I found the practice quite useful at the time. Having a list of small movement prompts that felt useful, that kept me from stiffening up too much, and that could be done quickly made a huge difference for my mental health at a difficult time.
I know that I kept it up for a while but I don’t remember noticing when I fell out of the habit of doing them*
In fact, I had essentially forgotten all about them until I came across the book again this weekend and actually said, “Oh! Movement snacks! I love them.”
I flipped through the book right away and picked a movement to do (I put my arms overhead and wiggled my fingers and the like) and as I did that, I had an idea…
“Do you know what would be better than having these listed in a book? If they were on separate cards or something so I could just pick one out at a time without having to flip through them.”
And that, my friends, is how I spent a chunk of my Saturday cutting up a photocopy of the listed movements and separating them into two types.
The first group was ‘overall practices’ – like taking the stairs, parking further away, etc., and the second group was ‘quick things’ – like using a ribbon to practice balancing skills or standing on one foot to brush my teeth or stir a pot.
Now I am trying to decide the best container to hold all the movement ideas (and I strongly suspect that I will be decorating the container AND the slips of paper but I will leave that as a fun treat for Future Christine) so I can just pick one when I am so inclined.
This is from before I rediscovered the book but before I took this I was practicing getting up off the floor without using my hands for support so that’s totally a movement snack! I look a bit cranky because I wanted to be better at that project than I was. Image description: A head-and-shoulders selfie of me – a middle aged woman with a round face and shoulder length light brown hair that is kind of wavy/curly here – sitting on the floor. I am wearing a black shirt and a slightly disgruntled smirk. Behind me you can see the light green wall of my bedroom with a bunch of photos and decorations on it – including a string of star-outline lights hanging up behind me.Also, I can never seem to remember to look at the camera instead of the screen so I am looking downward a bit instead of straight ahead.
PS – Sam wrote about exercise snacks in May of this year and Catherine wrote about them in September 2024 but the ‘snacks’ they describe seem to be slightly different than the ones in Durham’s book. While she has some suggestions – taking the stairs, parking further away, etc., that are more exercise-y Durham has much more of a focus on mobility/movement rather than on getting a few minutes of cardio in. I guess that’s why the book is ‘movement snacks’ rather than ‘exercise snacks!’ Also, I agree with Catherine that using the word ‘snacks’ is much more likely to make me think of food than exercise. Don’t worry though, I make sure to have plenty of both kinds of snacks. 🙂
*My Dad actually passed away in May of 2023, just a few months after my initial post, so my timeline for those few months is blurry, to say the least.
I blog here for fun, community and to pursue my own interests in feminism and fitness, but my day job is Dean of Arts at the University of Guelph. I rarely get to read or think about the same things, both for curiosity and for my serious role at the university. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about the art-health connection in conjunction with a new program we’re offering at Guelph and I thought that might be of interest to our blog community.
Our Bachelor of Creative Arts, Health and Wellness (BCAHW) is a 4-year honours degree. It’s the first undergraduate program of its kind in Canada, merging arts (Music, Studio Art, Creative Writing, or Theatre Studies) with healthcare, psychology, and therapeutic practices. We’re also home to a BFA in Music Theatre and to courses in Dance.
In my capacity as Dean, I picked up this book, which I’ll review for you soon. Promise! The author argues that arts engagement should be considered a fifth pillar of health alongside diet, sleep, exercise, and nature.
As a result of this recent turn in my work interests, I’ve got a social media newsfeed full of the arts-health connection. When I came across a headline this spring claiming that visiting an art gallery could be as good for you as going for a run, I had to dig in. I’m interested both as Dean and as a feminist fitness blogger. Turns out there’s research behind it, even if the truth is a little more interesting and complicated than that headline.
The study that started it: In May 2026, researchers at University College London published a study in the journal Innovation in Ageing that made a striking claim: engaging with arts and culture can slow biological aging by roughly the same amount as physical activity does. The team looked at data from more than 3,500 UK adults, measuring biological age using seven different “aging clocks” — tools that estimate how quickly someone’s body is aging based on biomarkers, rather than relying on the calendar. People who engaged more often with arts and culture, and in a wider variety of ways, showed slower biological aging. The effect size was comparable to that of physical activity, and it was strongest among adults over 40. Co-author Feifei Bu suggested the arts might work through several “active ingredients” at once: aesthetic experience, sensory and sometimes physical stimulation, and social interaction. It’s a plausible story. But it’s worth thinking about the obvious caveat, which outside reviewers were quick to point out: this is a single snapshot in time. It shows a correlation, not proof that going to more concerts and galleries causes you to age more slowly. People who are already healthier and more energetic may simply be the ones out doing more things — including going to museums and art galleries. There is also the obvious wealth-health connection. Richer people have more time to go to galleries and they also have better health.
