I love making plans. Plans are like slightly more practical fantasies. They hold out the promise of achievement and progress and all those seductive words that speak to my Protestant-work-ethic soul. Do this and be better!
What I am learning is that the best plans are not as tidy as my fantasies would prefer them to be. I—and I will venture to say we—need some wiggle room. If I say I will get up at 5 every morning and I’ll do my cardio straight after breakfast and then weights and then stretch, I’m not exactly lying, but I’m not going to do exactly that every day. There will be a day when I forget to set my alarm and don’t wake up anyway. There will be a day when I have a cold. There will be the day after a hike that turned into an accidental death march. It’s a good idea to leave some slack.
Maybe my plan is something more like this: I will do 30 to 60 minutes of cardio in the morning 5 to 7 days a week; I’ll lift weights 2 or 3 times a week; I’ll do yoga as often as possible and for sure on days when I skip the cardio.
For this to work, I have to be happy with the minimums and not totally wiped out by the maximums. Thirty minutes of cardio on five days a week meets the minimum requirements for general health. Two weight workouts is enough for folks who are not professional athletes. A guaranteed two days of yoga (assuming I miss two cardio workouts) is a reasonable minimum. If I hit the maximums and I’m totally trashed, I can adjust the maximums down until I get stronger or fitter or whatever.
And (bad news alert!) even the best plan doesn’t work if we don’t actually do the workouts.
Go play.
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