Gifts

With Christmas on the way, many of us have our minds on gifts.  Here are some gifts we can give ourselves that might make Christmas more fun:

• Cardio.  It is worth the time, really.  It reduces stress, increases energy levels, and burns calories.

• Yoga.  We all need an excuse to be quiet in this season of busyness.  We might even have time to remember why we are doing all that stuff as we connect with our inner light.

• Rest.  An essential part of fitness is recovery.  We forget that.  Take a nap.

• Good food.  This might mean savoring a cookie, or it might mean making sure there is salad for lunch.  We need to remember to choose what nourishes us in the deepest sense.

One other note:  As much as I love fitness, it is absolutely crucial to remember that we can only give OURSELVES the gift of fitness.  No matter how much we love someone or how much we think they need to improve their fitness, we should NOT give fitness gifts unless they are expressly asked for.

Luxurious

Many of us are pressed for time.  My industry is full of ideas on How to Be Super Double Awesome in Ten Seconds A Day!!!!  The struggle is real.  We all have to figure out how to commute, work, take care of the kids, eat, run errands, maybe sleep sometimes, and, oh yeah, be human.  Time for fitness seems like some kind of myth, either the good kind, like an escape to a desert island with yummy coconuts, or the bad kind, like some sort of punishment with flames and an endless lack of parking spaces.

It is absolutely true that fitness doesn’t have to take forever.  Half an hour a day, even in ten-minute chunks, is enough.  Just move.

However, it can be incredibly luxurious to have a real chunk of time for fitness.  Maybe, by some miracle, we find a free weekend morning.  I’m sure we can all think of things we could or should do with that time, but if we choose fitness, we have a real opportunity.

There is a satisfaction to be had in doing all the steps.  So often we skimp on the warm-up or the stretching.  We have to choose between our cardio and our weight lifting.  Even during our weight lifting, we don’t want to “waste” time resting between sets.

Maybe, every once in a while, it’s worth it to grab a buddy and go.  Do the cardio and then trade off sets of lifting.  Egg each other on and spot each other.  Help each other do those little things we all know we are supposed to be doing (hello there, myofascial release!) but continually put off.  Take turns stretching each other.

It could be fun.

Better

When I do chores, I have a fairly simple rubric:  it has to be better at the end than at the beginning.  Maybe I did not sweep up every single leaf in the yard or get every last weed.  Maybe I could have done slightly more scrubbing in the tub.  But I am satisfied if the end result is an improvement.

The beauty of this rubric, which makes it particularly applicable to fitness as well as chores, is that it rewards progress.  Many of us have perfectionist tendencies.  The desire to Do It Right can get in the way of doing it at all.  We might not be able to spend two hours a day at the gym completing exemplary reps for every single muscle group, plus cardio, warm-up, cool-down, flexibility work, balance training, and mindfulness.  But a ten-minute walk outside at lunch time can do wonders for our mood and will, in fact, help us along our fitness journey.  It might even encourage us to do it again.

In this fallen world, none of us gets to be absolutely perfect.  Let’s work to be just a little bit better instead.