The gallery study everyone’s been sharing: The other piece of research behind that “art vs. exercise” narrative in my social media newsfeed comes from King’s College London, published in October 2025, though it hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed. Fifty volunteers were split into two groups: half viewed original paintings by Van Gogh, Manet, and Gauguin at London’s Courtauld Gallery, and half viewed reproductions of the same works in a plain, non-gallery room. Everyone wore sensors tracking heart rate and skin temperature, and gave saliva samples before and after. The results favoured the real thing. The gallery group’s cortisol — a key stress hormone — dropped by an average of 22%, compared to just 8% for the reproduction group, and only the original-art group showed a meaningful change in inflammatory markers. Their heart-rate variability also became more dynamic, a pattern generally associated with healthy nervous-system flexibility. It’s the first study to show art activating the immune, hormonal, and nervous systems all at once. The researchers framed it as evidence that being in front of the real object — not a photo, not a print, and definitely not an AI-generated image — matters.
A useful reality check: Not every study agrees, and that’s worth including rather than glossing over. A separate 2026 study published in Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being took a more measured view. Comparing art viewing to a neutral activity and to another pleasant activity, the researchers found that art produced greater subjective well-being and lower self-reported stress — especially for people who started out already stressed — but heart rate and cortisol levels didn’t actually differ. In other words, people felt better, but the physiological signature wasn’t as clean as the more dramatic headlines suggest.
So, is art the new running? Probably not literally — nobody’s claiming a gallery visit builds cardiovascular fitness the way running does. But the research does support something we talk about a lot on this blog: that “movement” and “wellness” are bigger categories than the treadmill and the weight room. Sitting in front of a painting, walking through a museum, taking in live music — these things appear to do real, measurable things to our stress hormones and possibly our long-term biological aging, even if the exact mechanism is still being sorted out. That’s part of why we blog here about the books we read, the dogs we walk, and our meditation and gratitude habits as well as our more active adventures.
For those of us thinking about what a sustainable, whole-life approach to health looks like — especially as we get older, where the UCL study found the strongest effects — this feels like permission to take a gallery afternoon exactly as seriously as a gym session. Not instead of movement, necessarily. Alongside it. Maybe walk to the gallery! And certainly walk around the gallery while you’re there.
Despite not having central air (we do have two heat pump units that have ac, one for upstairs and one for downstairs but it’s not the same as central air) I am still riding my bike indoors on the trainer.
Why?
Smoky air is one reason, but it’s not the whole story. The whole story involves my Zwift streak. I’ve written about it and my plans for a Pocket Scotty before.
Now I’ve got my own Pocket Scotty, a 23-week streak, and I’m one week away from having an animated Pocket Scotty that waves at people. Woohoo!
Twenty-three weeks of dedication, and you’re just one ride away from your next big reward. Stay on track this week to hit 24 weeks and unlock Animated Scotty—your most dynamic Streak Flair yet!
Your streak is legendary. Let’s keep it rolling!
See you out there! On the road and on the trails, but also indoors in the virtual worlds of Zwift. If I see you in Zwift, have a look for my Scotty waving at you. 😀👋🐿️
Catherine wrote about streaks recently and closed her post by asking how we felt about streaks. Right now, I feel pretty invested in two streaks–my 1000+ day Duolingo streak and my 12-week Zwift streak.
The weird thing is that while I care about them and find them motivating, if I miss out, and blow a streak, I never get that said about it. It’s strange. Sometimes I feel I have all the positive things about streaks–they’re motivating–without the sadness and the negative of losing a streak. I just pick back up and start again. How about you?
Today is the last day of my 4-day meditation retreat at the Art of Living retreat center, outside of Boone, North Carolina. It’s called How to Meditate, Relate, and Creatively Self-Regulate: a meditation retreat for neurodivergent humans. It’s run by my favorite meditation teacher Jeff Warren (who’s from Toronto), and my now-co-favorite meditation teacher Ofosu Jones-Quartey, who lives in the Washington DC area.
