Around March I started getting back into my fitness and personal health. Over the course of a year plus at a startup I lost about 10lbs and received results of a nutrition test which essentially said I was malnourished. A bit of an eye opener for me. I decided to take the 3 months Connie was in Australia as a chance to focus on myself hence the Be Selfish blog post.
Since March, I’ve put on around 15lbs (hopefully of muscle) through consistent exercise and a committed meal-prep-based diet. My exercise routine consisted of body weight exercises that I execute in my upstairs hallway with a yoga mat and a pull up bar. The program is a 12 week program I initially found about 2 years ago that helped me put on my first 10lbs of muscle. After every 4 weeks the program jumped a level with longer and harder workouts.
I learned a lot taking myself through this short journey and, as you guessed it, outlined those lessons below.
No skipping hard work
To get the body that you want you have to work at it everyday. Same goes for building a business. It’s a selfish pursuit to fully commit yourself to a goal but there are no shortcuts. Day in and day out. Meal in and meal out. It’s not always fun but you need to motivate yourself from within and from without (?) to come back again tomorrow.
Scaling too early hurts
My routine was lacking cardio so I decided to take up running. I have too high opinion of my capabilities and decided to run 6 miles one balmy Saturday morning. My furthest run prior was 4 miles and my last run was about two weeks before. So, of course, I set off. And some how completed it under one hour. Right at 59 minutes actually. About 5 hours later my right foot started to ache. By the next morning, I could barely walk on my right foot. Pretty sure I developed plantar fasciitis from scaling too fast. My muscles were not strong enough to take the sudden increase in workload and I was paying the price for it. You need to build up the tolerance and ease into the extra work and this is only accomplished through patience and strategically pushing yourself forward.
Practice patience when it does hurt
Speaking of patience, that’s the only way to overcome your ego and now a hurt body. Putting aside the urge to jump out there again too early helps prevent burnout and ensures you’re properly recovered both physically and mentally.
No substitute to doing it right
Quality over quantity. I constantly need to remind myself this during the last few sets of the day. This is where the majority of my injuries have come from.
Why am I so preachy lately? Sheesh. Someone shut me up.
Not a fully thought out post but I’ve already moved past it. No sense in forcing it any further.