What to Do When You’ve Hit the Wall

You don’t want to get off the couch too fast. You need a plan. And what better way to start working out how you’re going to work out than a book by a genius who while pursuing his Ph.D. decided against intellectualism to become a muscle man. Sam Fussell’s paean to being tired of ignoring his body led to an obsessive undertaking to do the exact opposite. A gripping read and the literary equivalent of listening to the theme song from Rocky. To, you know, get ready!

So you’re off the couch, and you’re ready. But high school gym class is the last class you had that in any way, shape or form got you really ready for doing something/anything physical. But if ignorance of the law is no excuse for violating the law, then not knowing a personal trainer is no excuse for not being trained by a personal trainer. Which is where artificial intelligence comes in. Now a robot can roll its eyes when you say you can’t do another deep knee bend.

3. COVID Sweats vs. Plank Sweats: Discuss

If it was paranoia that got you off the couch but kept you away from the gym, then it might be paranoia that has you thinking the sweating you’re doing in your home workout is just a precursor to the fever that’s an earmark of COVID-19. And when you’re looking for an excuse to NOT work out, well, it’s any port in a storm, right? Which is why and how fitness trackers have gotten in on the act. They know things. About you, your body and your habits that are most definitely being found useful in taking the guesswork out of the possibility of you having the virus.

“You can only do so much with body-weight exercises.” Forget the fact that you’ve actually done no body-weight exercises like push-ups, burpees or squats. You’re convinced you need weights and, well, if you had some, then it might make sense to start working out. But you don’t, so you won’t. Sorry for the hectoring tone, but as a former personal trainer, I do know that there’s such a thing as Amazon. And UPS, FedEx and the USPS (at least for the time being). With a small investment in a kettlebell, an Indian club and a sandbag, you can not only survive physical fitness-wise but thrive.

When seeking out a new place, you can always use a little help. In the latest episode of “Decision Moments,” created in partnership with American Family Insurance, Chicago influencer Rachel Mooreland embarks on her remote apartment hunt with her leasing manager boyfriend, Roosevelt. Will she choose the killer view or extra space?

1. Working From Home Is Not Working OUT at Home

If you’re sitting at your desk at work, at the very least you’re moving to get there and you’re moving to get home again. Unless you’re rich (in which case, why are you working at all?), getting from your bed to your “home office” doesn’t take more than a few steps, which won’t require any stretching at all. Doesn’t mean that the obvious benefits of stretching are absent. And if you look at it a certain way, specifically that stretching is probably a lot easier than an hour with kettlebells, why would you not stretch? Outside of the fact that it’s extremely boring? Here are a few ideas.

2. Flexibility Reconsidered

Apologies are in order. There’s a tendency to make fun of that which you don’t do. I don’t play basketball? I make fun of basketball. But if I seemed to be making fun of stretching above, it’s not because I don’t stretch. It’s because I hate stretching, and do it badly, and yeah, we tend to not like to do things that we do badly. Here’s the catch, though: Flexibility is not a “nice-to-have.” It’s a “must-have.” In fact, the five pillars of real physical fitness are cardio endurance, muscle strength, endurance, body composition and flexibility. So not taking stretching seriously is like not taking leg day seriously. Don’t. Do. It.

It’s well-known that just because you’re a pacifist doesn’t mean you’re a pushover. In fact, a lot of very serious martial artists have become so to keep to the path of peace. So it stands to reason that maybe just like the biathlon where someone combined cross-country skiing and shooting, we now have combined yoga and boxing. A genius move given that the lower your resting heart rate, the likelier that you will be able to fight well. How? Science.

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Exercising and getting your body to release endorphins is a surefire way to get a leg up on depression, but COVID-19-related depression might be a higher order of magnitude, especially when combined with other stressors. So, if we have the time, why wouldn’t we seek help for our mental health problems that isn’t in pill form? AI-based treatments for both depression and its handmaiden, loneliness, have arrived.

There was a time when the idea of chatting with either a psychic or a psychiatrist over the phone was comical. That was well before online communities for just about everything showed up and we had a smartphone in every pocket. Janine Kreft is a pro at telemedicine counseling for the Department of Veterans Affairs. But her real innovation comes on TikTok, where she dishes out compelling mental health advice for the younger set.

While talking out our problems is a time-honored solution, in general there’s probably no one patient enough to spend the kind of time with us on the phone or online who wouldn’t eventually just want to grab us by our shoulders and scream, “Get it together!” But the ubiquity of sound? Now, there’s something. Most definitely ultrasound, which doctors are using to blast the plaque off arteries in the brain. These and other sonic beams might be a nonsurgical way to get the brain the relief it needs when it needs it.

4. Brain Tips? Brain Tricks!

You got a short attention span? Huh? What? Well, yeah, us too. So what works best for us almost always? A list. Preferably one with not more than 10 things. Like the nice folks at Florida International University did for us when they busted out 10 tips to manage our mental health while social distancing. It includes sticking to a routine, maintaining social connections, getting enough sleep and … exercise. See, we told you.

1. For the Birds

Bird-watching became the unlikely center of a national debate on race in June after a white woman called the cops on a Black bird-watcher in New York City’s Central Park. But it also underscored the fact that birding is becoming a thing during the pandemic for more than just the usual crowd. The absence of human traffic on the roads and in the air has made birds feel more at home, and with everyone going on walks all of a sudden, more people are appreciating the avian life around them. This being 2020, we know this to be true how? Because of all the birding app downloads!

Who among us hasn’t recalled our favorite coach getting down with some timeless ol’ coach wisdom like “when the going gets tough: quit” or “winners never quit but quitters get to go home early”? See, if you’ve figured out that some things are not worth fighting for and want to head for the hills and social distance like a champ, we have a few ideas of how to best go about doing that. You’re going to want somewhere isolated with good access to running water or wells and game for hunting.

3. And Zombies?

We’ve seen fast-moving zombies in the movies. We’ve seen old-style, slow-moving zombies. We’ve seen urban zombies, we’ve seen rural zombies. We’ve seen serious treatises on escaping the zombie apocalypse, which may or may not have been caused by a virus. But one thing we haven’t seen is zombies that SWIM. So a lot of people who haven’t owned boats before are buying them now. Maybe they just like boats. Or maybe they have some sort of zombie insider smack that the rest of us need to heed.

We’ve all known a Chicken Little. The sky is falling. There’ll be a global collapse of the financial system. Nuclear winter. Racial holy war. Viral pandemic. And we’ve all either said silently or out loud “yeah yeah” and bid them adieu to head right back to doing whatever we were doing before they came along. But what if they were right? James Rawles has an idea, and he’s way ahead of you in preparing for societal collapse.