Routine Maintenance
by Blake Beckcom
Undoubtedly, all of life’s routine’s get sorely tested in the coming weeks. Our “customary and regular course of life procedures” goes out the window to make room for the varying holiday activity that ends the year. Do they have to? Well, no, they don’t. It comes down to how you view your routines, and what are THE most important routines you stick to, balancing the temptation to take on more than one can successfully manage these next weeks. I say “successfully” due to what appears to be a trend; post holiday illness. Yes you get it all crammed in, saying yes to everything, pushing out your fitness program to “make room”, but the price often paid is a New Year’s illness.
Routine is additionally defined as “an unvarying and constantly repeated formula.” Unvarying, constantly repeated, says it all. There is little give in that definition. Fitness takes consistency of effort, and of time, repeatedly, over time. Life’s circumstances may vary, but the fitness routine must have unvarying execution. Why is it that when the over commitments and day timer cram fest comes calling, that one of our first inclinations is to bail out on fitness?
Routine is also defined as “commonplace tasks, chores or duties that must be done regularly or at specified intervals; typical or everyday activity.” “Must be done” being key words here. You have to have a mindset that my fitness routine is “commonplace” tasking in my life. It “must be done regularly” to get me where I want to go. Does typical or everyday activity describe your fitness approach? Do you look at taking care of you as a duty to, and for you?
Lastly, routine is defined as “regular, unvarying, habitual, unimaginative or rote procedure.” There are those words regular and unvarying again, now accompanied by habitual. These words must mean something, since they are used in the definition of routine, multiple times. Hmmm.
SO, how do you get it all done? The vacation; the family in town; the gifts; the food; the decorations; the events; the kids; stringing the lights, and where does the energy come from to cope with it all…AND not throw out your fitness “me time”? First and foremost is the positioning of your fitness program as routine, unvarying in your approach to the habitual pursuit of regularity. Fitness has to become WHO YOU ARE. It’s just a part of your being. This is how you roll; “regardless of what lies ahead this week, I will get to the gym and keep my training schedule in tact…regardless. I’ll move a work out day over here or over there, go three days in a row, have three days of rest in a row, regardless of how the actual days of training line out, habitually, typically and constantly repeated, my formula is I don’t miss my work outs”. It’s all about your prioritizations and keeping YOU and fitness first.
If you train three times a week, as example, you have seven days to find three time slots. When you break it down to this, it is far easier to cope. A step further is, “I only need to find three, 60 minute windows of fitness duty time for me this entire week.” Yes, it is your dutiful approach to your fitness routine, which gets your fitness routine done repeatedly, and you to your goals of long life, limiting medical interventions and being a happier more contented you.
When the words “routine maintenance” comes to mind, it makes you think of what? Just like your car, your body, mind, and spirit needs the invigoration of fitness, and what fitness maintenance does for you, over your lifetime. If you need help getting in the driver’s seat to establish a fitness routine, or maybe you’re just stuck in a rut, or perhaps your engine needs higher octane fuel, call us at Fitness Together, 619 794 0014. Our private suite, one on one focus is the one body shop your car will respond to in 2012.
Category: Life Style
