Given the circumstances, my dad had every right to be depressed about his diagnosis and treatment. Anyone who has cancer does. (Anyone who has any kind of difficult circumstances can develop depression or anxiety, and justifiably so.) But he absolutely did not let himself get depressed. He never saw himself as a victim. He rarely even talked about it—more to protect his family than anything else, I think.
Part of what kept my dad going was that he was always a very personable man, and he loved people. He had a great relationship with all of his doctors at the VA Hospital at Stanford University. He passed that attitude down to all of us in the family. So his attitude kept him going through the pain. His general love for life was his elixir.
So was physical activity. Sports were an active component of my dad’s healing. He played golf up until a few months before his death. The fact that my dad was so fit absolutely helped him not be as sick as somebody his age who’s overweight or a smoker. If he’d been out of shape and had not taken care of himself his entire life, we would have lost him much sooner. It’s not so much that optimal health is a guarantee of letting you live a long life (although of course, it’s an essential component)—it’s that when something bad happens, being healthy gives you the stamina to help you heal quicker.
In addition, my dad had always done his own version of Tai Chi. As long as I can remember, I have memories of him doing his routine for about ten minutes every day. There’s no name for it; it was just his own thing. He didn’t study Tai Chi—he made it all up! He’d stretch, touch his toes, put his hands in a salutation, move around his head, balance or center himself, in a sequence he figured out on his own. He was amazingly flexible. He was my superstar.
I see my dad as a shining example of how to use your brain to power through trauma. After a daunting and terrifying delivery of bad news, he took the bull by the horns and went for it. He could have given up and watched TV all day while eating ice cream on the sofa and feeling sorry for himself. He definitely needed that ice cream to keep his weight up, but he went out there golfing and living his life instead of staying home in bed. If he’d given up, he would have died very quickly.
Not only did exercise keep my dad going up until the end, it helped him manage his stress. Whenever something stresses us in a good way (like getting a huge, challenging new project at work) or a bad way (the rent’s going up and you just lost your job; your children are having a hard time at school; your car engine just gave out for the last time), your body instinctively releases the corticosteroid hormones cortisol and epinephrine. These hormones give you a noticeable jolt of energy that can help you make effective snap decisions, such as swerving out of the way of a drunk driver when you’re on the road.
But if you’re under prolonged stress, the continual release of these hormones can wreak havoc on your body, leaving you with such problems as irritability, sleep disorders, anxiety, and depression. In other words, your stress makes your stress more stressful.
As much as my dad was able to manage his stress, he knew what was happening to his body. We were always sanguine about his prospects. He had a goal. He wanted to see my nephew graduate from high school, and I was heartbroken, along with the rest of my family, that he wasn’t able to make it. He was determined not to die from bladder cancer—he told himself he was going to die with it—and he was going to golf his way out of this life on his own terms. He fought up till the very end, and lived much longer than his doctors expected he would.
You might not be able to put an end to stressful situations that are out of your control (your parents getting a surprise divorce, for example, or a close friend becoming seriously ill), but you can do your utmost to manage them with specific techniques, such as mindful breathing, meditation, yoga, the kind of visualizations you’ve learned how to do in this book, and, of course, exercise. It’s such a great stress reliever because the endorphins that are released during exercise automatically lower your cortisol levels. Not only will you feel better while you’re moving—you’ll continue to feel better after your workout is over.
Let’s talk about abs!
Using exercise for regular stress management will not only help keep you on an even keel, it will improve your confidence and motivation.
I want to be clear that exercise can’t cure depression, anxiety, or other mental illnesses. When things go wrong and you’re having a particularly difficult time, you need to get the right kind of help—from a therapist, sometimes from medications, and especially from things you can do yourself that are guaranteed to make you feel better. Exercise will always be at the top of that list.
But making your physical fitness a priority will help you maintain a balance to face difficult moments so you don’t trip and fall when you need to look calm, cool, and collected. This can happen when you need to be strong and go straight through a door to a meeting where you have to give a presentation and your nerves usually get the better of you. You know what I’m talking about, right?
We all have those days . . . we all have those moments . . . it doesn’t matter who you are or what you have or what you’ve already done, we will all have those moments when you just have to have your shit together and do what you have to do.
You can either falter, or you can get moving—you know this in your body memory from the feeling you get from movement and exercise that you can do this, and you take that same memory and apply it to what you need to unleash the cascade of chemicals in your brain, enabling the gears to start turning so that you’ll get the confidence and ideas and motivation and lift off you need.
You’ll turn into a rocket that blasts off so you can do your thing, the way you want to do it. And succeed the way you want to.
MY FAVORITE EXERCISES TO HELP YOU GET STACEY ABS
When you’re getting fit and losing weight, you naturally think about your belly and what goes into it. These abs exercises are a perfect reinforcement for your core—the seat of all your physical strength and power.
When I was in my twenties and started training clients at my local gym, one of my best classes was my abs class. I always had great abs from playing sports, and fine-tuned the routine I taught based on what I’d learned from my swim coach and basketball coach in high school. They’d drilled into us that core strength is the root of all body strength, and that if you didn’t have an awesome core, you wouldn’t ever be a good athlete. I just had to look at my winning teammates for proof: Their abs were ripped!
