I dragged myself out again this morning. Rubbed my eyes to make sure they were actually open since I could see nothing. I made it to the pool to the shock of my coach who thought I might have wussed out already. Even more surprised were those people who didn’t know I’d been there last week. They looked like they’d seen a ghost. 

Progress was made. I swam even more than last time though my mind went blurry trying to keep count. I suspect I did about 1200m this time. My timed swim was a bit worse than last time but since i had done more distance I didn’t worry about it. I was exhausted by the end of it but my strokes are looking good. Apparently I “look good for an old-timer”.

Mentally I feel alive and awake though I know my body will crash in a few hours. Trying to see if I can make it to 5pm at the office. Two days down, so many more to go.

Many things in life involve making sacrifices. When it comes to starting an exercise program, thos sacrifices play a huge part in keeping it up. We sacrifice time, we sacrifice other activities (like sleep ), we sacrifice spending the time with other people etc.It can also provide fodder for conversations and jokes after the fact. 

A partner makes these sacrifices seem easier, if only because we like to share our misery. It helps to know that someone else is sacrificing when we are. It can also provide fodder for conversations and jokes after the fact. But having a fitness partner helps to keep you accountable. You would have to explain to someone why they must go when you stay home to sleep. 

Most people are also competitive and don’t like to look like failures which if you have a standing partner as witness is a possibility of you give up. 

So far having a partner in my endeavours has proven to be very useful, and is definitely helping to convince me to get up before the sun when I would rather roll over and go back to sleep.

Humans measure things. We know how many years we have lived, how many inches from head to toe, how many pounds we weigh, what grade we got in class, how fast we were driving. Measurement is a key part of human life.

In many human endeavours, besides just a simple static number, measurement is used to to gauge progress toward a goal. To know where we started, how far to get where we’re going and where that end-point actually is, we must measure something.

Of course, measurements can be in non-units. Weight can be measured by how our clothes fit. Fitness can be measured by how we feel at the end of the exercise routine. But there is still some measurement even if it is subjective.

In my latest venture back into swimming, there will be multiple measurements for me to track my progress. How many laps I swam in total (how many total metres), how many consecutive laps of any one stroke I can do without stopping, how many strokes I use in one lap or from the flags to the wall, how many strokes without breathing, how long a rest between sets, how long my entire routine takes, how fast I do a particular distance.

I will of course also have the subjective ones, like how tired I feel after the training, how energized I feel for the rest of the day, how much sleep I need that night, how early I crash at the end of the day, how easy it is for me to get up and go, how much pain my muscles feel afterwards.

Tomorrow morning I will get up and head off to my second day of training. I will be tired and I will be in pain afterwards but hopefully I will have made some progress even if minute. Maybe I will shave one second off my timed swim from last time. Maybe I will swim one more lap than last time. Maybe I will feel less tired afterwards. Maybe none of those will happen.

But I will have made progress just by doing it again.

As a teenager, I never ‘exercised’ but I was the fittest I have ever been in my life. The key to that fitness though I never thought about it was my level of activity. Back then I used to swim, play water polo, dance, play tennis, never once thinking that I was exercising. I was just doing things that I enjoyed, that just happened to be great exercise.

I recently came to the realization that this is where my life needs to go back to. I cannot exercise for the sake of exercising. It is difficult for me to exercise even for the sake of getting fit, or improving my health. Somewhere in my warped mind, those goals are not worthy. My slightly hedonistic tendencies need me to do things for fun, because I enjoy them, to derive pleasure.

So the solution is simply that - to return to my youthful life approach and identify activities that I enjoy. This time there will be some conscious effort to make sure that I do select activities that make me work.

My regular latin dancing arose from this because I admitted that I enjoyed it enough to go regularly and recognized that it was definitely a heart-pumping activity that could help get me moving. I have been successfully going dancing once a week initially and now twice a week ever since August. At first I would be panting after each song and need some rest but now I can keep going for an hour or so without much complaint.

Next I added the swimming I used to love. Again I can’t just go and swim laps to no end so I contacted my coach from days of yore and enquired about Masters swimming. So I am now going to see if I can keep up the training, eventually increasing the amount and eventually compete again.

So far I am enjoying my approach to exercise and fitness and wholly recommend it to anyone looking to jumpstart their fitness and healthy living.

Among the reading matter that I enjoy, fitness information has always played a part. Even though I do not normally apply most of what I learn, I absorb that knowledge dearly and even impart it on friends looking for advice for their own fitness programs.

One of the things I have always known is the value of cardiovascular fitness to overall health. Of course, in my laziness that is the part that gets left out more often than not, because the cardio part is “too hard”. 

My recent venture into swimming after a decade-long hiatus went much better than expected. Although I was exhausted by my efforts to move the sludge that is chlorinated water, I realized that I was not huffing and puffing and gasping for air as I have done in the past when I attempted this same feat. Even my coach commented that I did better than she expected.

One reason for this is that I have been secretly (secret from my lazy self that is) working on my cardio for the last couple months. I went from my totally sedentary lifestyle, where walking too fast up a flight of stairs was grounds for my chest to complain, to one where some light intensity was achieved twice a week. My secret activity? LATIN DANCING. Dancing twice a week has seemingly given me that headstart that I needed to not feel like I was dying in the pool. 

So now with the swimming added to my regular schedule (even if just once a week), my cardiovascular strength can continue to develop as I add further benefits.