Tangential Arguments

Short and to the point.

I used December to get rolling to try and re-involve the gym into my life. My medical insurance and health reimbursement through work require that I get to the club 12 times per month, so that’s what I did. Well really I went 11 times, but I’m going today too. I just got my Gym Rat badge of foursquare to prove it. The bare minimum on the last day of the month isn’t going to cut it in January.

For the 31 days following the new year I will join the herd and flock to the gym along with the masses of resolutionites. My specific goal is 5 times a week. None of this monthly goal where I have to go seven times in the last week just to crawl to the finish line. This time I’m holding myself accountable on a weekly basis in hopes that I can learn a habit by brute force. So with three full weeks and two short weeks that combine to make up January I’ll be targeting 21+ visits to the gym.

I’ll be focusing on building a habit that in some form carries over to the rest of the year so I’m not going to beat myself up each visit. It seems reasonable to have a couple of default plans. Or just one. I’m going to plan to run 2 miles every trip and adjust accordingly. On days that I feel better I’ll run 3, 4 or dare I say even 5 miles. On days where my legs are sore I’ll focus on trying to relearn what all of the lifting sets I recorded earlier this year were. And on days where I feel like hell I’ll drag myself through the obligatory 2 miles. In order to meet an arbitrary goal I set for myself earlier in December I’ll need to complete 35 miles during the month, so I’ll throw that in as a secondary objective.

Weekly Checkpoints:
Week 1: 2
Week 2: 7
Week 3: 12
Week 4: 17
Week 5: 21

In the immortal words of Barney Stinson, “Challenge Accepted!”

for more profundity or pithy humor follow me on twitter – @bicb