Enjoying Exercise

You may remember that I mentioned that I have started working with Angie Gooding and I am taking part in her Your Body Project. I wrote about what the project involved a few weeks ago and I have just finished the first stage, so I thought I would share with you all what I learnt from it and what I learnt about myself.

The first part of the project was Enjoying Exercise. To be honest, when I looked at what the program would involve, this was the section I wasn’t overly bothered about. Not because I didn’t think it was worthwhile, but because this was an area I didn’t think I had an issue with. Turns out I did and this program is showing me things about myself that I didn’t know. I was doing my workouts when I should (mostly) and I felt awesome after them, so I was enjoying them right? Not so much. I was doing the workouts that I thought I should do, that would show me results, but I wasn’t doing things that were fun.

Of course there needs to be a balance. Like anything in life, right? For many, exercise is to tone up, to change your shape and to get results. But that isn’t the only reason to exercise, and it shouldn’t be. Working out can be fun and it should be fun. Don’t just see it as time to get results, see it as a time to take out of your day, to focus on you. Do something you enjoy. Turns out that you can enjoy it and get results too, you just have to try new things.

See, I have been running a lot. Well, trying to run anyway – I am not very good at it. I enjoyed the feeling after a run and I enjoyed being able to run even 1 minute more than the run before. But during the run? I was pretty miserable. Why would I spend time working out and being miserable when I could workout by doing something that I enjoyed and still get the same benefits from it? This is what I spoke with Angie about during our first Skype chat and she suggested I stop running if I really didn’t enjoy it. So that is what I have done. It was difficult, just because I am a stubborn person and I don’t like to give up on things, but I also what to use my workout time as wisely as possible.

During the first week of this section we were asked to do a fitness survey. Basically, we had a list of statements and we had to choose which ones suited us best and it would tell us what kind of workouts suited us best. To be honest, I am not surprised with the results, as the workouts it told me to do are the ones I do enjoy the most. The surprising this is, I am not doing those kinds of workouts.

The results showed me that I enjoy working out with others (but equally, sometimes alone too) and I like my exercise to be disguised as something else – something fun like hiking or dancing. It also showed me that I always need to be doing something different. The same workouts all the time bore me. I also need set goals to work towards. Because of my crazy schedule, convenience is a must (this I knew, but wasn’t very good at figuring out a solution).

So, with all this, and after having an hour long chat with Angie about limitations, what I enjoy about working out, what I don’t like and what areas I want to work on (my core is the main area), Angie made me a personalised workout plan. This is the awesome thing about this project – Angie is a qualified personal trainer, so a personalised plan comes with it. We had talked a little about roughly what the plan would be, but I was excited to see it all set out.

I had mentioned that I had always wanted to try CrossFit and that fits in with a convenient workout and it is always different. I can’t afford to go to a CrossFit gym, but there are so many workouts you can do at home and I am really enjoying creating them myself. My husband has been doing them all with me too and he loves them. It is great to workout with someone else and we are really pushing and motivating each other. A little bit of healthy competition is good too and it helps that he is easy on the eyes . We have really gotten into doing the deck of cards workout. It is really intense, but so much fun.

As well as CrossFit twice a week, I am doing yoga once a week (which is helping strengthen my core), swimming once a week (which is such a good overall body workout )and dancing once a week (which I find really fun) and then I have 2 days off. As you can see, it is a proper mix of workouts and I enjoy all of them.

There are more specific goals too. I am working up towards swimming 20 Olympic laps before stopping, increasing my plank time by 30 seconds each week and increasing my reps of half push-ups so I can work my way up to full push-ups. They are all going really well and I am hoping to reach my swimming goal in a couple of weeks. The push-ups….those I am struggling with. Oh, I also have some core and strength routines in my program too.

I am loving the variety and what I am loving most is enjoying the workouts. I thought I was enjoying them before, but the way I feel about them now shows that I wasn’t enjoying them as much as I could have been.

I know some of you mentioned before that you wish you could do Angie’s project, but you just didn’t have the money – well I know some people just really don’t have the money, so you just have to do what you can with what you have. But, the health and fitness industry has millions (billions?) thrown into it every single day – so there are people out there that have money to spend on health and fitness. Think of all the money you have spent on magazines that promise you to drop 10lbs in 2 days or the gym memberships you have gotten and then gone once every 2 months.

Angie’s program gives you something I have not seen anywhere else. It is addressing the deep rooted issues that cause you to not enjoy working out or that have made you develop an unhealthy relationship with food. That is the next phase of the project, which we started yesterday – Finding Peace With Food. I seriously can’t recommend this enough. I have learnt so much already and it is making this health and fitness journey much more enjoyable for me.

So, that is where I am at with my workouts. A bit of a change from what I was doing, but a good change. On that note, I am off to do some yoga and a core workout.