Row, Row, Row My Machine…

Gently in the basement. Merrily, merrily, merrily…something that rhymes with basement.

In one of my recent Go Team! posts ‘Make some tweaks‘ I said that I was planning to move my rowing machine up to the living room because my mid-decluttering basement was too distracting. However, soon after I posted it, I realized that there was a more direct way to fix the problem – I shifted the stuff from directly in front of the machine so I didn’t have to see it while I rowed.

It instantly helped.

In fact, as soon as I move the stuff, I hopped on the machine and rowed for a few minutes.

That in itself was a victory and I added to that triumph by deciding to sign up for my free trial of Apple Fitness + that I have been getting reminders of for months.

I watched my first video and rowed along on Monday morning and I LOVED it.

The instructions were clear, the leader was enthusiastic but not overbearing, and I could easily see (and match) the pace of the rowers in the video, and I felt encouraged to work a little harder than I probably would have on my own.

It gave me a lot of the benefits of being in a group class without actually having to be in a group class – I felt like I had company, the structure was clear and once I had decided on a workout, I didn’t have any more decisions to make during the session. (Unless I had decided not to finish it, of course!)

Of course, I could get a lot of those same things from YouTube videos but going to an exercise-specific app and choosing from a single category felt a lot different than going to YouTube and searching past – and getting distracted by – all kinds of other interesting things to find a video to exercise with.

Anything that removes obstacles and reduces my distractions on the way to exercising is a good thing.

And the video itself felt different, even though it was a pre-recorded thing made for a mass audience, it felt much more like a Zoom class or something else that I could join/be part of than just something I was watching and doing on my own. I don’t know what about the video made it feel like that but I liked it.

Yes, I know that I have done this exactly once and I may or may not continue to enjoy it but the fact that my first experience with the program was overwhelmingly positive means I feel drawn to try it again.

And that is definitely a good thing.

And I’m awarding myself a gold star for my efforts.

Feel free to award yourself this gold star for your efforts today, too.