🏃 🏃 Regaining my fitness Week 9 update

The past couple of weeks have been a bit of a slog to be honest. I've had a lot on my plate, but I really don't want to let this habit slip away, because I know how easily that can happen. You leave it two or three days and all of a sudden there is lead in your shoes. You hit the snooze button at 6:30am, instead of jumping out of bed and before you know it the fitness regime is a distant memory and great story:

"Hey, do you remember when I exercises consistently for 8 weeks solid. Wasn't that great? Man, wouldn't have been so great to have kept it going..."

No, I don't want to have that internal dialogue in the coming weeks, months and years, so my aim is to tough out the difficult weeks and just stick with it. All it takes is twenty minutes every day. That's 1.39% from my day.

1.39%!!! Surely there are other less important things like a TV show that I can skip to make room for my exercise or I could always integrate them. That's the beauty of the home workout. You can multitask as you workout and no hefty gym membership fees either!

MINDFULNESS

I have been reading a lot about mindfulness recently and the benefits it can have for our busy modern lives. Some of the main ones that I have learned about are:

Decreased Stress
Increased Ability to Deal with Illness
Facilitation of Recovery
Eliminating Depressive thoughts
Improved General Health

Looking at that list, what's not to like. At the moment, I am finding it tricky to squeeze it into my normal day, so I have been doing it just before sleep, and man do I drift off to sleep in seconds and I am so relaxed as I do so. It really is a great feeling, as the days stresses and worries drain slowly away.

Now, to be fair I am a great sleeper anyway, so with or without the mindfulness, I'll drop off to sleep quickly anyway, but for anybody who struggles to nod off, I would highly recommend checking this out.

The app I use is called Insight Timer and it is free to download from the Apple App store or from the Play store for Android users.

For the sleep meditations, just go to meditation tab, then sleep tab and you will find loads. I particularly like Yoga Nidra for rest and sleep by Diana Warlick

In next weeks updates (which is this week for me), I will be including this meditation in my exercises, as for me the mind is as important, if not more important than the body, so it needs exercise too.

EXERCISES FROM WEEK 9

Day 55

275 x pushups
50 x Dumbell curls (9Kg)
50 x Dumbell side lifts (9Kg)
300 x sit ups
170 x jumping jacks
100 x No weight arm exercise
75 x shadow box

Day 56

110 x pushups
90 x Dumbell curls (9Kg)
90 x Dumbell side lifts (9Kg)
200 x sit ups
200 x jumping jacks
200 x No weight arm exercise
150 x shadow box

Day 57

90 x pushups
90 x Dumbell curls (9Kg)
90 x Dumbell side lifts (9Kg)
200 x sit ups
200 x jumping jacks
200 x No weight arm exercise
150 x shadow box

Day 58

120 x pushups
80 x Dumbell curls (9Kg)
80 x Dumbell side lifts (9Kg)
200 x sit ups
200 x jumping jacks
200 x No weight arm exercise
150 x shadow box

Day 59

200 x pushups
90 x Dumbell curls (9Kg)
90 x Dumbell side lifts (9Kg)
200 x sit ups
100 x jumping jacks
100 x No weight arm exercise
150 x shadow box

Day 60

Rest

Day 61

20 × pushups
Golf (7-8km walk)

GREAT ADVISE

@paulao0506 had some insightful comments on my last fitness update about rest time, and I was actually starting to get a tweak in my knee, so I have took her great comments on board and had two rest days this week on Saturday and Sunday. I still did 20 pushups on Sunday and played a round of golf, but that's very close to a rest day for me. Going forward I am going to try and have at least one rest day each week, as it is important to give the body a rest to regenerate and heal itself. Thanks Paulao for the great advise. I really appreciate it.