The average American spends approximately fifty-six hours per week sitting, so their core automatically weakens. Add in improper posture when doing all this sitting (not to mention all that looking down at your phone or other devices), and, most likely, a workstation that isn’t ergonomically designed to help you sit up straight, and you’ll suffer as a result—especially with lower back pain. Strong abs will not only help prevent back pain, but they’ll boost your stamina, increase your flexibility, and make you look and feel amazingly good.
Before you start, there are a few important things to remember:
How your abs will end up looking is predetermined genetically. Don’t be discouraged by the Photoshopped images of fantastically flat abs you see in magazines—they’re usually doctored images. Some people will quickly get “cut,” Magic Mike abs after a short time, and some will do tough abs workouts for years and never attain that kind of definition. What matters is that your abs are strong, and that you take the time to keep them that way.
It’s also important that you feel good about your abs. If you are constantly tugging on the shirt by your abs, thinking that’s going to help make them look better, it doesn’t. It only alerts everyone around you that you aren’t confident about your midsection. Be aware of this habit, especially on a job interview or a date. Leave your shirt alone!
Slow and steady is far more effective than rushing through the motions. It’s a myth that doing hundreds of fast-paced crunches every day will give you perfect, washboard abs. It’s much better to slow down and build up
to thirty-second sets of stable, isolated moves that really work.
Here are a few of the best.
Bike Crunch
DO THIS FOR: At least 3 minutes
SUGGESTED SONG: “Happy” by Pharrell Williams
NOTE: If you have a back injury, be careful and don’t do any moves that compromise you.
1.Lie on your back with your hands behind your head and your legs elevated up to a slightly bent 90-degree angle. (How high you can raise them depends on your flexibility—do whatever feels comfortable.)
2.Bring your right elbow toward your left knee, then your left elbow toward your right knee.
3.Keep going till the song is half over.
4.Try to hold the crunch for a two count on each side to force a slower, more concentrated movement until the song ends.
TIPS
•This is going to start to fatigue the muscles in the core, so hold it for as long as you can. If you need to rest, then do so. The more you do this move, the longer you’ll be able to hold it.
Alt Taps
DO THIS FOR: 3 minutes
SUGGESTED SONG: “Blow” by Beyoncé
1.Lie on your back so your body forms an X on the ground.
2.Bring your right hand across to your left foot, then your left hand toward your right foot, lifting your head, neck, and shoulders off the ground.
3.Keep going until the song ends. If you can hit the pace of Beyoncé, great; if you have to half-beat it, fine—but do it!
TIPS
•Yes, it’s tough! If you need to rest, then do so.
•If you start to feel it in your neck, it’s okay to support it with the hand not in use.
•When you come straight up off the floor, you’re working your lower abs. When you twist on an angle, you’re working your obliques and your lower abs.
Ninja Plank Crunch
The plank is one of the only exercises that works the entire core, allowing you to strengthen the front and back of your abdominal area simultaneously. This makes it the most effective exercise in this book, so you should aim for doing it more than any other one!
DO THIS FOR: 3 minutes, 10 seconds
SUGGESTED SONG: “Faith” by George Michael
1.Get into the traditional plank position: forearms on the ground and your body perfectly straight. Lift up so your entire body is off the ground, resting on the weight of your forearms. Do not let your back arch or sag. Stay strong and locked into plank.
2.Bring your right knee forward toward your right elbow, then return to the plank position.
3.Repeat on the left side.
4.Continue for 90 seconds.
5.Rest for 10 seconds.
6.Repeat for 90 seconds more.
TIPS
•Don’t look down at your abs; instead, stare in neutral at the floor. Even skinny people look peculiar down there in this position. Don’t look—it’s weird!
Grab the Rope
DO THIS FOR: 3 to 4 minutes
SUGGESTED SONG: “The Way You Move” by Big Boi
1.Lie on your back, feet on the ground, knees bent, shoulder width apart.
2.Sit up with your arms and hands reaching through your legs, as if you’re grasping for an imaginary rope, and grab it as if it’s helping you stay up. Your shoulders should be off the ground.
3.Alternate the grab from right to left.
4.Continue for the entire song. Your shoulders and upper back remain up off the floor.
5.When you grab, also turn into the middle, flexing the obliques with each change of the hands. Keep the flex even more into the next move. Stay strong—this shit is hard!
TIPS
•You want a song with a strong, pulsating beat to it, as that will help keep you propelling the grab!
MY FAVORITE EXERCISES TO REINFORCE HOW YOU LOVE YOURSELF: SG BUTT
What many people don’t realize is how connected all our muscles are. All your power starts in your core, then wraps around to the corresponding muscle in the gluteus muscles of your backside (which is the largest muscle group in your body). In other words, you always flex your abs first, brace them, find your balance, and then power through the glutes.
