My Gymversary
Feb. 28th, 2006 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjI've reached the one year anniversary of my current gym membership. I'll put this behind a cut for those who find other people's exercise motivations to be boring.
I'm proud of several things. I've 99% stuck to the rule "If I go to work, I go to the gym." There have been a few exceptions, but I've managed to convince my subconscious that going to the gym is a treat and that I'm depriving myself if I don't do it. I'm also proud of having managed to convince the gym owner/manager to stop trying to "encourage" me by telling me how much weight he thinks I've lost. He really doesn't get that it isn't about weight, but at least he eventually got it through his head to stop that category of comments. (He doesn't seem to get internal motivation in general.) I honestly have no idea whether I've lost weight -- I don't own a scale. I do know that I feel ... "collected" is about the best description I can think of (in the way the term is used in horseback riding). I bounce when I walk. I have muscle definition in my shoulders and arms. I'm about 97% recovered from the nerve damage I got in my right leg when I had my last bad back episode (muscle spasm around the sciatic nerve) and it's pretty rare for my back to bother me these days. I can bicycle up the hill to downtown Berkeley without even breathing hard.
My program aims at a 30-minute workout, alternating three days of treadmill/nordic-track/etc. with two days of weight training. I've been adding more stretching recently. The one thing I don't do is any running -- I don't trust it not to mess up my knees, and my right ankle is still a little weak on the outside and I'm worried about hitting it wrong and spraining it. I also skip the stationary bike since I'd rather do my bicycling somewhere scenic.
Now if only I could convince the gym owner that not everyone shares his taste in loud, hard-driving, industrial workout music. When I can't hear what's on my iPod headphones over the speakers in the other end of the room, it's just Too Darn Loud.
I'm proud of several things. I've 99% stuck to the rule "If I go to work, I go to the gym." There have been a few exceptions, but I've managed to convince my subconscious that going to the gym is a treat and that I'm depriving myself if I don't do it. I'm also proud of having managed to convince the gym owner/manager to stop trying to "encourage" me by telling me how much weight he thinks I've lost. He really doesn't get that it isn't about weight, but at least he eventually got it through his head to stop that category of comments. (He doesn't seem to get internal motivation in general.) I honestly have no idea whether I've lost weight -- I don't own a scale. I do know that I feel ... "collected" is about the best description I can think of (in the way the term is used in horseback riding). I bounce when I walk. I have muscle definition in my shoulders and arms. I'm about 97% recovered from the nerve damage I got in my right leg when I had my last bad back episode (muscle spasm around the sciatic nerve) and it's pretty rare for my back to bother me these days. I can bicycle up the hill to downtown Berkeley without even breathing hard.
My program aims at a 30-minute workout, alternating three days of treadmill/nordic-track/etc. with two days of weight training. I've been adding more stretching recently. The one thing I don't do is any running -- I don't trust it not to mess up my knees, and my right ankle is still a little weak on the outside and I'm worried about hitting it wrong and spraining it. I also skip the stationary bike since I'd rather do my bicycling somewhere scenic.
Now if only I could convince the gym owner that not everyone shares his taste in loud, hard-driving, industrial workout music. When I can't hear what's on my iPod headphones over the speakers in the other end of the room, it's just Too Darn Loud.
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Date: 2006-03-01 04:36 pm (UTC)