Hey, baby, what are you planning to wear???

I have this fantasy where I am the cool chick with the laid-back life, ready to go on adventures instantly.  Go on:  crush my dreams.  Here in reality land, I know that one of my skills is planning.  I also know that planning makes my life much cooler, even though it sounds incredibly boring.

Planning is what makes my workouts work.  I don’t have to figure out what to do in the moment because I already figured out what this week’s workouts were going to be while I planned for my clients.  I don’t have to try to decide what kind of snack to feed my starving self that has some vague relationship to healthy food in the moment because I thought about it while I was making the week’s grocery list.

Anyone with fitness goals is deciding to make some peace with planning, as unsexy as it is.  Goals don’t do anything unless we have plans to get them done.

And I can always use my skills to plan for an amazing adventure…

Twisted, sister?

We like to go straight.  We talk about moving forward with a project.  We want to get ahead.  We don’t want to get sidetracked or twisted.  As far as metaphors go, great!  Whatever blows our skirts up, as one of my dear friends used to say.

But in fitness, we need to think about some of those other directions.  Life doesn’t happen in one plane.  We have to look over our shoulders to drive, twist around to get the leash on the dog, and let’s not think too much about the gymnastics required to get that last sock out of the washer or the wayward shoe out from under the bed.  When we practice moving sideways and across our bodies, we help ourselves deal with real life.  We are more prepared for the times when we oh-so-gracefully step off a curb unexpectedly or slip on the proverbial banana peel.

After all, life is a dance and what kind of dance would it be without a few side steps and twists?

My darling, my barbell? I don't think so.

It is always dangerous to generalize, so I hesitate to say this, but, I’m going to get crazy and do it anyway:  no one totally loves going to the gym for itself.  Maybe people like the feeling they get from having been there.  Maybe they like the music in the spin class, or that guy who is always hanging out by the cable machine, but mostly we go to the gym for reasons other than love for barbells, dumbbells, and cardio machines.

We go so that when we go on vacation, we can take the fabulous hike up the cliffs that overlook the sea.  We go so that we can help our older relatives shift that sleeper sofa without spending the next week in a close personal relationship with an ice pack.  We go so that we can run up and down the sidelines at all those soccer games our kids are playing in, yelling encouragement (if we go to yell imprecations at the refs or a bunch of criticisms at players, I have to say that I don’t support that!!!!).

Motivation will rarely come from the iron or the rubber or the plastic we find in the gym itself.  It comes from the experiences we get to have after we’ve used all those things, the ones that open our hearts and make our spirits soar.

Why are we going to work out today?