More than a week has come and gone since Jan. 1 and my Commitment Day 5K and how have I committed myself to health? Besides getting all revved up and wanting to sign up for 80 more 5K’s, 10K’s and marathons, I started mulling over all the sage fitness advice I’d come across lately. Then I wanted more. I got really obsessive and scoured the Internet, magazines and my collected readings for any and all ways to live like a pro health-lete.
So then why on my first day of practicing my hit-the-gym-hard mentality did I flail on my follow through? And it’s worse than you think.
I decided to heed the advice of: If you say you’re going to the gym everyday, then go, however, make your first priority simply getting there. And sure enough the first day of putting it into action, I didn’t feel like working out. Even though I brought my workout clothes. To my part-time job. Which happens to be at my gym. That I purposefully applied at to get motivated to work out more.
I don’t have to drive to the gym to work out if I’m already at the gym! So as I’m clocking out with my gym bag in tow, I’m already feeling guilty for planning to leave, but at the same time promising myself that if I skip out on this workout, I have to work out at home later, because I’ve made the commitment and there’s no turning back. That is … until I run into one of the personal trainers who stops to visit with me and then asks if I want to work out with her.
Little does she know that this is divine intervention. Not only do I find it next to impossible to say no, to pretty much anything, but I also heavily believe in signs. I was about to walk out without doing my planned yoga class and here someone, no not just anyone, a personal trainer, stops me and asks if I’d like to work out with her, is this the work of God? Yes, the answer is obviously yes. God got involved and saved me from myself and my filthy procrastinating habit and quickly sent a trainer down to intercept me.
We made it to the yoga class.
And do you know what miracle happened from taking that class? I felt resolve from sticking to my promise for only one day and proceeded to work out again the next day, and the next and the next, including in my apartment gym, promising myself that even if I did just 10 minutes on the bike, at least I was making it happen. Naturally once the spandex were on, the sweat was pouring and my music was blasting I pushed myself to do more because it actually feels tremendous to work out once you’ve started. Does everyone know this? If not, I’ll be the first to inform you that even when I was challenging myself to wall sits with a medicine ball propped over head for one minute intervals and my thighs were spasming, I felt like a total champ and wanted to high-five myself. I mean, I couldn’t because I would’ve dropped the medicine ball on my head and sadly that is not the first time I have had a rough face-to-face encounter with a medicine ball.
The moral of the story: Be open to your own individual ideas of commitment and resolution. If you promise yourself to work out every day or even 5 days a week then do it on your terms, accepting that some days that will mean a walk, the gym, yoga, a bike ride, or even using your children as your medicine balls. At the Ranch, Bob showed us that we could turn anything into a workout—canned soup, chairs, sweatshirts—anything.
So if I can do it for the hundredth time, surely you can too, as chances are the more you commit to yourself, the more you won’t want to let yourself down.
-Cassandra