Vision and Goal

Halloween week is a great time to pretend.  Everybody’s doing it!  Your kids are dressing up as anime characters you’ve never heard of.  Your boss is pretending to be Glinda the Good Witch.  The guy who delivers your packages is wearing bunny ears.

We can do all those things, but I’m suggesting that we pretend in a different direction.

 

We’re going to pretend we have reached our personal goals.  (If your goal is to be Glinda the Good Witch, that’s awesome and I probably can’t help with that.)

 

Take a few minutes.  Get quiet.  Maybe grab some paper if you’re a person who likes thinking by writing or drawing.  Take a couple deep breaths and let them out.

 

Now:  imagine.  You have achieved it!  You’re whatever it is you wanted to be.  How does it feel in your body?  Warm?  Cool?  Relaxed?  Powerful?  Purple?  (No, I don’t know what purple feels like, but I wanted to make sure that everybody knows that what it feels like in your body only has to make sense to you.)

 

What does this newly achieved world look like?  Calm and peaceful?  Joyous and noisy?  Lively?  Natural?

 

Who is with you?  Are they the folks who have been cheering you on?  Cool people you met along the way?  Are the haters there, sufficiently cowed by your new awesomeness?

 

Roll around in all this a bit.  All this stuff is the fuel that will get you to the reality.

Monday Workout: Halloween!

It’s festive, right?  (It’s not my fault that no exercises start with N and that I had to cheat a little on the E.)  Happy Halloween!  Three rounds.

 

H	high knees	30
A	Arnold press	10
L	lunge	20
L	lateral raise	10
O	oblique crunch	10
W	woodchopper	30
E	extend triceps	20
E	elbow plank
N	narrow squats	20

 

Thursday List: 5

There are lots of ways that thinking about the future helps us in fitness.  Here are some ways we can be kind to our future selves.

 

1.     Pack the gym bag the day before.

2.     Make a grocery list that includes good-for-us snacks and meal ingredients.

3.     Do the laundry so there are clean workout clothes.

4.     Buy the Epsom salts or Advil or whatever helps recovery.

5.     Schedule the massage or training session or class.

Time, part 2

That relationship to time that I was writing about yesterday is about the future, too. 

Most of the time, when we work out, we want to be in the present moment.  That’s the one we have influence on.  That’s where change happens.  If we’re working with a trainer, our trainer will help us stay focused on what we’re doing in the moment.

 

But.  We also need to have a little bit of consciousness of the future.  That’s where motivation comes from.

 

Say, for example, that I’m doing burpees.  I don’t like burpees.  Almost nobody likes burpees.  They’re hard and uncomfortable and we get sweaty and all that.  If we are too much in the present moment while doing burpees, those of us who are sane are going to say enough of this and stop.  But if we remember that our goal is to have enough stamina for a marathon or for a marathon game of tag with our kids or grandkids, we will keep going.  We use our future goal to fuel our present work.

 

Some goals are better than others, but I can’t say definitively which ones because the best goals are the ones that motivate each of us.  Mine are not yours.  It’s worth spending a bit of time visualizing your future awesome self doing whatever it is that inspires you.  That will get you through the burpees.

Time, part 1

It helps to have some perspective on time when we want to create a healthy relationship with fitness.

When we get started on a program, we need to think a bit about the past.  A good trainer will ask about what we’ve done before, what we liked, what we didn’t like, what injuries we’ve had, and a bunch more stuff about what has already happened with us.  This data helps a trainer keep us safe and also to create a program for us that suits our needs and desires.

 

Once that’s done, our job is to forget about the past.  We also have to keep forgetting it on a daily basis.

 

What do I mean?

 

We’re working out today.  The only relevant body is the one we’re in right now.  It doesn’t matter if we used to weigh 700 pounds.  It doesn’t matter if we used to be the world champion.  We are who we are today.  We need to work with the limitations and capabilities of this moment.  Focusing on where we used to be just distracts us from what we’re working on right now.

 

Some days go better than others.  Some days we can do All The Things and other days not so much.  The only thing that matters in each workout is that we do the best with what we’re working with this time.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Choose Wisely!

I’m still thinking about balance.  Today everybody gets to choose whether they’d rather do single leg squats or single leg deadlifts.  Three rounds.

 

kb swings	30
kb twist	20
kb 8x	10
db circles	30
1 leg squat or dead	20
plank up down	10
step ups	30
skullcrushers	20
Russian twist	10

 

Thursday List: 5

One of the keys to a good routine is a good checklist.  We use it until we internalize it and it all happens on autopilot.  Here’s an example of a morning checklist:

 

1.     Brush and floss.  (People who floss their teeth are generally healthier.  It’s unclear if it’s the flossing or just that people who floss their teeth are more tuned into taking care of their health.  It doesn’t take long.)

2.     Eat a healthy breakfast that includes some protein.

3.     Do a workout.

4.     Take a few minutes for mindfulness.

5.     Get on with the day.