We have been doing sitting, lying down, standing and walking-outside-in-nature meditations, enjoying sound baths, writing in our journals, and talking and listening to each other. I’ve been to a bunch of meditation retreats or workshops, but I think this is now my favorite one.
Our last session is this morning, so I’ll post a thorough review this week. But for now, here’s a preview of one of my favorite things from the retreat:
THERE ARE BIG FANS EVERYWHERE. And I love love love it.
You may be thinking, what?
Lemme explain.
The retreat center is at the top of a mountain in North Carolina, where it used to be always cool and refreshing, even in summer. But no longer– the humidity and summer temperatures have creeped up the hillsides and invaded even this sheltered place.
But these folks are ready for it. Enter the fans.
Here in the dining hall there are silent areas. But the big fans are exempt.I sat at a table strategically placed between two big fans, but far enough that my food did not get blown off the plate.
There is a ceiling fan in my room, along with a box fan that can be placed anywhere for spot cooling. I really appreciated it.
I’ve saved the best for last. We did/are doing our sessions in this lovely space called Shakti Hall. Here are some pictures of it from trip advisor (we are not allowed to take pictures inside, which is fair enough).
Shakti Hall, with its gorgeous wod ceiling and light everywhere. Shakti Hall set up for a workshop (not mine).
Since it was warm and humid, of course they had fans. I begged for (and received) permission to take photos of the fans they used in this space.
Me, looking rumpled but chill post-sit,with this enormous fan.Me giving some love to the enormous fan. You can also better see how big it is. And how loved it is.
Omigod I love these fans. I don’t think I can fit one in my car, otherwise I would find out where they got them and buy one immediately. And they work, well, they work very effectively.
You might wonder, but aren’t they loud? Well, the organizers did turn them off for our sits. For which I was a bit sad. But acceptance of what is is part of a meditation practice. So I sat, accepted, but also looked forward to the time the fans were re-activated. Which was a delight.
In case you’re wondering, the retreat has been insightful and surprising and wonderful in ways that outstrip even the awesome big fans. I’ll write more about that this week. In the meantime, maybe go buy yourself a big fan. You’ll be glad you did.
I’m at the final stage of recovering from my lower back injury from the winter.
It started with analysis and restricting movements until my back healed then re-introducing different spinal movements.
The last step is yet another “silly little movement” called the Jefferson curl.
Emily described it as going from standing to fully bent over, curling my spine like a pill bug.
This bug is curled up just bragging about its range of motion
Emily and I spoke about why moving each vertebrae separately was important.
First, it’s helping my proprioception. As I stand tall and slowly curl my head, neck and each part of my spine – I’m understanding what muscles and connective tissues are doing at each stage of the movement.
Second, it’s practicing movements that occur in everyday life. Bending over to pick up a sock or stooping to get a weed in the garden should be effortless and not require special movements.
Third, learning this move is removing my fear of re-injury. I’ve been overly protective of my back which, ironically, makes me more prone to injury.
The internet has strong opinions about the Jefferson curl specifically and spinal movement in general!
Do a quick search about spinal flexion and or the Jefferson curl. It’s ok. I’ll wait.
You will quickly find people yelling about always keeping a neutral spine. Others imploring everyone to use the full range of motions of your back. What a mine field!
Under my physiotherapist’s guidance and coaching, I practiced the movement with a tiny 5 pound kettle bell. I didn’t even know they came that small!
Emily reassured me that it would feel like breaking every rule about form. It did! Since it is so ingrained in me not to round my spine I struggled to get my body to comply.
After two weeks of doing 2-5 reps a couple times a day using a 5 pound weight, the Jefferson curl is feeling more fluid and available to me.
I’m not saying everyone needs the Jefferson curl in their routine but it has caused me to question if I’m unnecessarily restricting other movements.
I tend to shy away from kneeling and other pressure on my knee because of an old injury. I’m going to gently explore that and challenge my self-imposed restriction.
Use with caution
It’s not that the advice to keep a neutral spine is wrong. When lifting heavy loads, it’s important to get in the right posture and engage your legs and core. Good form for exercises matter!
So I will never be using my heavy weights on this movement. I also need the range of motion available to me in my life because socks and weeds need picking up!
Can you think of an example of when you first started doing a thing, then what you do shifts over time without you even really noticing?
Looking back at my 2021 post about getting an Oura ring, I wrote about how my new finger fitness tracker had suddenly got me reviewing my stats after every soccer game, emptying my bar fridge, and cleaning my house. The story surprised me a little for how I’d forgotten how much this little gadget had motivated me.
