Get it Done | Prioritize You Workouts High
It’s 8:00 in the evening. You’ve had a long, hard day. You got a lot of work done today. You ran your kids to and from practice. You even managed to sit down and have a good meal as a family. All in all, it has been a good day. However, there is a void. Maybe it is guilt, or maybe a sense of incompleteness. You’re trying to be more consistent in your exercise habits, but this day got away from you, and it did not happen today. Now you are tired, your feet hurt, and you just want to settle into the couch and catch up on episodes of TWD. Your time to sweat is important to you, and your day always feels better when you train, but life happens, and something has to give. In this post you could easily substitute [any activity on which you place high value but struggle, at times, to make time for] every time you read the word workout or training.
Identify a Great “Why”
I’ve definitely been there…many times. You’ve got to ask yourself, “Why do I train?” Why is it important to you? You may have answers like, “It’s part of my weight loss plan,” or “It’s part of the culture with my circle of friends.” You may answer, “I want to be as strong as I can possibly be,” or “I want to show off my abs on vacation.” At the core though, your training has to have deeper meaning. It’s about making you the most optimal You possible. It is important to be strong, and exercise is a valuable component of healthy living and overall fitness. However, there is more. Your dedication, increasing strength, growing self-confidence, and mental toughness resulting from gym time have carryover to the rest of your life. All your sessions, whether you’re hitting PR’s or struggling over a plateau, accumulate to you being more awesome. I know, it’s a cheap word, but it’s true. Whether through progress or taking on adversity, the experiences promote growth just as trials and adversity in other areas of life refine us. Therefore, your relationship with the barbell must be given appropriate attention and care. It must be built into the life schedule with diligence and little compromise. Place the training stimulus on your body so that it responds with adaptation. It’s about pushing yourself to new
limits, keeping yourself at the leading edge. Find your breaking point and succumb to it. Then find it again and push it out further. I have found that the joy is in the journey and in the progress. You can’t experience that joy if you don’t allow time and commitment to the progress.
Schedule Will Power Out of the Day
Look at your schedule. Where does workout time fit best? Not perfectly, best. Stick to it. If 8:00 at night is when you have to train, that’s okay. Just plan your day accordingly. Look forward to it. Don’t sit on the couch at 7:30 and start scrolling through your social media accounts. Will power sounds nice, but I don’t want to rely on it. I am all too familiar with my own weakness. The allure of instant gratification is often overwhelming and overpowering. Whether it is with food, or with what I do with my time, I am bent toward weakness. Proper systems help me avoid the pitfalls. My personal preference is to get my workout done earlier in the day, at least my first workout anyway. This is for multiple reasons. First, it takes away the excuse of, “I’ve had a long day, and now I’m too tired.” For hardworking, busy people, this is an understandable and very real situation. I want to eliminate this excuse, so training time moves up. A second reason I like to work out earlier is because of the way I feel when I have finished. It makes me feel strong, accomplished, and confident. I like to ride that wave throughout my day. It makes me better at everything else. Right now, I am hitting the gym at 5:30 am. It allows me to get a good amount of strength training in before the day gets busy. Most days I’ll get a second workout in that focuses on metabolic conditioning. I know not everyone can or even wants to spend that much time training, but that is what turns my crank. You’ve got to find what works for you.
Routines and Habits Win the Day
I am not a morning person at all, but because it is important to me, at one point I forced myself out of bed for a couple of weeks. Now a habit has formed. I am still tired every morning when the alarm starts buzzing, but I wake up thinking about my workout for the day. Once my mind is activated, and I start thinking about my goals and progress, it’s up and at ’em. My morning is very routine so I can be maximally efficient without much struggle or frustration. The routine actually begins before I go to bed. I set out my gym clothes, set up the coffee maker, and if I am going to shower at the gym, I pack a bag with my work clothes, towel, etc. I know right where my coffee mug, blender bottle, headphones, and car keys are. In the morning, when I am groggy, but trying to get out the door, I don’t want to have to think and pack. I also don’t want to wake up the rest of my family so early. As I am yawning and wiping the sleepiness from my eyes, I get my
coffee going and change my clothes. Then I’m on my way. From the time my feet hit the floor to pulling out of the driveway is about 10 minutes. The routine is there to make it easier for me to get going on my morning priority, my workout. It’s kind of like the game Chutes and Ladders. Without the morning routine, I would often fall into a chute that would take me back to my pillow. Or I may stumble my way through and get to the gym in a frenzied, chaotic state without maximum time to get my work in. However, the routines are like ladders that allow me to efficiently fly to the top and get going.
Maybe it’s not in the cards for you to work up a good lather before the sun rises. No big deal. Just make sure you structure routines into your day, especially around the time your set for your workout. Make the transition into that time easy and seamless. Then kill it with intensity.
Obstacles come up each day that are unexpected that we have to deal with. Some are important priorities, some are not. Many things are daily, reoccurring priorities, such as eating, sleeping, taking care of your family needs, and doing your job. Add your time to sweat to that list. No more drawing the curtains on your day with the weight of a training void. Place your workout in the top tier, and get it done!
