I am moving in one week and everything that goes with it has disrupted my routine. Lately I have been fatigued, mostly due to stress. It has not been a surprise to turn around and find I have missed three consecutive days of workouts or that I traded a good run for a stretch on the couch.
Stress is a sneaky siren. Her call has you capsizing into the doldrums with not much hope of rowing yourself out. Although I know that giving into it merely generates more stress, I succumb to her sometimes. Yesterday my husband came home early from work, at 3:30 pm. I had two choices; I knew if I worked quickly I could beat him to the punch, calling “gym!” before he called out “golf!” (think “Shot Gun!” for parents and imagine me putting on my shoes as I hop and bump my way out the front door – leaving husband reaching for golf clubs, mouth open and children with confused expression frozen on face). If I didn’t work quickly I would forgo my window of opportunity and gave in to my tired body. I mustered everything in my stressed out downtrodden being and reached for my shoes…. “gym!” I yelled, shocking my family, old dog, new dog and probably half of the neighborhood, beating my poor sweet husband to the coveted front seat of freedom. (This is of course a dramatization- but it is an accurate description of how it feels to win alone time when you have kids.)
So as I pulled on my shoes, hopping out the front door, almost tripping over dogs and adjusting exercise pants which requires tugging and wiggling and looking quite foolish, I made the decision to run the two miles to the gym- leaving my cool comfortable car parked where she stood. HA! I believe the expression most appropriate here hints at a pool and jumping in rather than wading slowly. And so I took a deep breath and jumped feet first into the heat of the day. “Why?!”, you ask, “Why would you do that to yourself”? Surely I must have died there on the side of the road and most likely I am typing this today from the great beyond! No. I made it. I ran the whole way and ended up at the gym a sweaty, stinky, thirsty mess.
The point is, I tried. I did it. I ran to the gym after a couple days without a workout and forced myself to demand a couple inches of space among all the other guys and gals and punched out a leg workout. Afterwards, I slowly walked myself home.
The key here is: Just give it a go. Tell yourself twenty minutes, you are only going to commit to twenty minutes and if you’re still tired, you’ll go home. Usually, if you begin a work out, no matter how tired you believe you are, you’ll find your footing along the way and finish it. And even if it is half ass, you will have moved. You will have injected something positive into your stressed out worn out day. You will have Conquered Slacker Mountain and you’ll feel better!
There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.
-Henry Ford
Loreli Deleon
Personal Training Manager
