Consistent...

Life is full of little paradoxes.  (Probably big ones, too, but those are beyond the scope of my practice…)  Yesterday I wrote about shaking things up.  Today I’m thinking about consistency.  The good thing about paradoxes is that both parts are true.  We need both to shake things up and to be consistent.

Consistency is about showing up, every time we plan to show up, and doing the work.

When we first jump in to working out, we have grand plans.  We will work out All The Time!  We will be So Awesome!  Probably by tomorrow!

Then we get sore and we think that maybe we can be awesome later, like maybe next week when we can stop swearing every time we have to go up and down stairs.

(To be clear:  I do not recommend working out through the kind of pain that means we are injuring ourselves.  Sometimes workouts are uncomfortable.  Sometimes our hamstrings or quads or some other muscles complain at us the whole time.  Know the difference between discomfort and scary pain, like we know the difference between our kids whining and real distress.)

Planning when we are calm is useful.  Folks just starting out might want to do moderate cardio five days a week.  When that becomes a habit, it’s good to add a weight training session.  Then another one.  Planning on rest days helps make everything better:  I know I can do this if I know that I don’t have to do anything on Saturday…

We can do this.