AHOY FRANDS. I survived Singapore and my bout of playing at Being a Responsible Grown-Up. The kids survived too, BTW, but between the changes in routine, lack of sleep, and general achy-breaky joys of ageing, the last week of workouts has been a right grind. That’s right — even for folks like myself who legitimately love to exercise, there are many times when we just don’t feel like it. So I’d like to talk about some strategies I used when starting out, and how I push through periods like these even much later in the game.
PS: Thank you to all of you who emailed to check if I (and the niblings) survived — it was equal parts heartwarming but also disconcerting that you actually worried any of us might not make it out okay. xD
When I first (re)started this whole fitness journey, I remember the vaguely awestruck expressions I’d get when friends quizzed me about what my regime looked like. Not so much because I was starving myself to death (I was in a fairly deep deficit for a while, but I had a significant volume of food to consume per day), or devoting an unholy amount of time to exercise (I started out with three workouts per week, which took around an hour each, assuming I didn’t dawdle or waste too much time faffing about. This eventually upped to 4x/week, and I only started incorporating 6x/weekly workouts this past spring), but because “you have so much willpower” and “I wish I were as motivated as you are”.
A lot of what passes as fitness advice seems to align with this sort of thinking — we need to capitalise on motivation to spur ourselves into action, we make New Year’s resolutions (“new year, new me!”), we depend on willpower to grind our way through things that we don’t want to do.
But I think these systems are flawed. The biggest trick is habit, and the key to developing those habits is a little Jedi mind trick of how you frame that discipline and commitment to the process.
Make the decision to start
Personally, the biggest obstacle between my achieving any specific goal is how much I actually, hand-on-heart, want to achieve it. To quantify this: Do I want it more than I don’t want to do whatever it would take to get there? Do I want it enough to prioritise the long game more than the instant gratification of whatever small pleasures I might have to cut back on or (temporarily) give up? Do I want it enough to shape my lifestyle around my goals?
And sometimes, I don’t. No matter how much I think I want that Adonis belt, or that bicep vein, or that one-arm chin-up, or that freestanding handstand, and all by my 25th or 40th birthday/before “things go downhill for good”, it may well be the case that life currently has other non-negotiable priorities that will make it incredibly difficult for me to achieve those goals in that timeline. Does that mean I should stop working towards any goals? No. But it might make sense to adjust those expectations and set realistic and reasonable goals and timelines that I can achieve.
Take the (day-to-day) decision-making out of the equation
For some strange reason, we also rarely give the actions necessary to achieve our (fitness) goals the priority that we should, even after we’ve made the decision to go for it. I like to tell people to think about fitness in the same way you do your job: if you don’t go to work for the hours that you’ve committed to, and if you don’t fulfil the duties that are expected of you, it’s unlikely that you’ll retain your job and be able to keep getting paid. In the same way, once you make the decision to accept a job and sign the contract, you go to work every day without having to make the decision to do so each morning. You might love what you do, but even the most passionate employee is gonna have a cold, dreary morning where they just don’t want to get out of bed, or some amazingly sunny day when they’d rather be scrambling up some mountain than stuck in an office. Yet, it doesn’t (usually) keep you from getting to work, does it?
Same goes for fitness: if you’ve decided that a 3x/week workout routine is what’s going to get you where you need to go, schedule that into your calendar. Don’t shift it (unless there are extenuating circumstances) in the same way you wouldn’t randomly flake out on a meeting with your boss just because Dan invited you out for happy hour. (You probably would ask for a reschedule if it was your parents’ 50th wedding anniversary celebration, or if your kid needed a visit to the ER.) Schedule in Sunday #mealprep if that’s what it takes to keep you on the nutritional straight and narrow.
If the action that you need to take is nonnegotiable, that means you save yourself the decision fatigue of convincing yourself to go to the gym, or eat the food you’ve prepared. Much like how we brush our teeth without fail anyway, in spite of how we don’t always (or, ever?) wake up in the mornings wanting to do so.
Action (and momentum) begets motivation
Finally, don’t wait for motivation to strike. If it does, yes, by all means, capitalise on that. But waiting for the perfect time to start isn’t going to get you anywhere — there will always be something in the way: a busy period at work, kids’ exams, moving house, the holiday season, a big holiday… the list goes on. Start, be prepared to grind your way through the beginning, but rest in the knowledge that you’ll build up momentum, and the success of each initial step is what will keep motivating you to carry on.
Practically, and anecdotally, speaking
To circle back to what I touched on in this week’s header — I’m exhausted. I’ve been running on way too little sleep for the last 3 weeks or so, my nutrition hasn’t been super dialled, I’ve been battling unfamiliar gyms and suboptimal equipment, I’m extroverted out, I was hot and now I’m cold, I have a pile of laundry staring at me, and I’m about to get subjected to a world of hurt at physiotherapy because my hip flexor has not taken kindly to all the flying, sitting, driving, and kidlet-curls I insisted on doing all of last week.
But I haven’t missed a workout (I have, however, eased back on some of my weights, and scaled back on some of the sets/rep ranges within reason). I even had to drag myself kicking and screaming off my sofa, change out of my PJs, tug on my socks and shoes, and crawl onto the TREADMILL (because it was raining, OH THE INDIGNITY!) on Sunday night in order to hit my step goal. (You folks should have seen the unholy tantrum I threw — I think my howls reverberated up and down Victoria Peak.) Not because I was motivated to do so, but because I knew that my hip was already suffering from a week and a half of intense driving, lots more sitting than I am used to, and flights that always wreak havoc on my body.
And you know what? It’s only been a couple of days since I’ve been back to my routine, but it’s already starting to feel better again. As I knew it would, because I’ve been here (many times) before. And I’ll be here again, but I won’t be relying on motivation or willpower to power me through the next low period either. I’m playing the long game, and in this oddly freeing way, what I want (or don’t want) right this minute doesn’t actually matter. Because I know what I really, really want: which is to remain fit and healthy, to have this body that does what I want it to do (instead of a body that keeps me from doing what I want to do).