The Dividends of Exercise

Okay, so I didn't quite stick to the initial workout commitment I made on this blog a few weeks back. I was less than a week in when I went to Chicago for a wedding and let it all far apart.

But...

I've made an even more ambitious commitment since then, and I've been sticking with it. Instead of going to the gym only two days a week, I'm now going Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for a cardio workout and then doing a crunch regimen at home Tuesdays and Thursdays. Surprisingly I'm having an easier time sticking with this much more extensive program. Maybe because I do something everyday I don't run the risk of letting my "off" days invade into my "on" days.

Whatever the reason I've been sticking with it, going on two weeks now, and it already feels habitual, which I think is a good thing. But more important than all of this as a motivator for continued exercise is how I feel. I feel much, much better. The heaviness and weariness I was hefting around with me has lifted. I'm more energetic in general and feel more like a participant in my own life than I have in a while. It's amazing how much just two weeks of constant activity can accomplish. I'm excited to see what a few months will gestate.

That's probably the strongest motivator you can have, I think. Having real desire to exercise for its own sake, and not just as a means to an end. When viewed as a means to an end, exercise will always inevitably cease, if not before, than surely when the "end" has been reached. But exercise for it's own sake, for benefits reaped on a continuing basis, and not at some point in the future, is self-perpetuating. Exercise should be its own end.

I'm feeling better than I have in quite some time, and I think I've dropped a pound...it's a start. Thanks for the support I've gotten from some of you. I'll keep you posted.

The Burn Lets You Know It's Working

As I think I said in an earlier post, pain is not my thing. I don't necessarily go out of my way to avoid it, but I definitely don't seek it out. But there is one sort of pain that actually feels great.

No! Not that. Jeez, what? No!* I'm talking about the all-over body buzz you get after a really good day of hard work. It's a pain you wear as a badge of honor. As a reminder that you (hopefully) accomplished something that day. Or even if you didn't, you at least put yourself in forward motion. You worked and slaved, doing whatever important or unimportant thing you did, and you are left with a fully tactile reminder for at least the next few days.

Same thing with working out. You know you got things right at the gym or the courts or the pool or the laser tag tournament when you wake up sore and stiff the next morning. When "a little hair of the dog that bit ya" would actually send you to the hospital. That's a good workout. Pain is your bodies way of telling you that something needed fixing, and you broke out the right tools.

The moral is, just like peroxide on a gaping flesh wound, you have to feel the burn in order to know it's working.


*Sorry. No judgment here. If that's your sort of thing, have at it. As long as you, and her and her, and him, the hermit crab and that roving band of gypsies are okay with it, and no one gets hurt any more than they sign on for, knock yourself out (or have them knock you out.)