Five years later, and I’m taking an indefinite soccer break. Most mornings the ring delivers a verdict I can already predict based on my choices the night before. And despite software updates, the ring tells me when I’ve cleaned, but it doesn’t do the cleaning for me!
My Oura ring glows green and red occasionally. Otherwise, I don’t notice it all that much.
These days, I check the app half as often as I used to. On a recent 2-week hiking and biking trip to the Azores I left the ring (and charger) at home entirely to avoid extra pack, and it didn’t cross my mind again until I got back.
Over 5 years, the app interface has changed along with how I use it. Added doo-dads. There are now scenic pictures behind my stats, and the app calls me cutsie names like “champ.” There are new dashboards too, one tracking “saved activity time” and another breaking down the “energy zones” I’ve engaged and avoided. I look at neither.
Weekly Zoned Minutes report that I’m Not in the Zone, at least not in Zone 4 or Zone 5.
I do regularly use the app for a 5 to 12-minute midday meditation break. They’ve added Headspace-style voice narrations with choose-your-own soothing background noises, and there’s one narrator’s voice I like. But it’s stuff I could probably also find online for free.
I also still go back to the sleep performance tracker. Sometimes, Oura and my partner have divergent views about how restless or disrupted (or disruptive) my sleep was. At least the fitness tracker never complains about me.
Overall, 5 years later my Oura’s job has shifted, mostly confirming what I already know I should or should not be doing. It also seems to have an overload of data sitting on top of the two or three things I most care about.
I’ve been reading more lately about personalization and AI in the context of education, and it lines up with something my fellow blogger Nat wrote about her three months of smart watch data: she’s not motivated by stats that aren’t meaningful to her. Like Nat, what I want from the next version of my fitness tracker device is personalization: the ability to say show me what I most care about and hide the rest.
Until then, I guess I’ll to keep wearing it. Not because I need it, but because it’s free for me to use without a paid membership. And, I’d rather have it and not need it 75% of its stats than to need them and not have them.
Screenshot of my Oura app after a night’s sleep, with a mountain in the background. The screen notification says, “Hey there champ, your resting heart rate indicates that you’ve recovered well. Looks like you’ve done a good job balancing your workouts and rest.” Have I?
It’s been a rough summer so far. My big vacation and conference travel plans fell apart due to a host of family issues, big and little. Work hasn’t been that easy either.
I thought then maybe staying close to home, I’d have time to bike more, but a) the weather has been a disaster, and b) increasingly, there’s no one to bike with.
Sarah and I were going to ride today but the air quality is the worst in the world, and outdoor exercise is not recommended!
Oh, and it’s too hot indoors to ride on the trainer at home for very long, though I am doing it because I care about my Zwift streak. Which is ridiculous, but here we are. I’ll blog about that later.
On the friend front, some of my riding friends have moved away, others have stopped riding, and Sarah is usually too busy at work. I’m not fast enough to ride with any of the local cycling clubs. Unlike Nat, I don’t like riding alone, and it all feels pretty impossible. Without any big cycling holidays or goals, it’s hard to make myself get out there. Bah! Bah!
So I thought maybe, just maybe, I could spend more time at the gym. It’s air-conditioned. But personal training is over for us for the summer, and again, when it’s just me going alone, and I’ve got a busy work schedule and demanding home life, I have a hard time getting to the gym, even though I know it helps me cope with all the work and home things.
There’s always an end-of-day aquafit, right? I love that Movati has aquafit classes scheduled at 430, 530 and 630. There’s aqua Zumba (no one can see you getting the moves all mixed up), aqua yoga, aqua intensity…so many options. But no. Actually, zero options. The pool at Movati is being repaired and is closed for the month. Update: Now closed with no end date as they’re having difficulties repairing the pool lining.
And if that weren’t enough to make me want to scream and stomp, my anti-gravity fitness instructor is away for the month.
Well, at least I’m walking the dog, right? NO. It’s been too hot for Cheddar to go much more than around the block.
On the upside, Susan and I did get to the Elora quarry. Sarah and I did get to the Puslinch Tract Conservation area with Cheddar. And I did ride the Tour de Guelph with fellow dean Graham Holloway and College of Arts staff member Abby Scott. All great, but not enough.
Walking with Cheddar on a very hot day
Plans?
