April’s challenge: exercise every day
For this month, I decided to train with weights or go for a run, every day for 30 days.
Motivation
During my training for the charity boxing match, which began in mid-January, I had lost a lot of bulk. Whilst I didn’t need it for the boxing, I had definitely lost some muscle across the shoulders and in my arms. I wanted to try and return to a body size that looked more proportional to my frame.
And, with my cardio fitness being so high after the 9 weeks of training, I wanted to maintain it by mixing the anaerobic weights training with some short distance (5km) running.
How did I do?
It was a slow start, as you can see. I missed the first 4 days, but this was due to the cold that I had at the end of the previous month. It really knocked me. As soon as I felt like doing a workout, I was on it.
After the initial slow start, I missed 6 sessions in the remaining 26 days, and on one of those occasions I even broke the rule of “never miss twice”. Most of the time I missed a day it was because other things came up.
I hate exercising in the morning, even though people (read: successful entrepreneurial types) claim that’s the best thing you can do in your life. I would always plan to do my exercising at the end of the day, but sometimes my day overran or an unexpected appointment (e.g. socialising) would arise.
Most of the sessions I did were weights. That was good because I definitely regained the bulk I’d lost during the boxing, and the results were fast and satisfying — mainly through consistency, I imagine. But, from the cardio point of view, I haven’t pushed myself as much as I’d wanted — only doing a total of, perhaps, 3 runs during the period. Assessment: successful, but not perfect.
Lessons learned about exercise and procrastination
- One thing is clear — it is no wonder that people fail at doing exercise regularly. You can have all the will in the world, and even have a system in place to motivate you, as I did, but there will still be failures in meeting your goals. You have to have a special state of mind to voluntarily show up for your workouts.
- With respect to procrastination, not wanting to break the chain was a good motivator, as it had been with previous months. I definitely would have done less if it wasn’t for the visible checklist.
- I also put into practice another great procrastination-busting technique — it’s not the results that count, it’s the turning up. Some days I didn’t have the time to do a full workout with the weights, so I planned a shorter one. I still got some benefits, even if it wasn’t the maximum. And the same with the running — on one occasion I just wasn’t “feeling it”, so cut the run short. But, the important thing was I turned up, even if I didn’t feel like it.
Will the habit continue… I’m not sure. I’d like it to but, as I’ve seen, exercising quickly falls off the list when you have other things going on in your life.
Next month’s challenge
For May, I intend to read every day. I have loads of great books, some of which I’ve started and never finish. My initial goal was to read 10 pages each day. If I get through more then that’s great, but 10 pages is the minimum. As of writing this, I’ve been doing it nearly two weeks and I am not sure if I am reading exactly 10 pages or not. It just so happens than the book I am reading has chapters that average out about that long. Rather than counting in pages, I am counting chapters — a chapter per day.