When you go into glute training, you always engage the core first . . . and you really have to think about what move to do next. If you don’t, gravity takes over and that’s when your lower back starts to hurt. When your mind wanders during any kind of core work, or when you’re slouching at your desk, your lower back bears the brunt of this, gets compromised, and starts to ache.
So what does this have to do with love, you might ask? Well, butts are one area of the body where people tend to have a love/hate relationship. I want you to love yours, no matter what shape it’s in. Not only because you need strong glutes to keep your body upright and able to move, but because they are so powerful. Loving everything about who you are is one of the most freeing and satisfying things you can accomplish.
Ballet Barre Squats and Leg Lifts
DO THIS FOR: 5 minutes
SUGGESTED SONG: “Be Alright” by Ariana Grande (x 2)
NOTE: I have been training clients on the barre for thirty years, as it is the most effective and stable place to be. If you don’t have access to a barre at a gym, then use a heavy and stable piece of furniture instead.
1.Place your legs a bit farther than hip width apart, toes pointed out.
2.Allow yourself to feel the rhythm of the song while you squat about halfway down to the floor, then come back up to the starting position. Do not let your knees go past your toes. If you’re super flexible, go deep. If you aren’t, stay shallow and build up to going deep!
3.Move over to the barre or piece of furniture and hold on gently with one hand.
4.Turn your foot out as you raise it up. Go to your comfort zone of lifting here—I’m not asking you to punt a football, but almost! Switch legs after you can’t bear to do any more. Shoot for 30 on each side.
5.Turn to face the barre or piece of furniture and hold on to it with both hands.
6.Lean forward with your abs tight, then extend one leg out behind you, toe pointed. Keep your standing leg slightly bent and not locked out. Shoot for 30 on each side.
TIPS
•You most likely started doing moves like this when you were a child. Don’t overthink them. Stay connected to your core.
•Imagine your legs long and lean and strong while you are doing the movements.
•Stay positive, and speak nicely to yourself. After just one song of these movements, tomorrow you will feel it!
Donkey Pee Ballet
DO THIS FOR: 5 minutes
SUGGESTED SONG: Your current favorite song on the radio or “New York City” by the Chain Smokers
1.Get down on the floor on all fours.
2.With your heel pointed toward the ceiling, do “donkey kicks” as if you were about to kick someone in the nuts! Make sure to lead with your heel and jam the bottom of that foot up into the air toward the ceiling. Abs tight! Do 30 on each side.
3.Go back to the starting position.
4.Do knee-out-to-the-side raises: Lift your knee up from the hip, abs tight. Squeeze your inner thigh as you move. You will feel this one so much more in the opposite side booty! Keep going, 30 each side.
5.Return to the starting position.
6.Do ballet points: Extend one leg back and kick long, straight back to the wall, abs tight. Push through your second toe (not your big toe). Go for 30 on each side.
TIPS
•This is a classic three-part leg series that really tones your butt and lengthens your thigh muscles, too. It’s an ideal replacement if you have bum knees and can’t do squats.
•Keep your neck relaxed and in neutral. Take all the pressure off your back by concentrating on keeping your abs tight.
Cardio Fix
DO THIS FOR: 5 minutes
SUGGESTED SONG: Play any fast-paced Madonna here . . . any song with a strong beat will do.
1.Stand with your feet hip w
idth apart, arms extended in front you at shoulder height.
2.Crouch down and jump up as high as you can, landing softly. (This is called a jump squat.) Keep your abs tight. Do 20.
3.Return to the starting position, your arms at your sides, then stand on one leg.
4.Use the force of your arms to jump up in the air, then land softly, balancing on that same leg. Do this 20 times on each side.
5.Return to the starting position, your arms at your sides.
6.Do jumping jacks—except move your legs to the front and back, as if you were cross-country skiing, instead of out to the sides. Try to do this as fast as you can, switching legs, 30 times. (This really turns it up a notch!)
TIPS
•Keep your abs super tight and make sure you breathe calmly. You’ll be able to do more this way!
The Toilet Squat
DO THIS FOR: As long as you like
SUGGESTED SONG: Not appropriate here!
1.Get up from the toilet after you’ve done your thing and flushed.
2.Do as many squats up and down without touching the toilet seat as you can. Aim for at least 10.
TIPS
•This is one of my favorite exercises, since you’re there anyway! Use the moment. You can do it in any bathroom, anywhere, for however long you want to, and it’s an effective way to strengthen your glutes and your thigh muscles. It’s great on airplanes. Trust me, it’s not as easy as it looks.
•Just don’t ever touch the toilet with your butt! Ewww!
MY FAVORITE EXERCISES TO GIVE YOU SIGNATURE SG ARMS
When you think about exercise, and moving—going for an energetic walk, perhaps—what comes to mind? Are you just thinking about how a nice, brisk walk will make your cardiovascular system and your leg muscles strong? I hope so. But I also want you to think about the upper half of your body, as arms and shoulders tend to get neglected by those who like to get their aerobic exercise from walking, running, or outdoor cycling. Even if you swim or play racquet sports, you still need to do arm-strengthening exercises regularly—this will make a huge difference in your sporting prowess. And many people get confused about what arm exercises to do, as well as how to do them.
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