Well, it’s the middle of July, and it’s tempting to start thinking now about next summer’s plans. I’m definitely going back to some serious cycling vacations. You know the kind where you ride every day from place to place, not the kind where you travel and just bring the bikes along.
But I also know it’s too easy to bail on this summer’s fitness ambitions. I still want to put some serious cycling miles in the bank. I am reminding myself though that the move of cycling to an autumn activity might be a good fit with what’s happening climate-wise. See It Feels Strange and Awful, But It’s Where We Are.
We’re back at personal training on August 18. Between now and then, we’re going canoe camping and hanging at the farm with bikes and a swimming pool. So it’s not like there’s no movement in my life. I am still enjoying the morning movements.
Way back in 2013, I did my first Bring on the Bay (BOTB) swim, a 3 km swim in the Ottawa River to raise funds for Easter Seals.
In 2016 BOTB started to offer a swim angel program. It’s the largest program of its kind in Canada, and it’s an important contribution to making the event more accessible. I think is that’s very appropriate for an event raising funds for people with disabilities.
Coincidentally, 2016 was the year I had bunion surgery. I was very nervous about swimming that distance as I hadn’t done much training and was afraid I would get a massive foot cramp. My friend Nadine was friends with the guy who had dreamed it up after supporting one of his friends to do the swim the previous year. She offered to be my angel. She swam beside me and it gave me the confidence to keep going (but was prepared to get me help should I need it).
I couldn’t find a picture of us from BOTB that year, but here we are swimming at Meech Lake on a foggy day.
Fast forward a few more years and I was bored of swimming for myself, but thought it would be fun to pay it forward by being an angel. My swim team mate Sarah was interested in doing the race but was nervous because she had no open water experience. I volunteered to be her angel. She did great!
Sarah and I after our swim
The next year, Sarah convinced her mom to try. Irene did the 1.5 km route all in breaststroke. She now comes to Ottawa from Hamilton every year to do the swim.
Irene and I before starting our swim
Last year, I was paired with Penny, who it turns out I knew slightly as she often swam at the pool where I lifeguard. We did the 1.5 km race last year and this year she did the 3 km. Now 83, she was the oldest female swimmer (and may have been the oldest overall) this year.
Penny and I after our swim last year. Ignore that random hand on my shoulder; it is not AI. I cropped the photo.
This year, I was paired with Lisa. She had recently had surgery and was anxious. I was technically still recovering from my surgery but knew I could do the distance. We were well matched and took care of each other.
Lisa and I in the line waiting our turn to get into the water. There were 995 swimmers this year.
Nadine has moved away, but her influence is still felt in the Ottawa swimming community. She introduced me and several other friends to being swim angels. This year there were four of us out of 38 angels who met through her.
And the word has spread within my master’s swim club; four of us were angels, including Sarah, plus our former coach. Not bad for a tiny 35 member club.
Two months ago, I tripped over a big old tree root while running and hurt my shoulder (I wrote about it here). The Urgent Care doc said that probably it was just a sprain and I should come back for an Xray and MRI only if the pain or mobility symptoms worsened in the next couple of days. I’m averse to medical tests, so that recommendation aligned with my own avoidant inclinations. Nothing worsened. So, I went about my life. As was possible. Given that I had severely restricted mobility and, yes, some pain, which I worked hard to minimize, going so far as to take fewer of the prescribed painkillers, to monitor my recovery, I told myself. Minimizing pain is an inherited trait. Discomfort was not to be acknowledged in my family.
More than a month after my shoulder injury, I finally started physical therapy. Although I already felt miles better, the therapist said she wouldn’t treat me without an Xray and MRI. The results were shocking (not just to me, also the doctor and the physical therapist). I had multiple fractures and partial tears. You know that feeling when you have just had a close shave and then afterwards you are shaky, thinking about what might have been? That’s how I felt when I got the MRI results, oh — that’s why my shoulder hurt so fucking much. The results gave me retrospective permission to feel all the pain I’d been in. Even though it was mostly gone by then. I realized that I’d been very tuned into what provoked more pain. But I was less tuned to the level of daily pain.
I would like to move beyond my inherited relationship with pain. And yet, here’s what I’m wondering: did not naming the pain, nor seeking an accurate diagnosis, help me? My recovery has gone better than expected. I’m not back to doing handstands or pull-ups. Yet. Eight weeks out, almost everything else is back, with only minor tweaky discomfort. I can throw on a jacket or wrestle off a sports bra without a significant extra physical negotiation. Running. Cycling. Yoga. Oh, yes, I am using lighter weights at the gym. I’m not that insouciant.
