Tag Archives: healthy living

A little too sore

A couple days ago I did an 8-minute leg workout that I haven’t done in a while. I pushed hard like I’ve been doing this regularly. By mid day I knew that I’d overdone it. My hips and upper butt were sore. I also did a hard tricep workout that day. Then yesterday I worked my chest and biceps, but chest re-worked my triceps again too.

Today I’m just sore. My hips and legs are sore, my arms are sore, my chest is sore. I’m full body sore. It has been a long time since I did this to myself. This morning I’m going to do a walk on the treadmill, not a run, not a fast walk, a nice slow walk to get my body moving, then stretch. Long slow stretches, and full motion exercises with a 5lb weight, not 15, not 25, just 5 pounds, to go through the motions and activate my sore muscles.

I used to get sore like this a lot when I worked out, then I’d do more to ‘get the lactic acid out’ but end up pushing myself a bit too hard and staying sore longer. Then I’d hurt myself, and need to stop working out. Often my back would seize up and I’d be in pain for days or even weeks. I can feel the fatigue in my back, muscles stiff and inflexible. My hips are already letting me know that I’ll be standing at my desk all day… no sitting for me today. So I need to listen to my body.

No weights today. Tomorrow I’ll do my walk with my buddy and nothing else. I know the two hot tub visits over the last couple days helped, so I’ll squeeze in a couple more soaks this weekend. The point is that I’m too bloody old to walk around with a full body sore from working out.

I’ve made some great progress in the last 9 months, actually in the last 3 and a half years since I started my healthy living journey. But I can’t get stuck in a pattern of pushing myself too hard. I’ll hurt myself to the point of having to slow down significantly. I’m not training for anything other than feeling healthy and good… and a full body ache doesn’t feel good. I’m going to take it really easy the next few days. If I don’t, my back just might force me to take a break. I’d rather slow down on my own terms, and this soreness is a good hint that I’ve got to slow down a bit.

Younger me would have muscled through. Dumber me would have kept going and hurt myself. I guess I’m a little wiser now, but not too wise or I wouldn’t be sore all over right now. 🙃

You build habits on your bad days

I touched on this in my post, Just show up:

We live in a society now where there is so much pressure to do well; to be your best; to shine. It’s not easy. But sometimes the message doesn’t have to be ‘you are awesome’, ‘you have so much potential’, or ‘push yourself’. Sometimes the message of ‘just show up’ is all we need to hear.

  • Don’t plan an hour workout, just show up at the gym.

  • Don’t worry about how much you have to do, just start.

I’d like to expand on this idea a bit. When you ‘really really don’t want to go’ to the gym or start your workout, you still need to go. You don’t need to do anything amazing, you just need to get started and know that you are doing something good.

Not going is a slippery slope to a bad habit. If you decide not to go or get started when you ‘really really don’t want to’, that makes it easier to not go when you ‘really don’t want to’. And that makes it easier not to go when you ‘kinda don’t want to’… and so it becomes easier to break the habit.

It’s easy to maintain a habit when you are having good days, it’s the bad days that are the problem. It’s the bad days that break the pattern, or that solidify your commitment. Doing the hard work on the tough days are what keep good habits going.

Some days you’ve got to play your ‘B’ game rather than your ‘A’ game. An excuse that you are not up to your ‘A’ game is not a good enough reason to not show up. On the contrary, your ‘A’ game gets better when you do the work even on your bad days

Master the art of showing up

The biggest change I’ve made to taking care of myself in the past few years is this:

“When determining the size or complexity of a new habit ask yourself, “What can I stick to—even on my worst day?”

Start there. Master the art of showing up. Then advance.” ~ James Clear

I’m not in the mood to work out today, but I’ll go get on my row machine for 10 minutes. That would be it, but I’m also going to run the weight club this morning and I’ll do a bit of weights. Then one of our students ends the session leading us through 15 minutes of yoga.

I could skip the row machine, I’ve got an excuse, I’m doing weight club. But how hard is it to do 10 minutes on the row machine listening to my audiobook? It’s faster than 20 minutes on the bicycle or treadmill. These are the minimums I allow myself. I know I can do these things even when I don’t want to. I know that I don’t have to go all out, I just have to put in the time. That’s what I can do on my worst day… I can go through the motions for 10 or 20 minutes.

