Tracking Routines

Fitness Friday 

Between Residency and my trip across the pond, my lifting schedule has been so whacked out, it’s a wonder I remember how to squat at all!

This week has marked the return of my schedule in all its glory and infamy and o my stars, I couldn’t be more excited. On Sunday at my layover in O’Hare, I was planning out my week, deciding on which day I should be doing what lifting sequence, and o my stars, how excited that made me! It’s been a challenge for this schedule-driven human to be so far off of the daily, normal routine for so long. That said, it’s been a good exercise in remember that everything isn’t all schedules and datebooks, and that living life is far more entertaining and exciting than just planning it.

So this week also saw the return of progress photos … not that I’m too pleased about what these images show, but they’re a useful tool in helping to see the minute changes that begin to occur when one has been away from lifting for so long. Obviously, I know enough to know that the changes aren’t going to be immediate, but just getting in the gym and sweating, lifting heavy shit and putting it back down does enough for my psyche to make me think that there’s been a change. It’s all in my mind, I know, but it’s effectively helping me to push through the wall.

So at Res, I did my best with the time I had available to sweat and lift. I got in more cardio than any real weight training, and even that was lackluster at best because I was fighting a cold and frankly, there really wasn’t a ton of time for me to lift. It occurred to me that this has likely been the longest break I’ve taken from lifting and fitness related activities since I started graduate school. I really can’t recall a time that I was so far off my routine and schedule for this long.

Dang.

That means for two years, I’ve been pushing my body pretty darn hard. Okay, not elite athlete hard, but hard enough to have built a solid base, to have made significant changes in my physique, and to have almost mastered a Burpee (haha, just kidding. I can’t do a burpee for shit. They suck and they always will). The point is that sometimes it’s easy for me to get so focused on the end result (even if that changes based on my particular goals at the moment) that I forget what I’m doing is pretty solid, and that my commitment to fitness and to lifting is one that is now so deeply rooted in my core being, I feel it’s absence when life is so hectic that it can’t happen the way I’m used to having it.