Returns

So, I went back to to the gym last night.  After a gap of {checks} nearly 6 weeks. Hmm. The chronology (for those of you interested in the anatomy of excuses) goes something like this:

14th March - final gym session before week of rest before The Walk
23rd March - The Walk
24th March - Beginning of further week off gym to recover
31st March* - "My legs still hurt, a few more days off won't hurt"
2nd & 3rd April - Stomach bug, off work
4th April - "Still feel wobbly"
7th April* - "I think I'm getting a cold"
14th April* - "I keep getting nosebleeds"
16th April - "I feel really mentally/ emotionally feeble, AND I miss the gym... hmmm"
17th-21st April - Away on holiday
22nd April - "I'm just recovering from lack of sleep on holiday"
22nd April - "Actually, sod it, I'm going to the gym tomorrow"

(* dates approximate)

So I did.  No more excuses, no more bollocksing about, waiting for the stars to align for exercise.  I've spent weeks not even walking very far in the mornings or evenings, wasting money on taxis to get me into work.  While there are depressing, stressful, annoying things happening in my life, and I can't fix them with stationary bikes, I can:

1. damn well tire myself out in a good way so that I get the sleep necessary to help problem-solve in my poor brain;

2. feel a sense of achievement in clocking goals and doing a difficult thing well;

3. get back that sense of purpose and personal puissance that comes with feeling physically fit;

4. treat myself well - that's actually treat myself well, by giving myself the gift of fitness, rather than "treat" myself, which amounts to doing a series of passive things that are actually quite harmful (sitting around in unhealthy poses, eating crappy food, staying up late to watch films/ read books that will still be there tomorrow, getting cabs instead of the bus, mithering, "having a rest from physio", etc.).

5. be kind ("you had a few rubbish weeks, let's move on"), and not punish myself ("stupid cow! give me a gazillion press-ups so that you injure yourself, can't sleep right, and feel even more wretched! you deserve grief for feeling bad!")

6. get myself a new goal to aim for.


Yesterday morning I just grabbed my gym bag, ignoring the fact that the kit was not clean (yes, I got myself clean socks, I'm not a total barbarian!), and set off after work (after realising that I'd been killing time with extra bits of work that could wait, presumably trying unconsciously to make it "too late" to go) to the gym, walking fast, trying not to overthink things.

Luckily, my brain still seems to retain the well-worn groove that came from doing that very thing twice a week or so for eight weeks, so as soon as I'd flipped the "walking to the gym from work with my gym bag in my hand" switch, I was fine.  In fact, I'm worried that I did too much on the stationary bike because I was working to the old pattern from 6 weeks ago.

(I've just worked it out explicitly - I've now spent nearly as much time Not Doing Exercise and Being Inactive Again as I did the opposite. Darn it!)


I did 20 minutes or so of sliding resistance on the recumbent bike, then about 6 minutes on the rowing machine.  I figured that my neck/ shoulder problem was up to it.  I'll monitor over the next couple of days for pins-and-needles, etc.

Yes, I stretched out afterwards.  And yes, I'm a bit sore today.  And yes, my heart-rate was more elevated than it would have been back in March, but less than it was in January. So, you know, I haven't lost loads of fitness... :)

Culture Clash

So I've been doing this for just over a week. I measure fluid intake, portions of fruit & veg, sleep, and exercise activity (everything from walking fast for the bus to free weights). Oh and physio exercises (they count as "light strength exercises" in the exercise tab but they get their own thing because they're important). They're all compared against daily and weekly minimum targets, and yes there are graphs. Dammit.

I'm not measuring fat or sugar intake, though I probably should, on the grounds that I've noticed in the past that, when on a health kick, I feel too full to snack, and eat dried fruit instead. Except this weekend...

One of the things I've struggled with over the past year or so since inheriting the physio exercises, is fitting them into my busy poetry (and other things) schedule. One of the reasons everything slid so much towards the end of 2013 is that I was ferociously heavily-booked for gigs. Cycle goes: work, travel to gig, gig, travel back, eat something random, sleep; wake late, rush breakfast, bus/ taxi to work, work til late as left early yesterday to travel to gig, home (bus), sit around exhausted, eat late, sleep; rinse, repeat. Where to fit the physio exercises (20 minutes of mat work for legs and core, in case you're interested - I assume you are: you're here…) into that? Morning and evening both seem to be out as I keep catching myself by surprise by it being 8 o'clock and "too late to start all that".

Which is basically bollocks. Make a plan, execute the plan; rinse, repeat - excuses are for the weak...

I don't respond well to bullying, so I have to coax myself along. I read my Kindle during everything except crunches; praise myself for doing half the reps; tell myself how much more awesome I'll be when tomorrow I do two more of each set; remind myself how good fit feels; picture both the impressive upswing of multi-coloured graphs and how long I'll be able to walk for. I love walking.

But I sucked at fitting just physio in before; how am I going to fit physio, gym, and other calisthenics in?

I'm guessing that I'll have to timetable it; make it explicitly as important as performance stuff. Even when... Well…

See, part of the problem is stamina. I'm getting older, I'm not very fit, and things wipe me out. Take this weekend. Saturday (yesterday) was a Big Deal of a gig. I jittered like a muppet on speed beforehand, eating and drinking very little, stayed up (very) late afterwards grinning like a loony and belatedly eating cheese, and spent all day today eating biscuits and complaining about being tired. Physio was done Saturday morning; fair enough. Today? NOTHING.

So the lessons here (I reckon) are:

1. Establish a routine. Stick to it. (See 3 and 4.)

2. Don't punish yourself for transgressions; that just leads to more cheap comfort-seeking behaviour.

3. Find better compromises than Do All The Exercise OR Do Nothing.

4. If you need to sleep, tell people to let you sleep. Trust what your body's telling you.

Because I'm buggered if I'm giving up poetry, and I'm buggered if I'm giving up (so soon) on an exercise regime, and I need to go to work between these two…

Thassit for now.