focus on core strength in the abs, glutes and quads, all the large muscles that we use doing any kind of “yardwork.”  I’ve seen its benefits described as muscle strengthening and body toning, which sounds about right except that I have no idea what body toning is, although I know it when I feel it.

The first arena for Pilates is the program the gardener follows at the health club, the yoga studio or the bedroom, and the second arena is what’s unique among exercise programs I’ve tried.  It’s about carrying the Pilates muscle tension and breathing into the garden so that those large toned muscle are engaged during our manual labors.  It’s going beyond just bending with the legs to total Pilates consciousness.  I try to stay “in Pilates” when I’m doing my daily walk, too, a form of multi-tasking that feels damn good.

To round out my ever-optimistic program of prevention, I do stretches and weight-lifting as prescribed by the same wise physical therapist who led me to Pilates.  Then, when it comes to the pre-gardening warm-up-and-stretch routine we’re always told to do, why do I suddenly act like a slacker?  Coz that’s what happens when I first hit the garden, with all my pent-up impatience to get to work. So friends, help me out with your favorite stretches, or just join me in my slacker guilt.  And to you pre-middle-aged gardeners out there: This is your future.

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