If at first you don’t succeed, try again. And again.
Over and over and over.
The number of ‘fails’ doesn’t matter. Every fail is one more chance to learn something new, or remember something that you’d forgotten.
Apparently last October I recommitted to working on my fitness. I say ‘apparently’ because it seems that I’d forgotten that I ever made that post.
I have not lost my ‘pandemic 21.5’. I am not in the shape that I want to be in.
Begin again, begin again.
In the past when I’ve been successful at exercising its been because I made fitness my number one priority. I did this by doing my exercise first thing in the day, even in on days when I had to leave for my private teaching at 6:45 am. I once had a nice run of a couple years doing things this way. I managed to build a habit and all was well. Right up until the time when my routine hit a brick wall and I stopped.
Ultimately my approach wasn’t ‘do things this way for the rest of your life’ sustainable because in order to prioritize my exercise I wasn’t also prioritizing my sleep. Especially on the days when I had to leave the house at 6:45 am. On those daysI toughed it out and managed to get at 4:15 am, do a 30 minute power walk then get to the gym for a 30 minute strength workout. I honestly felt great. Working out first thing in the morning is incredibly energizing.
The problem with getting up at 4:15 am three days a week is that I wasn’t also going to bed and falling asleep right at 9:15 pm so that I could get a full 7 hours of sleep.
I haven’t fully resolved all of these conflicts and I’m not even entirely sure how I’m going to move forward. I do however have the beginning of a plan, so I’m recommitting to daily exercise once again.
Every morning I’m going to start my day with exercise. I’m tracking the ‘what I’m doing’ using Google Keep. After I complete my exercise I’ll take a screen shot and scribble in the date. Here’s ‘Day 1’:
Notice that I’ve made the bar extremely low. This morning was a ‘6 am’ day. I did 25 tibialis raises and called it a win. Every day I’ll do some type of exercise first thing in the morning. I’ll gradually raise the bar as I go until I’ve built an exercise habit that is sustainable and that meets my fitness goals. I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to upload those screenshots here. I’m thinking probably not, because it’s not terribly interesting to anyone but me. I will however create an update at the end of each month and share it with my email subscribers. The idea is to begin to create some external pressure and accountability for myself.
Stay tuned to see how all this goes!