Sometimes that’s all I really do… go through the motions. But more often than not, after planning to do just the minimum, I end up pushing myself just a little harder than expected. The plan is to show up, but I do more. That’s what happens when you master the art of showing up.

So just show up, and maybe you’ll do more. You just need to commit to showing up and doing the minimum, and being ok with when that’s all you do. Be happy with this low bar on your low days… and you’ll be amazed how often you achieve more.

Just do it… just show up!

A tribe of #FitLeaders

For the last month I’ve been sharing some workout photos and conversation with other #FitLeaders on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/pam_mahood/status/1518706635832578049?s=21&t=kGq3G-MX5cZrhqzNpeCdzw

I didn’t follow the schedule.

I’m not sure if anybody did, and that didn’t matter to any of us. What mattered is that we shared; We worked out; We knew we had each other to look to for support.

I’m not aware of anyone training for something specific, we are just looking to stay fit. Like I said in a tweet:

Fitness is a lifelong journey and the destination is a more healthy tomorrow.

Find your fitness tribe, and get active. Future you will thank you. As Kelly says:

Take care of body, mind, sprit, and connection.

Got my gym back

Last night was the first time that I was able to use my home gym since the middle of November. Our main floor home renovation is almost completely done, and we are no longer using the basement as our kitchen, and living room, as well as for storage. The room is reconfigured, and since my wife wants the treadmill outside the room, so she can easily watch tv while on it, the room is even roomier!

I’m excited about this change. I’ve had a tiny spot with my exercise bike and weights for the past few months, but now I have treadmill and row machine access again, and a nice place to stretch and use my incline bench.

Despite not having my full functioning home gym the past few months, it has been a very good few months for me with respect to exercise. I have an extremely knowledgeable teacher that is running weight club with me for our students 3 days a week – once before school, once after, and once at lunch. And under this teachers supervision, and inspiration, I’ve been adding new exercises and longer sessions than I do at home. As a result, I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been when fit.

I was heavier than this in 2018, but that was unhealthy weight. Now, I’m a solid 5-7 pounds heavier than I’ve ever been due to working out. And it feels great!

I’m not overdoing it. I’m not hurting myself trying to lift too heavy. I’m focusing on muscle groups, working then well, and giving them time to recover while I work different areas. I’ve added protein shakes and creatine (which helps with recovery), and I’m still not eating snacks after dinner, although I’m not as strict as I used to be about time restricted eating (or intermittent fasting), I still pay attention to this.

So I’m already on a good path, and now I’ve got my gym space back. I am confident that I’ll be able to stick to my routines even as the end of the school year gets crazy, and continue to make gains in 2022.

This isn’t a race. I have a few long term goals, but the longest one is to stay healthy for another 30+ years. Now I just have to focus on my diet and my too high bad cholesterol… but I’ll save talking about that for another day.

Routines to return to

I’m learning that I need to stick to my routines even when I’m on holidays. This morning was a challenge because I did my usual morning routine after dinner last night and so I was wired and couldn’t fall asleep.

Write, meditate, exercise. When I start my day early enough to do those things, I have a great day. When I skip one, I spend much of the day thinking about when a will ‘catch up’, and that’s not a good use of my mental energy. And when it’s the workout that I miss, my physical energy isn’t there either.

What routines work for other people, how do you use your schedule to your own benefit?

Getting better

I’m liking videos like this, and this that have become popular on TikTok. I work out at home, but when I go to a gym, I like seeing people there that aren’t obvious gym rats.

Social media is filled with gym snobs shaming people, but more and more I’m seeing things like this. We are all on our own journey, and not everyone is as lucky as I am to be able to work out at home. We need to celebrate the fact that more people are going to the gym, and we need be positive supports on people’s healthy living journeys.

I think things are getting better, and we are seeing more and more people try to better themselves. This is to be celebrated. Find a place that lifts you up, rather than brings you down… and get active!

