Back to the Bench II

My Dad bought my older brother and I weights when we were Teens. There was never a good place to lift in our house. We had no basement. The attic was too hot or cold. The garage was the best location and was far from ideal.

I learned a good lesson...

If you are looking for an excuse to not do something, you will always find one. Very rarely will opportunities be ideal. There are typically compromises, trade-offs, and less than perfect realities to deal with in order to accomplish goals.

I could have lifted in the garage, I just didn't want to lift bad enough.

Through college and afterwards, I did get in a routine with lifting for spells and then drift away from it. I like to run but lifting has never been a natural for me. Within the last decade, I decided to be more consistent lifting-wise. Unfortunately, my lifting was after school and I used coffee to light a fire under my butt.

Although I typically slept the same amount of hours that I did before consuming coffee and lifting, I only came to realize later that the quality of my rest was affected. I was looking at the amount of time slept versus the quality of sleep. I was coming up quite a bit short and when I contracted Lymes and then my appendix perforated and it had to be removed a couple of years ago, I figured that I was straining my body and immune system to the breaking point. It was a wake-up call and a literal gut check. The surgeon had to cut me open.

By trying to lift and stay fit, because I was utilizing the wrong strategies, I was inflicting more harm than good on my body and soul. So, I went back to the bench to work out a new plan.

The first thing I did was move the weight bench out of the basement into my bedroom. Besides being worried about radon, I found that leaving the bench and weights down in the basement allowed me to put it out of my mind. Lesson learned: If you want to do something bad enough, make it something that is difficult to avoid. Make it harder to avoid it than do it.

Another application, if you want to read the Bible more, keep it convenient and on a table or desk where you relax or work. The converse is also true, if you find yourself trapped watching too much television, cancel the All Channels cable package and go Basic. You will watch less television because there is less to watch. Eat too much junk food? Don't buy it and bring it home. Drink too much? Don't keep it around the house or frequent bars.

If you don't pray enough--and who prays enough really--turn off the car radio on your commute and go noise free. I use my thirty minute commute each morning to pray for 15 minutes. The road ahead is a perfect metaphor to ask God to impart a vision for your day and life through what is ahead.  Plus, fellow drivers will think you are nuts if you appear to be talking to yourself and they will be less likely to throw you the bird.

People that structure their times and tasks, creates less decision-making in the moment to make it work. Use preparations to create inclinations.

In order to create a lifting routine that would stick, I found getting up 20 minutes earlier each morning Monday through Saturday to work for me. The idea of getting up earlier than 5:00 AM does not compute, but I can do 5:00. I alternate lift days with riding the exercise bike days and then take Sundays off.

I find having a 20 minute window to exercise to be much better than a four hour window. I can fritter away the time and delay at night. In the morning, my time has to be extremely structured. Lesson learned: Create a consistent schedule and stick to it. The key is to make it a routine where habit replaces inertia. After the 20 minutes, I am done. Over and out. My evenings are free.

Twenty minutes is not a lot of time to work-out, but it is better than doing nothing or going extreme for a period of time and then quitting. Find out what you are willing to be consistent to do and then stick with it. Slow and steady wins the race. Eat a good solid protein-based breakfast. Breakfast cereal is bad news, even whole grain. Eggs are the way to go. Jesus even talks about it being a good thing to give an egg to a child.

During the winter, I discovered that I have to have my hair cut shorter so that my cool down period is quicker and so that I don't have a mop needing to dry on my head. I also consistently wipe off the excess sweat during the work-out and even  wear the towel over my head when preparing to get out of the house to minimize the cold.

I am extremely vulnerable to colds in the process of cooling down from a work-out. It is the body temp being high and sweat combined with cold that does me in. The hair on the back of the neck is particularly bothersome. Lesson learned: Enough small changes can make a big difference.

And now to the coffee. Because my time is short in the morning, I have to make my coffee ahead of time and store it in a mason jar. Then, I microwave a cup of it for a minute and drink it down first thing. It is not as good tasting had I freshed brewed it each morning, but it gets the job done and lights the fire. It is 85% of what I like taste-wise and I typically stop caffeine consumption after one cup. On weekends, I will fresh brew coffee and have an extra cup, concluding by noon.

I have found this to be plenty of time for my body to process the caffeine totally out of my system and I sleep soundly.

If you are still trying to make it work, there are several prerequisites to set the success stage. First step, make sure to get good gear and equipment. A solid weight bench, good shoes, sturdy weights, the right clothes, increase the probability that you will stick with it, I am no fan of out-of-home gyms and neither are most people, who buy memberships and then don't go. It is a lot less expensive in buying your own equipment and making it accessible.

If these suggestions are helpful, that is great.