Mr. A. Making a habit of it

One of the things I hear a lot is that it’s though to go out and do sports after you get home from a long day of work / study and that getting off the couch is half the battle of working-out.

I too had a hard time leaving home to do a workout in the beginning and after a while it gets “easier” and it’s not really the exercise getting easier because the intensity just goes up as you get into better shape, but more so that it is just something you do. I firmly believe it’s all about making your workout a habit, like taking a shower I the morning, brushing your teeth, once you begin to look at it like a habit it’s a lot easier to try to turn it into a habit.

Here are a few tips

1. Planning: If you want to make something a habit, plan it out, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 6pm to 7pm I am going to…
2. Join a Team / Club or do it with a friend, If you don’t want to haggle with planning it yourself joining a team with scheduled training is great, if doing it with a friend it will raise the comitment level
3. For both 1-2 apply that it’s something you can put in a calendar and maintained as something you need to do and not plan other overlapping stuff
4. Keep on track, The beginning is always the hardest part the claim is usually that it takes 21-30 days to create a new habit so these are the days that are going to be though, and the mind will try to “distract” you with other tempting offers, here the schedule and your commitment to that schedule will help you through.

Once made into a habit, tying those running shoes, going to the gym, whatever training you fancy will be a lot easier!

But remember Breaking the habit is an easy as creating it, so after you established it you got to maintain a 3 week vacation without workout is enough to put you back to where you started “habit wise”

Mr. A. a short update

Here is a short update fro the past week.

Pretty much everything is going decently, good food, loads of training and slow but steady progression, all in all a very good week.

Workout for this week looked like this:

Monday: I participated in the DHL Staffeten, which is a 5x5k run for companies with more than 20'000 participants each day summing to 120'000 in one week, I ran my 5k in around 22:30 which I was very happy with

Tuesday: I had Boxing

Wedensday: i Swam 2km and biked 45km

Thursday: Boxing

Friday: Biked 20km

Saturday: Biked 57Km with a lot of headwind and a 7,3kg bagpack

Sunday: My day off

I only had 1 less than ideal day, and that was Sunday, were I had a day of restitution, but it also included a buffet in the evening (I did manage to hold myself back somewhat, but still it wasn't ideal and i did eat a bit too much and when I got home I had some “desert cakes thingies as well”, It could have been a lot worth though and there will always be bumps in the road to progression and it’s important to cut yourself some slack, I’m looking forward to next Sundays weigh in! 

Hopefully I will manage to win again this week!

Mr. A. - A weekend of activities.

My weekend started off with an off-day, only biking a bit as transportation.

Saturday: I had a small transportation bike ride of 7 km in the morning, and in the early afternoon I started my long bike ride in total the long ride ended up at 83 Km, which I am quite happy with.

There were a ton of hills and a ton of wind which made it quite hard, especially the last 25 km where though both physically and mentally but I managed to pull through.

Sunday: We had our bi-weekly weigh in.

This week ended in a slow but steady progress and I am now down to 76,3 Kg so still 6,3kg’s to go, not as fast progress as I would have liked, but progress none the less!

The activity this Sunday was (unfortunately for me :P) biking: we ended biking around ~60 km, must confess my ass was a bit sore from the day before, but fortunately for me the speed 7 intensity was a bit lower and there wasn’t as many hills or wind as the day prior so that made it quite a bit easier, after the biking we did a bit of circuit training, and a basketball drill.

I ended up the weekend with some homemade burgers, and ice cream as desert, I feel it’s ok to “celebrate” your achievements and reward yourself :-).

Today it's back to the regular schedule!

Mr. A. Just do it!

Everyone have days where you are, tired, lethargic, unmotivated, lazy, and basically you don’t feel like doing a workout, and find a million excuses not to workout.

The solution is pretty straight forward, just do it! Show up to the workout and just attend, once you are there, once you get the running shoes on and get out the door, the workout will work itself and you will get through it, and get all the benefits it provides!

Even if it is not going to be your top most intense workout, it will still be a workout and a step moving forward.

So just do it!

Mr. A. Rescheduling training

I’ll just start off with: "I had a great swim today in total 3 km"

 

• 400m freestyle warm-up
• 200m (12.5m crawl non breathing 12.5m normal)
• 3x (400m crawl arms(pull buoy) +200m breaststroke)
• 100m freestyle
• 4x (25m crawl sprint 25m free)
• 300m freestyle warm-down

 

And now for the actual subject:

  

Due to the Outer snapping hip I have been forced to reschedule my training a bit to lessen the stress on the cords and hopefully reduce the inflammation

 

So the new training plan will be largely based on swimming and then attempt to keep some of the other activities up as well

  

So for now it will look like this:

• Mon: Swimming
• Tue: Boxing
• Wed: Swimming
• Thu: Boxing
• Friday: Free or Swimming or Random activity
• Sat: Biking or Swimming or Random activity
• Sun: Biking / bi-weekly activity

 

I’m not quite set on the weekends yet.

 

This is the initial plan and I will likely have to adjust it depending on how my hip ends up behaving

 

 

 

 

Mr. A. – Old injuries reemerging

So this tends to happen every time I attempt to get back into doing sports, and it has always been what ended up putting a stop to my training, and now it is reemerging.

Outer snapping hip, when fully emerged it appears as a snap every time I take a step and ends up being quite painful, and removes any kind of possibility for running and even walking ends up being painful.

Luckily it has not set in fully but I can begin to feel the snapping sensation, and I know from past experiences that I’m not far off from it getting to be a big issue.

I found some exercises that should, in time, help strengthening the area, and I think going to physiotherapy might be something I should look into

Mr. A. Having Easy ”go to” meals #1

Some days are easier than others, especially when you are trying to lose weight, and having to go shop on one of those days, usually won’t end up with a good result.

To avoiding this scenario I sugest you have 3 “go to” meals you are always able to make.
These should be:

1. Be healthy
2. Be easy and fast to prepare (shouldn’t take more than 20 mins)
3. Should always be in stock at home

This is my own go to meal #1 I will post #2 and #3 at another time

1. Stir fry x egg’s in a wok, with a little oil (I always have eggs
2. Add - Meat Salmon, Tuna, Chicken etc. (I always keep frozen chicken at home just in case
3. Add random veggies you have example. Spinach, Broccoli, tomatoes, onion, bell pepper, anything goes (try to keep a large portion of the total volume of the dish veggies for the health benefit.
4. Keep stir frying, Add, some: salt, pepper, soya, fish sauce, lime, lemon whatever you like, I usually go for soya / fish sauce and if the meet is fish I add lime.
5. Serve with: Rice, noodle or pasta, you can go for wholegrain here if you’d like to make it even healthier.

Once You get used to making this dish it can easily be done within 20 min’s and you should always have left over veggies you can use.

I love this, because it’s such a flexible recipe, its healthy it’s easy to make, and it tastes great