It's been a day
I love spreadsheets and tracking things. Like my tea consumption (which I am woefully overdue on my next cup, but it's been that kind of week). My tea chart takes data from my survey, which I complete before and during prep, and after consumption. Tea type and blend and weight, water temp and volume, steep number and duration, strength and score... I've got it all.
I've been on-and-off participating in a calisthenics program, and for the longest time, fighting with how to track my progress. All the stats were bogging me down so badly that I couldn't hardly do any workouts.
But then a couple weeks ago, I realized something. Health progress doesn't have to be measured that way. It doesn't have to be number-of-situps-this and angle-of-inclined-pushups-that; it's not how far or long I walked, or how much weight I was carrying. It doesn't need to be how many reps in each set or how many sets.
What really matters is consistency. Everything else can be tossed out the window.
If I can just be consistent, and track that, none of the numbers on the rest of it matters. If I can just participate (and participate to my limit) consistently over time, it doesn't matter how many of which exercise at what difficulty level I complete. If I can keep to a schedule, any schedule, I will get stronger.
So what am I doing?
I have a list of exercises, and they're distributed in my calendar (yes, the same calendar I use for work meetings and vacations and birthdays and everything else). Squats, pushups & pullups, toe-lifts, crunches & leg-lifts & planks, carpal stretches... the lot. They're distributed such that I have as few as possible each day and don't do the same muscle group 2 days in a row.
I'm not even counting my reps. I go until it starts to hurt, break for a few minutes, and then start again. Three-ish sets of whatever my body can take at the time. Maybe some more later in the day if I'm feeling bored or rambunctious (the former is vastly more likely than the latter).
I expect to hear some criticism about it, but I don't care. What I'm doing is working (so far) better than anything else I've tried. I've been able to stick with it longer than any other regime I've tried, and that's the important thing. Oh, I am getting stronger--that's important too. But there's my goal too: it's surely different than my imminent critics', so why should I listen to them? I shouldn't.
I finally found something that's working for me, and I'm getting top marks on my logging and metrics: I haven't missed a day yet.
(I confess that wasn't what I sat down to write, but it's down now and I'm not going to force what doesn't want to come--I learned that lesson long ago.)
Leave a comment or continue reading: other Tuesday posts, another cuppa, or delve into some data.
