Do you get charged up when you listen to hip hop or death metal? Maybe dance music fuels your fire for movement. Is Motown your thing? Or perhaps a nice dose of Carpenters or Michael Bolton is what you need to grease your wheels (don’t be hater – I can see you smirking).

The thing is that it’s different for everybody, but for most people, music adds an essential ingredient of passion and enjoyment to a workout. I used to work with a guy who only listened to Metallica, and he was a bodybuilder, so you know “Enter Sandman” was cranked while he was pumping iron. One of my clients prefers opera far and away over nearly any other style of music on my MP3 that accompanies our sessions (I have a special mix for her). Other clients love the blues, folk, alternative or any of the myriad of obscure artists I play during the hour. A few have even said they couldn’t care less what we listen to (although that’s hard for me to wrap my head around, if you want to know the truth.)

I teach boxing and used to work with amateurs and pros, sparring and training. I like loud and fast like The White Stripes, Flogging Molly or Eminem for hitting the bags and contact work. I prefer mellow (classical, swing, adult alternative, folk or even soundtracks like “O Brother Where Art Thou” or “Les Miserables”) for strength training so I can focus on pristine execution.

Whatever your preference, make sure you’re able to listen to what you like when you’re exercising. You’ll do it better and enjoy it more.

If you’re one of those people who thrives on being outdoors while you’re exercising, but you live in an urban or suburban area, par courses (which go by other names as well) may be right up your alley.

These are basically little calisthenics-type exercise stations strung together by paved, dirt or gravel trails and follow a prescribed sequence. You can find them in public parks, school grounds and sometimes laced around business parks. They’re a very cool idea but some people don’t know quite what to do with them. Here are a few tips to get a good (but safe) workout at a par course:

1. Jog about half your normal running pace. The exercise stations will spike your heart rate and you need to pace yourself to allow for a cumulative effect over the length of the course.

2. Skip the stations you aren’t sure how to use, seem beyond your strength level or ones that seem acrobatic or difficult to balance on if you are not particularly athletic or have something less than an excellent strength-to-body weight ratio. If you can’t easily do jumping jacks or hop on one foot for 10 seconds, skip these types of stations.

3. If you do strength work for your legs (squats or lunges), leave that one until the end, even if a leg strength station is presented earlier in the sequence. Why? Because you need to save your leg endurance for the rest of the jogging between stations and it could also compromise your balance and footing if you work your legs too hard before you finish the course.

4. Take along a resistance band for arm and shoulder work and exercise these muscle groups at the stations you skip (or spread evenly throughout the course). Look at the guide provided in the band package or contact me for animated links of suggested band exercises.

Par courses can be a lot of fun and a nice break from the gym routine if you know how to make it fit your needs and fitness capabilities.

So get out there and have some fun!

A woman I know was training for a long bike race. She was a recreational rider, not interested in anything but completing and enjoying the race. But she recognized that since the race was going to take her a few hours, she’d better train up to that level to get through the event. She lived in an apartment and so she invited a few of her friends over one night, told them to bring their bikes and their stationary trainers (devices that cradle the back wheel and basically convert the road bike into a stationary bike). They rented a movie, lined the bikes up in front of the TV and pedaled for the length of the movie (about two hours.)

I thought that was a great way to get in the work in an enjoyable way that made the time pass quickly. Many people prefer actually taking the bike out on the open road on a quiet Sunday. Still others think of a day tossing a Frisbee and splashing in the breakers at the beach pure heaven. One of my long-time clients doesn’t let many weekends go by without hiking one of the many picturesque trails in our area.

Whatever your choice of activities, it’s a terrific idea to include at least monthly (and maybe even weekly) a longer, lower intensity cardio workout. This is anywhere from 90 minutes to a few hours with your relative intensity level somewhere between 5 and 6 on a 1-10 scale. Here are some of the benefits:

1. Lots of calories burned, mostly from fat stores.
2. Building stamina for similar functional activities (cleaning out the garage, yard work, house cleaning, etc.)
3. If you pick activities you enjoy, perhaps the high point of your week in terms of pure relaxation and re-charging your batteries.

There’s a beautiful mildly hilly route here in my home town I’ve walked that ends in the heart of the very charming downtown area. It’s been a while since I walked it, so I think I’ll do that this weekend with a couple of soon-to-be very grateful dogs.

What are you going to do..?