Crash and burn

It’s the last school day before the March break. My ‘to do’ list at work will require a bit of focus to accomplish, but it is achievable… at least if the general day-to-day interruptions are manageable, that’s an unknown that is just part of the job. The good news is that beyond an email home to students and parents before the break, I don’t have anything pressing, that can’t wait until after the break.

All that said, something that often happens when I reach this point in the year, or at the winter break, is that the first couple days of the break I just crash and burn. I fall into a mode where I sleep more than I usually do, and I feel extremely lazy. And sometimes I literally get sick. It’s like my body holds out for the break, then says ‘You made it! OK, you can let go now’, and I get sick.

However, in previous years, I would usually not be sticking to my healthy living routine right now. I’d have the mentality of, ‘ I’ll get back into shape over the break.’ But this year I’ve done some form of exercise 19 out of the last 20 days. Usually I am metaphorically burning my candle at both ends, but I’ve been intentionally getting to bed for an average of about 7 hours of sleep (I usually get 6 to six-and-a-half). And I’m of the mindset that I’m looking forward to the break, not ‘I need a break’.

While saying this all out loud doesn’t mean that my body still won’t crash to some level, it didn’t this past winter vacation, and I feel like I’ve been able to break the crash and burn routine to start my holidays. The next couple days will tell the tale. Now it’s time for my morning meditation and then on to my exercise bike… I’ve got to maintain the positive patterns that are helping break this cycle.

Weekend Blahs

Feels like a rinse and repeat kind of day. Motivation is low, couldn’t sleep past 5:45am, but haven’t done anything for a couple hours while up. Sure I’ll get this written, I’ll meditate, I’ll get on the exercise bike for 20 minutes, and listen to my audio book. Sure I’m entitled to have a lazy Saturday morning or a lazy whole day. That’s all well and good. But I have to say that coming up on 2 years of pandemic mode has me a bit worn out.

It’s like a heightened sense of being ‘on alert’ for longer than is natural. It doesn’t help that at work, I’ve had to read pages and pages of information about changes to how we need to operate, and there are new daily reports to run and to fill out. I feel more like a safety officer than a school principal.

I’m glad it’s the weekend. I don’t think this would have been a productive day at work. I’m just going to have a blah kind of Saturday, and I’m going to do it guilt free. On my agenda today after my healthy living routine is a whole lotta nothing. Yup, it’s going to be a blah day, but also a good day:)

Out of sync

I wrote a post recently about my routine being disrupted, and a good friend read it then texted me saying, “Hey, be gentle with yourself around the whole routine thing. We’ve been thrown a huge curveball right now and it’s impacting everybody“.

I replied that I’m motivated by making my goals public, and I did indeed improve on my routine. However, my response neglected to really listen to the point he was making. In previous posts I’ve written about the fact that I tend to consistently wake up before my alarm. Last night I was in bed earlier than usual, and while I looked at the click far more often than I usually do, I needed to hear my alarm to wake up for the 4th day in a row. I find this frustrating because I wake up before my wife, and she is a light sleeper, so I know my alarm disturbs her sleep quite a bit.

But as I started to beat myself up about the fact that I can’t seem to do something that I’ve previously found easy to do, I thought of my buddy’s message. Nothing is normal these days. Everywhere I look, things are either disrupted due to Omicron, or someone I know, and/or their family members are dealing with Omicron. Schedules at work have changed, students are all in rows facing the front of the class, and people’s plans and lives are being disrupted.

Extending my buddy’s metaphor, we haven’t just been thrown a curve ball, we have been thrown a curve ball with a wiffle ball. 🤪

Yeah, I’m out of sync, the whole damn world is out of sync! And maybe I have to wake up in the morning with an alarm, like most people do anyway. And maybe my healthy living routine will get disrupted again. And maybe (likely) Omicron visits our immediate family. And maybe I be gentle with myself when I swing and miss the curve balls headed my way.

If you are living a life where things feel somewhat normal, you deserve a trophy. And if you aren’t feeling like things are normal right now, be kind to yourself and know that it’s perfectly ok to be feeling the way you do. Give yourself a break… you deserve it! (And so do I.)