The other 20% of the time it was a screencap of the info from my fitness app. That was less inspiring (less interesting!) but it kept the habit in place.
I’m sure that was partially because of my injury but it was also because it felt like I was journaling for its own sake rather than for any actual benefit.
I was essentially keeping the habit in place but for no real reason so it’s no wonder the practice just kind of dropped off my to do list.
For the record, I’m not being hard on myself about this – I’m just noting what happened and I don’t feel bad about it at all.
BUT
I think it’s time to get back into the practice of reflecting on my fitness – what I did, how I felt, how I want to feel and what activities might help me to feel that way- and obviously a journal is the direct route to that kind of thinking.
I’m probably going to do some combination of a digital journal (so I can think aloud with voice dictation) and and paper journal that has lots of room for me to write, draw, and collage.
I’ve revisited my earlier posts and developed a series of questions to use as a guideline and I (once again) plan to review my previous entry when starting a new one (extra reflection? why not?)
AND since journaling often leads me to solutions I haven’t thought about before but I promptly forget them once I close my journal – I am going to keep some index cards nearby to pull workable ideas out of my journal pages to keep for easy reference.
My plan right now is to do some fitness journaling 3x per week (I think writing once per week was part of the problem before – too much to say in one entry so it became a chore) for 3 weeks and see how it feels.
And, of course, I will probably make adjustments as I go.
Do you journal about your fitness practices? Do you find it helpful? Do you have any advice to offer?
Christine and The Updates sounds like a very annoying cover band.
I can only presume they would pop up when you were in the middle of something and tell you that you had to listen to them. You could listen right now or you could schedule a time to listen to them later but you were going to hear their songs whether you wanted to or not.
And, of course, if you were about to do something very important and time sensitive, they would start a long, uninterruptible set. 😉
ANYWAY, enough of my extended and funny-to-me-at-least analogy.
One of the things that I fear when writing for this blog is that I am going to promise to follow up on something and then forget all about it. For example, that I might create a challenge for myself or say that I am going to do something for the next month and then either forget all about doing it or forget that I said I would follow up.
Have I done this already on the blog?
More than likely.
Have I done it recently?
Maybe.
And that’s what this post is about!
Here are some updates on a few things I have mentioned in the past few months:
Fitness Journaling
When I last talked about reflective fitness journaling, I was finding it very useful. It was giving me a ‘container’ for thinking about the how and the why of my various exercises, providing me with a way to celebrate my successes, and allowing me to consider how to adjust things without judging myself for them.
I’m happy to report that I am still finding all of those positives in my fitness journaling practice.
I have moved to a digital journal instead of a paper one because it is easier for me to be consistent that way. I set a reminder for every Monday and when it goes off, I open my exercise journal document and dictate my thoughts on my exercise habits over the past week.
Once I have written this week’s entry, I reread last week’s and if anything has changed or if I want to add anything to the current entry or change any of my plans for the week ahead.
My 6 Week Fitness Plus Workout Plan
I started out strong with this plan and had a helpful epiphany about sore muscles but then I ran into a bit of a snag timewise and painwise and while I was able to reframe that snag into a reminder that I am trying to tell myself a story of consistent exercise not the story of a 6 week plan, I was finding it more and more difficult to get myself to do those exercises.
I actually had to coach myself out of this one.
Lots of my clients object when I try to get them to work on their projects little by little (something I struggle with myself) because it feels like there is ‘no point’ in doing 2 or 5 or 10 minutes work on a project that will take ages to complete.
That’s when I gently remind them (and me!) of two things 1) When you are struggling with a project, you start by creating the habit of working on it. The tasks related to the project itself get done as a side effect of creating that habit. 2) Doing any amount of work on a regular basis is way better than holding out for a perfect work session that you can never get around to.
I really enjoyed the 20 minute sessions I did but they were wreaking havoc with my schedule and with the side of my knee. I found myself avoiding them, putting them off to late in the day, or planning to do them ‘tomorrow’ – not an actual tomorrow, a mysterious, non-existent tomorrow.
So, I have gone back to doing 10 minute sessions for the foreseeable future and I’ve left the 6 Week Plan behind for now.
The latest news on the meditation front is that I seem to have shifted my thinking from meditation as something I *have* to do into considering meditation as something I *get* to do.
I have found myself looking forward to those few minutes of stillness and breathing.
Somehow, I never made a decision about whether April was real but it does seem to have existed and now we’re into May.
Clearly May is real, or at least the first two days are, but I haven’t made a lot of plans for this month yet.
Sooooooo, be prepared for an encore from Christine and the Updates next week!
*The crowd goes wild*
Photo by Adam Whitlock on UnsplashImage description: an excited crowd at an event shaking open packages of coloured powder in the air so the air above them is filled with splashes of colour.
Ok, the crowd rolls its eyes and Christine laughs maniacally because, like a computer update, she’s going to do her thing, no matter what.
She will also talk about herself in the third person which is kind of weird but she’s rolling with it.