In an easy version of this scenario, I tell myself, see, not knowing healed me, the mind is powerful, trust the body over the scan. The reality is that I have no control case. I don’t know what would have happened to this shoulder if I’d had the MRI on day three instead of day thirty-two. Maybe I’d have been sent to surgery, immobilized properly, protected from re-injury, and healed faster and cleaner. Maybe the delay allowed me to heal in blissful ignorance. I can’t know.
Here’s a possibility I’m considering: Not knowing how bad my injury was meant I didn’t guard the shoulder the way I might have if a radiologist had handed me a list of exactly what was fractured and torn. I kept using my shoulder, to the extent my body allowed, without the extra layer of fear that comes from a diagnosis. Pain research talks about fear-avoidance, catastrophizing, the way bracing against a movement can cost you more function than the injury itself does. Maybe less fear meant less guarding, and less guarding meant more range of motion stayed available while the tissue healed.
At the same time, I’m suspicious of my own desire for my not-knowing to have helped, because that’s the version where I’m tuned into and trusting my body. I like that story. And I’m going to hold it loosely.
What I’ve learned from this incident is not, don’t get a scan. In fact, I’ll be more likely to get an early scan next time. And I want to create more permissive space for my pain to be real, no matter if there’s a diagnosis or not. At the same time, I want to stay tuned to my body and keep dancing with my potential fear and the threshold of what’s still possible.
I started the Hybrid Calisthenics routine last Monday and I swear I can feel a big difference in my movements already.
Yeah, I know, it’s unlikely that I actually have many results from a single week of focused training but my brain is convinced otherwise so I am just rolling with it.
In fact, my brain is so convinced that it isn’t fighting me on finding time to exercise every day. Instead, it has let me just get started* when I reach ‘exercise time’ each day. This is virtually unprecedented.
And I think this shift comes down to two things:
A meditation on Insight Timer called Train Like An Athlete** in which Amanda Sellers said (among lots of other helpful things), “You don’t need motivation, you need a decision.”
I swear when I heard that, I actually said ‘Oh!’ out loud.
I don’t know why that really hit home at that moment – I know perfectly well that I don’t need motivation but perhaps subconsciously I didn’t believe it until just then.
Right after I listened to the meditation, I got out of my chair and did some stretches, squats, and standing twists just to keep myself in the right frame of mind.
And later that day, when I was mowing the lawn, I reframed that chore as exercise and decided to make sure to push myself a bit harder throughout the process. My ADHD brain loved the feeling of that decision and it loved the fact that I was accomplishing two things at once.
The good feeling of DECIDING to move my body more effectively lasted through the rest of the yard work the next day and brought me right up to Monday morning when I realized that I could build on the momentum of the last two days by choosing a new exercise program and starting it RIGHT AT THAT MOMENT.
And that’s when the Hybrid Calisthenics app kind of floated into my mind.
The Hybrid Calisthenics program app is VERY straightforward and VERY clear.
I have sort of tried the program as outlined on the website before but I didn’t get very far with it because, as I now realize, I don’t do very well with just a list of exercises.
When I just have a list, I always either push myself too far and overdo it early in the process or I don’t push myself enough and I get bored with it.
So, while I love Hampton’s friendly and encouraging style on the Hybrid Calisthenics YouTube Channel I had kind of filed his program away for later. You know, the perfectly logical process of putting a program that will help you slowly build your fitness on hold until you feel fitter. (Note: please read that sentence in a dry sarcastic tone. Include an eyeroll if you can.)
But once I took a look at the app, his routine felt a lot more possible so I once again took Amanda’s advice and made two decisions 1) to give the routine a try and 2) to follow the routine as it was laid out – no second guessing, no figuring things out, just following the instructions in the app.
Before I knew it, I was doing two sets of 30 wall pushups and two sets of leg extensions, recording my progress on the app, and feeling a real sense of accomplishment.
It must have been the perfect combination and level of exercises for me because while my muscles were a bit tired the next day, they weren’t discouragingly sore and I could do the next part of the routine without strain or stress.
And now it’s a week later and I could increase my wall pushups by a few reps this morning.
All because I heard that line “You don’t need motivation, you need a decision.” and made a decision at just the right time.
Now I just have to keep deciding to show up for myself.
Your streak is legendary. Let’s keep it rolling!
