How to be motivated, even on Thursdays

For a long time, Thursdays have been rough for me.  The burst of enthusiasm at the beginning of the week is gone.  The weekend is not here yet.  It somewhat helped to dub Thursday the Official Day of Getting Nothing Done because then anything actually accomplished on Thursday felt like bonus points.  If anyone else happens to be lacking in motivation on this particular Thursday, let me offer a few ideas:

• Moving makes us feel better.  It works better than antidepressants, especially if it becomes a habit.

• We get smarter when we exercise.  Getting in the workout before work will improve performance.

• We’ll live longer with a better quality of life.  I don’t particularly want another twenty years in a nursing home, but a retirement full of activity and travel sounds pretty darn spiffy.

• We will look cuter.  Maybe we will be thinner or more toned, but even if we don’t, we will have a better outlook and more confidence and that makes everyone cuter.

We can do this.

The Revolution starts at the spin bike...

We are all stressed out.  It’s a cultural phenomenon.  It sucks, really.

Fixing it in the long term is going to require cultural change and political action and a bunch of stuff that is well outside my scope of practice and areas of expertise.

In the short term, we can do our cardio.  This will help us as we work to make the world  better place.  We need the endorphins it provides to our bodies.  We need the mood shift and the stamina.  We need strong hearts.

Fight the power:  go to the gym.

Form-ula for success

Good form in weight lifting is important.  For one thing, it helps prevent injury, which is always a good thing.  I am not big into pain.  A lot of good form comes down to alignment, making sure that the body bears the load in a way that makes sense for the bones and joints and muscles.  Trainers, workout buddies, and mirrors can all help us see whether we are aligned and help us adjust our own perception of what aligned is  (It can be surprisingly far from what we think it is!).

Another part of good form has to do with range of motion.  When we don’t use our full range of motion, we begin an unfortunate cycle in which that range gets smaller and smaller.  The world is a big place and we can use it all!  Also, the work at the beginning and end of our range of motion provides extra challenge.  This is why we so often cheat out of it:  too much work!!!  We need to shift our perspective and see that that extra work is where the extra superpowers come from.

Sometimes we discover that we can’t have good form and use the same weights.  We may have used cheats to curl those bigger dumbbells, so good form might mean dropping to a smaller set.  Our egos may hurt for a bit, but our muscles will improve in a better way.

We can do this.