The Art-Flow For Your Brain Workout – V3.5

Good Morning my friends! I hope everyone had an amazing week last week. To kick off another week of awesome, this is The WOW – The Workout of the Week, from GoodAttitudeFood.com. This is “The Art-Flow For Your Brain Workout – V3.5”.

This week I am channeling my “inner-Bob Ross” – who was the first and probably only art teacher I ever really paid attention to, unfortunately for me. I was a dummy, but I digress. The Music this week is a cool record, converted to YouTube, with some great beats, going back to 1983. The workout will include some run/walk intervals on the street again (exercisers choice), an apartment friendly circuit workout, and will feature a yoga routine for lower back pain. My back has been a little stiff the last few days and this routine is perfect for some easy relief!

Channeling My “Inner Bob Ross”

For those of you who grew up in the 80s and 90s, you might remember Bob Ross. He hosted the television series The Joy of Painting from 1983 to 1994 on PBS. Ross used simple tools, a limited color palette, and an easy to follow style that allowed him to make beautiful paintings in about 30-minutes, the length of a show episode.

I bet I watched almost every episode of his show as a kid. I was always amazed at how he could make such beautiful paintings with such little effort. Plus, the dude had a great attitude! When I think about it, Ross might be my first ever positive life-attitude “mentor”, besides being the only art teacher I ever gave a second thought to.

“A happy little tree here… some happy mountains over there…”

You can still catch The Joy of Painting on media platforms today, thanks to the “magic of the internet”. The YouTube Channel for Bob Ross is a great place to start. Check it out!

… We start with a vision in your heart, and we put it on canvas. And we are here to teach you to do this too.

Bob Ross – Season One, Episode One – The Joy of Painting

My Bare Apartment Walls

My apartment walls are quite bare. Right now the only thing hanging on them is my printed Bill Murray “You’re Awesome” picture. While this is a great “piece of art”, these bare walls need something else!

I had been looking around online for some “art” type of stuff to hang and quickly found that “art” is expensive. Looking at all that stuff gave me some cool ideas though.

Bob Ross always said anyone could paint. While I am not using his technique this week, I am taking his advise that anyone can paint! Mr. Ross, thanks for the ideas, inspiration, and encouragement.

Instead of buying someone else’s art stuff, I decided I am going to make my own. I took a trip to the local art supply store (two words that rhyme with Bobby) and got myself some blank canvases and a paint kit. Almost everything was 50% off! For about $50 I got a bunch of blank canvas and a pretty nice acrylic paint kit with an easel.

Let the painting begin

This is my first ever painting on canvas, I think. At least the first I can remember. I remember doing watercolor painting as a kid, but that was on paper. Lack of experience is no excuse, I am diving in!

The project is some sort of space/planet thing that I dreamed up. It’s using three canvases to make one interconnect picture. Hopefully, when it’s all done they will fit together into a cool “three-piece-art-thing”.

Art Stuff is Good for The Brain

In the original “Art-Flow For Your Brain Workout”, I talked about how doing “art stuff” stimulates the brain. I am not going to go into all of those details again, but you can check them out here on that post! That post really started me on actually doing some art stuff. Before I would doodle and draw stuff, but never really put much effort or thought into it. It was always more of a thing to keep my active mind from being bored while sitting on hold or in a boring meeting. After that post, I started scheduling “art time”. #Alainara came out of that scheduled time.

Non-dominant Hand Painting

In my first two paintings of the three-piece project, I used my left (non-dominant) hand to a lot of the brushwork on the black backgrounds. From following Jim Kwik I learned that using your non-dominant hand to do tasks like brushing your teeth can be a great way to stimulate the brain. I found a great article that goes deeper on this from Jeff Rose here for more on this.

My theory is that if brushing your teeth with the non-dominant hand grows the brain, and if art-creation stimulates the brain, then doing something like painting with the non-dominant hand must “Super-Charge” your brain. So I used my left hand for a bunch of non-detail painting.

Results of this brain “super-charging” remain to be seen, but I think the theory is at least solid! And I feel way smarter, muu-hah-haha! – ignore my evil-genius laugh.

The Music – Flying Lotus 1983

The music this week is what I am calling a “space beats” album. I found it – or YouTube’s “algo” found – while listening to random music. It’s called Flying Lotus – 1983. The cool beats mix with some spacey “atmospheric sounds” and some jazzy riffs to get a pretty chilled out/spaced out album! The spacey tunes put me in the right frame of mind for my space-themed art project. I don’t know too much about “Flylo” as many YouTube comments refer to the artist (Flying Lotus) as, but I enjoy the beats! Check the link below to listen to the album!

The Workout

Round 1 – Goal = 7,000 steps in a day

Trying to get 7,000 steps – walking or running, or doing intervals of both. Dependent upon the weather, I am trying to get 7,000 or more. I am trying to hit the 7k mark 5 days or more this week. I will probably repeat the routine from last week and add some running intervals.

Round 2 – Apartment Friendly Tabata Circuits – 3 stations

Get those interval timers out! Set them for 8 X 20×10. Each set is 8 rounds. Take a minute break between rounds. Make sure to warm-up prior to this. I plan to do this four days this week. Mon, Wed, Fri, Sat.

I am doing a 3-station circuit trainer this week. Full out Tabatas. MAX it out for 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds, repeat 8 times for one set at each stations.

Station 1 – push-ups, sit-ups, lunges, squats, repeat

Station 2 – Resistance band – *Make sure to anchor – Curls, standing bench, butterflies, pull-backs – REPEAT

Station 3 – Half-speed shadow-boxing punch combos. Weighted gloves if you got em! Freestyle! Work for 20 seconds, rest for 10-seconds – repeat. Mix it up if you want. Add some high-knees or kicks. Whatever works – FREESTYLE so have some fun! Just half speed for this. Not moving the feet as much. More just cause I need to throw some punches after a few weeks of not having it in the workouts. STRESS RELIEF!

Round 3 – Yoga For Your Back

Yoga With Tim is another awesome YouTube source for Yoga. Tim is a really good teacher and the videos are great.

I woke up with a stiff lower back on Friday and it’s been nagging a bit since. I found this video from Yoga With Tim and it really helps get some relief. If you deal with back pain, yoga is a great way to solve the problem and prevent future issues. Yoga helps to build a strong core. When we build core strength, that takes the pressure off those sore muscles in the back. Building these muscles now will prevent back issues in the future. At least that’s what my ACE manual has been teaching me!

Here is the video from Yoga With Tim – Please check out the channel and show them some love for the awesome gift of back pain relief through Yoga!

Make it an Awesome Week!

There you have it, friends! This has been the Workout of the Week from GoodAttitudeFood.com THANK YOU SO MUCH for reading. Thank you to all the awesome free content providers! Check out the links and support these awesome peeps for what they do!

Be happy and healthy my friends! Try some art stuff, it’s good for your brain! It’s more stimulating than sitting on the couch watching “the tube”! If your walls are bare, maybe try some painting with the Bob Ross method. Bob was a “happy-little-mentor” for me in my early life, with his show The Joy of Painting. His show inspired me to write some painting stuff into my “hero story” this week. Maybe you could too!

Whatever story it is you write this week, remember that you are the hero in it! Be the hero in your story. In the real-life story; the one we all write with our thoughts, words, and actions.