Insourcing

I refer to my personal training indulgence as "outsourcing my willpower".  It is very true that I both show up to work out more often, and also work harder in each session, than I would do by myself.  Time and time again I have proven this to myself.  The training is focused on strength and balance, and I love what it has done for my shape and what it has done for my strength.  Aerobics I still do on my own, and not so successfully. Walking, with very occasional jogs on a treadmill, is pretty much it. With the better weather, I'm doing a lot more walking, but I'd like to get the old heart pounding harder more often. Gym at work is likely the answer.

The personal training is very very expensive, and I don't think I want to budget to do this forever. Eventually I'll have to transition to finding other ways of getting it done. Right now, I'm planning to keep it up through my big trip this summer, but I'm really not sure after that.  I have been doing three times a week, the recommended amount, but the past couple of weeks (and possibly the next couple) my life is much more complicated and so all three trips have been hard to work in. Right now, I'm sitting in a motel room instead of home, and I missed both today's and last Thursday's sessions.

This cheapo motel has no workout room, but it does have barely sufficient room for swinging a cat.  So I pulled the drapes, put on NPR, and spend at least half an hour on traditional equipment-less floor exercises.  Sit-ups and crunches in infinite variety always figure in the PT sessions, and so I got some of them in.  Classic push-ups - not the maximum count, but focused on ten perfect ones, then more easier ones on inclines or my knees.  It felt so good to be moving and twisting I worked in a couple of the yoga postures I've just learned.  I feel much better for having done this, even it feels like it wasn't much.  I ended up with some high side kicks on the back of the room chair.

Part of what I love about the PT is its always different. They have free weights, adjustable machines, big barbells, stretchy cords, medicine balls and giant exercise balls, boxing gloves, and punching/kicking bags. Sometimes I have a giant rubber-band around my ankles and penguin walk while raising a five-pound medicine ball.  The next time, it's just push-ups and sit-ups and leg lifts and supermans.  (Don't they all sound positive and energizing? Not drudgery.) I don't need all the equipment - I have free weights, a mat, and an exercise ball already - but I need to have the creativity to lay out a routine in advance - but not the same old static one every time.  It seems like the kind of thing I need an app for:  "shake a routine".   Shake the phone and get the 30-minute daily workout on the screen. Certainly, I do not have the mental processing power to make it up on the spot in the early morning.  Maybe I should just go low-tech and write the possibilities down on cards and do a "deal a work-out".  (I remember cutting out something like that from an Oprah magazine a few years ago. I did it for a week.)

At least, I know I like doing the workout, and I love having done it.  Often these good intentions do not stay with me - especially in the early morning - and so I'll need to work on other motivational self-talk techniques. But I should at least make it easy and fun to get my own routine.