Do you mow through your food like a thresher shark? Wait. Don’t answer. If you asked someone who spends a lot of time with you, would they say that you:

1. Often talk with at least some food in your mouth when enjoying meals with others?
2. “Cannonball” your bites with a beverage to “wash it down”?
3. Are often the first one finished with your meal?

And finally, have you ever finished a meal or snack and just wondered where the heck it went so quickly?

Don’t feel bad. It’s pretty common. But trying to squeeze eating in between everything else that seems so important makes us sometimes miss, or at least get short-changed on one of the most rewarding experiences we can have – the joy of savoring good tasting food. And it’s not just the taste, but the smell, texture and look of the food that we sometimes speed past at 90 mph.

Think about it for a minute. When was the last time that you enjoyed the last bite of something as much as you enjoyed the first one? How long has it been since you paused and truly absorbed all the sensory delights your food had to offer?

Try it at your next meal or snack. Take a second or two to really notice the experience of the appearance, aroma and consistency of that meal or snack before it disappears down your pie hole.

Help yourself to remember what you loved about eating while developing a discipline that serves you for the rest of your life.

Is playing just as good as getting in a workout? That depends:

On-line poker? No
A two hour hike? Yes
Swimming in a river, lake or at the beach? Yes
Dangling your feet poolside? Um, what do you think?

So you get the idea – it comes down to how physically challenging it is for you. A gentle, introductory yoga class might build strength and stamina for someone who doesn’t regularly engage in cardio or strength training, but for a gym rat with great flexibility, the class may be designated as the “off-day” activity.

Here are some great ways to get a decent workout doing fun stuff:
- beach or grass volleyball
- throwing a frisbee
- shooting some hoops
- playing on the play structure with your kids at a nearby park
- golf without a cart
- racket sports
- long, hilly neighborhood walks

Generally speaking, you’re not trying to get your heart rate up so high that your struggling to breath or loading your muscles to the point of soreness the next day, but more enjoying the activity, company and your surroundings while burning a few more calories than you would doing some light housework or gardening. If you’re pooped when you’re done, skip the workout the next day (especially if your muscles are particularly stiff or sore.) If not, go ahead and at least get in a cardio workout the following day if that’s what’s on your calendar anyway.

And most importantly – have a great time!

Boy – that title makes you want to tear into the article, doesn’t it?!

Okay, first let me distinguish between types of discomfort.

1. The guy at the gym wearing hiked-up, super-short, way too tight running shorts while straddling the weight bench. Not good.

2. The feeling you get when, like gawking a pile-up on the shoulder of the freeway, you can’t take your eyes off him (although you may want to pluck your eyes out of your head or get self-induced amnesia afterward.) Still not good.

It’s also not the over-used and badly applied adage that originated with old-school bodybuilders: “No pain, no gain.” That slogan had a very narrow relevance for a specific group of athletes who understood well the risks of extreme-intensity resistance training and were trying to reach unprecedented muscle girth development. But it’s been distorted and misunderstood when applied to a general fitness context. Some light muscle soreness evenly distributed over the length of the targeted muscle that subsides in a day or two is fine. Exercise-induced joint soreness is bad news.

But there is a very positive discomfort you can experience at the gym (or working out at home). It’s the feeling that you are challenging yourself and taking yourself a little bit out of your comfort zone. As you train more regularly and increase training tolerance, the body becomes more resilient. As long as the exercises are executed with strict control (correct posture, bio mechanics or movement streams, and fluidity or even cadence), a little discomfort is a good indicator of the main training objective: Gradual, consistent progression.

So, what do you look for in terms of discomfort for the two traditional aggressive modes of exercise (cardio and strength training)? Here are some tips:

Cardio: Deep, accelerated breathing, heart rate elevated so that conversation is difficult but not unmanageable. No dizziness, nausea or feeling of loss of control.

Strength: During a set, incrementally difficult repetitions and either progressive increase in the “burn” in the muscle, gradual loss of power or a combination of the two – but NO loss of coordination or joint pain.

The best indicator that the type and level of discomfort in your training is correct over the long term, though, is increased capacity in both areas of fitness. Over time, with individual workouts, you should be able to do more and recover more quickly.

Then, as you build your capacity, you’ll also build your self-discipline and ability to focus on reading your body during the workouts.

And maybe you’ll even have developed the composure to look the other way the next time mister tiny trousers is working out next to you.