I’ve been noticing a few improvements in my workouts recently. Last week I benched a weight that I haven’t done since my late 20’’s… half a lifetime ago. I’m doing a push-up challenge with my buddy but keep forgetting to do them, so the days I do end up needing to catch up I have to do a lot more push-ups to reach my goal. I can do sets of 30 now as easily as I used to do sets up 20. I’ve added 8 pounds to my weighted vest that I wear on my treadmill to walk on an incline. And my leg workouts I do now would have left me painfully sore for days! (That said I still feel the pain two days later, leg soreness after workouts is something I’ll never fully escape.)

My point is that I can’t pinpoint a time when this progress happened. It’s not like I woke up one day and added 50 more pounds on the bench press bar. Instead, I’ve been making slow and steady progress. I don’t spend hours in the gym, I just commit to cardio and working one muscle group, often for just 3 sets, sometimes two different exercises for 3 sets… if I can write fast enough in the morning to give me that time.

So, I haven’t really added to my workouts significantly at any point. I’ve had no big jumps in progress. I’ve had plateaus, and times when it seems that I’m just in maintenance mode, but recently the tiny improvements have accumulated and I’m noticing the difference. This has been a really positive aspect of my life in the last few years, something that keeps me in a positive frame of mind. It certainly helps to see my own progress, as slow and incremental as it has been.