I've spent a lot of time today trying to work out a decent regime for myself. For me it's an important part of "the new me", so I've come up with a plan to get fit, get healthy, and most importantly, I've tried to make it do-able.
I could go back over this blog and find countless failed plans of self improvement, and for fear of sounding like a broken record, hopefully this one will be different. I guess technically I can't call the last one an entire failure, it was unduly interrupted and I did carry it back on. This is a step-up, and evolution if you will, of that.
So I guess the main changes in this compared to any other plan I've tried is the incentives an motivations that apply on a personal level. This is really important, when I've failed before it's been out of laziness, lack of drive, and being poorly motivated. This time I've picked a few aspects that interest me:
My friends. It's easy to let yourself down, but I hate letting down other people, especially my friends. I'm now going to be jogging daily with two of my course-mates. It's not my activity of choice, but it's sociable, and good for cardio and legs, two area's I need to get fitter in for cycling. Even if all else goes to pot, this should stay going based on the lack of wanting to let others down. We've done the first two runs in the snow now, so should be easy to keep going with improving weather.
I'm a geek, if I can drive this with technology you can bet your bottom dollar I will. For cycling I already have the Garmin Edge 705. I can use the heart-rate monitor in every little workout I do and it will also track duration. I will now be using it for pace, heart-rate, distance, and laps when Jogging. I've been using the SportTracks on my computer to analyse the data from this for a while, but haven't done so for ages. I'm now using the software with a complete athlete profile measuring my personal stats and assigning my workouts to it. For me the incentive of making my stats improve or increasing the graph is HUGE, and seeing progress on a graph is rewarding. I'm also going to be inputting the profile data daily, making me more likely to workout more on days when I haven't done much.
Today for the first time in a while I had a proper workout in the evening. It was simple, and basic, but good effort, and I felt better for it. I'm going to try to continue with these when I can fit them in, ideally daily just before tea. Will have to see, no promises.
One thing that has always held me back health-wise is water. I hate drinking it. I've stocked up on the tesco-value and am now going to Aim to drink 2litres/day of squash. I should feel alot better for this again, as I tried it once before near the end of last year (academic) and so will just try and stick to it better this time.
I want to get a white board, or if not big reminder posters. So it's a big reminder of what I have left to do today for my daily routine to succeed.
I shall have Kinect for Christmas. So this will help with morning workouts in the new year. Hopefully I will have the sleeping pattern cracked by then.
I'm going to hold-fire on the sleeping pills for a little while. After having a little fail with them recently I got them to work by combining them with 3pints of cider... not my best idea granted, but there we go. I have noticed they make me feel more drowsy in the early part of the morning, and as part of this was me just wanting to get up earlier that kind of defeats the object :S
Well that's all I can remember for now. I'm late for bed again, but I wanted to bash this out before sleep.
Until next time, big love xxx
No comments:
Post a Comment