First, let me just say thank you to all of you who upgraded your subscriptions to support my fundraiser for the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. This was my way of participating in Friday’s ICE OUT strike and protests — and in retrospect, I’m wondering if I actually messed up a little. When I created this initiative last week, I hadn’t realized that not engaging in any form of non-cash commerce on Friday was such an important element of the demonstration, and for that I apologize. I will say, I only got a small handful of new subscribers on Friday itself — most came in on Thursday or Saturday — so great job to you for doing a better job understanding the spirit of the whole thing than I did. In any case, I’m not keeping one red cent of the money that came in over the past couple of days; it’s all going to ILCM. It’ll take a few days to finalize the numbers, but as of right now, you’ve helped raise more than $1,200 for this great cause. I’ll share a donation receipt when I tally the final amount and make my contribution! We really are stronger together. (And, ahem, always learning.)
February seems like a good time to double down on strength, no?
If you’re new around here, I send a workout video every week, and the first video of every month (aka the strength workout) is meant to be repeated — you can do it once or twice, even three times per week (along with whatever else you’d like to do, including the other videos that come through), and gradually add weight throughout the month. You don’t have to do it this way! But if you want to, a few reminders:
For your first workout or two, take it a little easy. Don’t immediately jump to the heaviest weight you can stand to move. Ease your way in to hopefully avoid destroying yourself with soreness and feeling the need to take a super-long break before you go back for another workout (or even feeling discouraged entirely). THEN start to push. Nudge just slightly out of your comfort zone each time. Grunting, cursing, and heavy breathing all very welcome.
Record the weights you used, if you’re comfortable (if recording body-related numbers is not good for you, skip this part). You should be trying to use a weight that gets you very fatigued and almost close to failure (i.e. you can’t do another rep) by the end of the minute-long set.
Repeat the workout once or twice more within the week if possible.
Do this for four-ish weeks (or more!), adding weight to the extent possible for each exercise that uses weight. Keep recording your weights (again, if this feels like a wise move for you) so you can see your progress! You can also mark progress on things like number of reps, longer working time (if you started off needing to take a break before the end of the set, etc.), or positioning (moving toward a more advanced version of the exercise), if applicable.
You can do the other WOWs that come through over the next couple of weeks as a way to mix things up and supplement your training, if you have time.
Then you’ll get another strength-training–focused workout next month, and the cycle begins anew should you choose — although you can absolutely stick with this one for another few weeks if you like.
I’m typically a big fan of offering up the option to skip the warmup or cooldown, or one or two rounds of the circuit. However, if you’re doing this in a progressive overload setup, I’d like to encourage you to keep the warmup and cooldown to make sure you’re taking good care of your body. If you can only do one or two circuits the first week, see if you’re able to add a second or third circuit in subsequent weeks.
A note on weights: If you’re going to go for true strength training, you need some heavy weights. This can be hard for home exercisers! I hate sending you out to buy weights — they’re expensive, heavy (heh), and hard to store. But you may get to a point where you just have to go for it and buy your own, or find a gym facility you can use that has heavier dumbbell options.
If you aren’t interested in progressive overload–focused strength training (or not yet), you are very welcome to just follow this video like a regular one-off workout! And you can do the whole thing, or if you have less time or energy than that, you can trim things down by:
Skipping the warmup
Skipping the cooldown
Skipping one or two of the three rounds of the resistance-training circuit
Make it work for you. If you’d like to repeat this workout a time or two throughout the week, great.
Let’s go!
