Celebrate the Back

April is my favorite month of the year. At where we are, it is the month that consists of ALL seasons within its 30 days - snowy winter weather, rainy spring weather, sunny summer weather, and a chilly fall weather…It is also the month I watch many wonderful flowers coming out of hiding. And to top it all off, it is the month I celebrate another year on this earth.

At this age, birthdays might not be as pleasant as they used to be - more wrinkles, more white hair, more random body aches…. But the memories that are made during that one year, good and bad, are the best gifts when my birthday arrives.  Hearing from friends that I haven’t spoken to for a while, getting the handmade cards from the kids, shedding tears to the card that Derek writes, listening to my family in Turkey singing happy birthday on FaceTime, breathing the April air in…

Some of you already know that I really love celebrating birthdays (everyone’s) with pushups…. Each year on earth earns us another push-up.  This year, since my birthday fell on a Wednesday (class day), it was especially exciting to do my 47 pushups with all the attendees.  My dad gave me the best surprise by staying up until 3am his time to do my pushups with me.  He definitely earned the “dedication” award.      Given that my new age is a prime number, we made sure to celebrate it AGAIN during the Friday morning class.  After all, prime numbers don’t come that often.

One thing that comes with age, especially after my 45th, is the random ache in random parts of my body.  As I covered in my previous blog, core is a crucial part of our body and part of our core is our back.  And the back is very prone to that random ache.  Given that both our back and our abdominals love to cheat, it is extra important to strengthen the back without letting the abs doing the work (and vice versa).  Back has a lot of control over the way we stand.  However, if we do not have a good posture then the back doesn’t force us to change it either.  Therefore, it is critical to pay attention to our posture to keep our back healthy.  More we strengthen the back, easier it gets to keep that better posture because we make our back “top of mind”.

Plank and pushups are by far the best overall core moves and as I mentioned in my previous blog, there are plenty of those on social media.  Therefore I wanted to focus on my second favorite back move - Superman!  Any Superman move is also a great way to work our way into more pushups.  That’s why my one and only modification for pushups, is a Superman.

Try it out:

Happy birthday to you all with a big high five for another year on this earth!

30 minutes after my birthday pushups :)