March’s challenge: practice Spanish, and planking, every day

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My 30 day challenge

5 min readApr 4, 2016

I decided that I was going to take on two challenges this month. The main reason being that the planking challenge wasn’t going to be too time-consuming.

Planking

I’d downloaded a screenshot from a post on Facebook that described a 30 day challenge for planking. This meant I didn’t have to think up a regime to follow — not having a sensible regime was definitely the undoing of the first challenge back in January, the pull-ups.

The regime was as follows, where the numbers here are day and the time, in seconds, of the exercise, “R” being a rest day:

So, by the end of the month, the target was to be able to plank for 5mins, non-stop. That didn’t worry me too much because I liked the way the pyramid was stacked — the barrier to entry looked really low, which is a great motivator to keep you on track to complete a task.

Spanish practice

I have been trying to learn a foreign language for several years, as a broad, bucket list goal. I’d chosen Spanish, but never really got past the basics. Consistency had been a problem.

I was already doing around 20mins a day when I could, and that habit was pretty well keyed in, as I’d stacked it against other morning routines. Wanting to do an hour was a way to accelerate my learning.

My approach was a combination of activities — I was already making regular use of two apps on my phone: Duolingo and Mondly. But because I was now planning to do an hour each day, I’d also have more time to work on some extras, such as verb tables, repetitive learning exercises, and general reading about grammar.

How did I do?

March’s 30 day challenge: top is planking, bottom is Spanish

I did quite well actually. For the first part of the month, I was really consistent. The wobbles came in the last third. The first time I missed both exercises was the 20th. This was the day after my charity boxing match, and not only did I feel like I needed a day off, I was really hungover.

Shortly after, in the same week, I disappointingly broke the “never miss twice” rule, on the 23rd and 24th. The only reason for this was that that was my birthday, so I was worse-for-wear around that time too.

It was at the end of the month that the planking really fell away. This was attributed to a shocking cold that I’d contracted. It took all my energy away and as the planking became exponentially more difficult I just didn’t have it in me. Once I’d missed a couple of days, the challenge (according to the numbers above) had slipped away from me.

Specific feedback on the planking

The pyramid of times above would have only just been about right, had I not been taken ill. Whilst the barrier to entry was really low, the exercise became really tough, very suddenly.

I like a physical challenge, but I was really struggling to keep up with those numbers. I’d be pouring with sweat after 3 minutes of it. That in itself was a barrier because if I was going to be dripping wet afterward, I had to think when I wanted to do it.

Before the challenge, my thoughts were that it was going to be good for my posture and good for my boxing. To be honest, I can’t say that I noticed a big enough difference in either.

If I were to do it again, I’d think more carefully about the time of day I’d do it. Perhaps before a shower — I really didn’t expect this to be something that would be making me sweat so much.

I might try and incorporate it into another fitness routine, now that a base level has been set.

Specific feedback on the Spanish

Before March, I was probably doing 20 minutes a day several days a week, then perhaps one night a week when I’d really focus on some key areas of grammar.

Moving this to a more consistent “one hour per day” was a big change. I have noticed that my vocabularly has improved massively, as has my confidence in reading and writing Spanish. This is down to repeatedly covering the same topics, thanks largely to the pace than Duolingo sets.

I tended to do the Spanish practice in the morning, whilst having my routine coffee. This worked well for me because my mind was in a better state for learning at that time of day, versus the end of the day — which is also a more difficult time in which to find a whole hour.

However, trying to do an hour of vocab learning all in one go was actually bordering on being ineffective. Towards the end of the month, on days when I was committing the whole hour to vocab, I broke the hour into two half hour chunks, with a different activity inbetween. This seems consistent with the pomodoro technique, where 25 minutes seems about the optimum length of time for an activity.

The 30 day challenge vs procrastination

As I am entering into my 4th month and, in actual fact, my 5th challenge, I am seeing the real-life effectiveness of procrastination beating tips I’ve read about over the years:

Seinfeld’s “never break the chain”: this is the essence of the 30 day challenage. By keeping a visual record of my progress, I can really quickly see how consistent I am being, and there is a genuine desire to keep that chain going. If I do miss, I really hate to miss twice.
Make it so easy you can’t fail: particularly with physical challenges, this has been really useful. In two of the last three months I have been able to go from not being to do pull-ups and not being able to do a planking, to feeling really satisfied with my progress after just 30 days.
Stack habits together: starting something new has definitely been easier when I have attached the activity to something I am already doing. This is backed-up by the fact I missed the Spanish practice on days I was hungover — in the morning routine is when I would usually stack that particular exercise. I feel like I would have more success with other aspects of my life if I learned to build those habits on top of the right existing habits.
The pomodoro: this 25 minutes optimal length of time for an activity, seems to work really well for me.

Next month’s challenge

I am going to have to do another physcial one. For April I am going to do either a 5km run or an anaerobic set of weights every day, for 30 days.

There are a few reasons why I need another physical one:

My level of fitness is relatively high right now — certainly relative to recent times. That came from the boxing, so it was hard-earned, and keeping hold of some of that is something I want to do — hence the running.
I have a personal goal to get my 5km time down.
During the boxing, I felt like I lost quite a lot of bulk. I just wasn’t using the bigger muscles in my shoulders and back, so they have atrophied. I want to get some of that size back.