September 20, 2019 - 7 - "Exercising Discipline"

     More than three years ago (edited:  realized I began in July of '16) I started doing a workout program designed by Kayla Itsines.  A coworker told me about Kayla's Beach Body Guide fitness plan and said a lot of people were having success with it.  She suggested I search online for ‘BBG transformations’ to get an idea of what it could do for me.

     I looked at just a few of the images and stories and thought:  ‘Wow. I'm doing that.’  I downloaded her app and got to work.



     I’d been working out pretty consistently for a couple of years but wasn’t doing anything that was giving me the dramatic results I saw in the transformation photos. Turns out I needed to up my challenge level a few notches.  Kayla’s workouts were a lot harder than anything I’d done before.  She mixed up weights, calisthenics and cardio in a way that made you start building muscle, burning fat, and occasionally crying for your mommy.  I figured I’d been putting in the time before with little results, I may as well try to make my time spent exercising worth it.

     At first I could barely do a push up. (And there were a lot of pushups.)  But I kept looking at the transformation pictures, and repeating a few motivational mantras, and just making the effort to do each exercise the best I could. My strength grew, and small changes started to appear on my body, and I just kept trying.

 Here are some of the reasons this program works for me:

It's Flexible - I was looking for something I could do anywhere.  The Sweat workouts were adaptable to home or hotel rooms anywhere in the world.  I bought a few pieces of equipment to use at home (a bench and some light weights), but in hotel rooms I'd just use water bottles for weights and a chair or a bed as the bench.  Lots of the exercises use body weight so I was seeing progress.

There's An App For That - The app spelled out exactly what I needed to get done in a week.  I just had to look at my work and personal schedules at the beginning of each week, then move the workouts around to accommodate the level of busyness in any given day.

     After that I was on auto-pilot.  The app told me what to do each day and it was my job to get it done.  It felt like having a personal trainer show up daily and boss me around.

Mental Hacks  - I think developing little mental tricks was the most important element for me.  I got my head in the right place to lure myself to keep going day by day and week by week...

     I kept looking at those before/after pictures thinking:  ‘I want that!” and ‘If they can do it, so can I.’  One woman showed her postpartum body, then how she looked a few months later holding the few months old baby. Dang!  I figured if she could do it, I had no room for excuses.

     I also looked for inspiring quotes about exercise and fitness.  I'd repeat them to myself for motivation, and made up a few of my own as mantras.

     I talk to myself throughout my workouts; counting out reps, saying stuff like:  ‘Halfway there!’  “Keep going!” and  ‘We’ve got this! (Channeling my inner personal trainer.)   Michael says it’s pretty hilarious to listen to all of this from another room.

     These are some other phrases and quotes I use to keep me going:

     "No matter how slow you go, you're lapping everyone on the couch." - Unknown
               I can't tell you how much this helps me.  It makes me feel proud of myself just for making            the effort.  It also helped me develop my own adaptation:

     "You can go slow...you just can't stop."  -Me.

               I still say this to myself a lot.   If I do a push-up or lift a weight and the next rep seems 
        impossible, I say this and I just keep moving.   I eke out the reps 'til I’m done and can
        say ’Great Job!  You did it!’ (I’m not a schizophrenic, but I play one when I work out.)  I have
        done some exercises v e r y slowly.

               But here's the thing:  even if I'm going slow, I figure I'm still building my mental and
        physical muscles.  Sometimes it's actually harder to do a particular exercise slowly, so I’ll just            pick the pace back up a little and keep going.  I was surprised at how often the difficulty seemed          to lift as I just kept soldiering slowly forward.

     "You just have to push 'Start'." - Me
   
            My rule for myself was that I had to do a few things to call the day a 'win'.  I had to a) plan a            time in my day to do the workout, b) put on my workout clothes, c) set up any equipment, d)     
        turn on every light in the room,  e) start playing some upbeat music, and finally:  f) I had to
        push 'Start' on the app.

             I told myself if I didn't want to do the work out after that, I didn't have to.  But I have never once stopped.  By the time I've gotten that far the first mantra always seems to kick in:
      "You can go slow....you just can't stop."

-----

“We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.
Discipline weighs ounces--regret weighs tons.”
― Jim Rohn