Making Time for a New Habit
"I wish I had time" = my weakest excuse for not working out since I finished the my second 20K on June 1, 2013. Yes, over nine months ago, and yes, I had to count it out on my fingers. This has been a personal struggle for me in my adult life. I grew up playing a sport or training for a sport all year round. So, in adulthood, it's been difficult for me to work in the rhythm of working out into my daily or even weekly routine. I'm sure others have struggled with this as well.
I deliberately didn't make a resolution about this. Although, I will say that even before my 20K last year, in the middle of training, I told Kelsey that even if I said I wanted to, she had to promise to not let me do the Dam to Dam 20K again in 2014.
I had an amazing time training and running the first one, but the second one... sucked. I hated it. And... I blame the weather. Spring 2012 was abnormally beautiful, and spring 2013... not so much. And, the time it takes to train for a 20K is just not something I want to spend time away from my family on.
So, after eight months of not exercising and holding out on a true new year's "get in shape" resolution, I had an idea in mid-January.
Push-ups
As I thought about the time margin I have in my life right now (husband, father, full-time job, two blogs, huge basement project), I knew that carving time out for an hour at the gym or signing up for a bootcamp wasn't going to work for me or my family. So I decided to start small, with the idea of building a discipline.
10,000
I didn't do any research on push-ups or push-up programs, I just wanted to do something simple, and 10,000 push-ups in 2014 came to mind. I wondered what it would take to do 10,000 pushups in 2014. 10,000 / 365 = 27.39 (28 for safe measure). 28 pushups a day didn't seem too hard.
Next, I thought I would build in some gradual growth. So, I started with 25 push-ups a day in January, 30 in February, 35 in March, and so on.
As I began to map out what it would look like, it shook out to 18,735 push-ups (starting on Jan. 19). Yo, that's a lot of push-ups.
And then I told Kelsey, and being the supportive wife she is, she told me "Ya know, you're not very good at following through with goals all the time." And I was like, "Milka-what? Watch me." I really think she knew it was the very thing that would keep me doing push-ups everyday of 2014.
Well, except that I forgot on Feb. 13 and had to do 60 on Valentine's Day.
I hope I learn something amazing though this experience that I can share later, but at the end of the day, I'm just doing some push-ups to help me feel better about my physical life. Baby steps. Everything in moderation. The tortoise wins the race every time.
We'll see how it evolves. But, I do know that Rooney likes doing push-ups...
[tentblogger-vimeo 86785312]
Busy adults, how do you get your workout in? How do you build in new habits into your busy lives?