ExerBlog |  |
For over 5 years, it has been: get up at 4:00, read email, chug a huge cup of black java, then head out in rain, blow or snow to do the "routine" as it was mentioned. Mine is a two mile journey in to various levels of personal discovery every weekday for over five years now. I jog in everything except more than 6 inches of snow. In that case, I x-country ski the same well worn path in skis that I received as a gift 30 years ago this season. I'm on my 2nd set of poles and boots. Early waxless fish scale technology. Steve gave me the idea during a visit in 1997. Why not just jog around the yard? Great idea. It's 0.2 miles so 10 laps is 2 miles. Started at 3 laps, then braved 5, then 7 (for a few days), then 10. I "learned" from the two black and white photographed (who was that guy, Charlie Atlas Sr.?, his laced up work out boots looked pre-WWII) posters that came with my York barbell set in about 1973 that you should do things in reps of 12, so I have been meaning to ramp up to 12 laps. Maybe that is my next goal. I will have to challenge the "Phanton Yost Jogger" next time (tomorrow) that I go out in the pitch dark to run through the course. Steve are you ready to go to 12 laps a day?
The last two nights I've slept like a koala about 10 hours a night, and yesterday I did no exercise.
Maybe it was reading about this 51 year old madman from my hometown Ann Arbor who's put well over a million meters on his rowing machine during the Challenge that got me going again today. [With rowing just about equivalent to running, distance wise, that's a marathon a day.]
So for me it's a short workout, with plans for a longer one tomorrow if my sore rib (oh, quit your bellyaching) lets me.
[I started this as a comment, but it got long.]
Go, Kurt! Woohoo!
Yes, I've found over the years that it's good to avoid *any* pain when starting exercise after a hiatus. If it hurts, some part of me remembers that the next time I think of exercising, and fragile motivation is lost.
So, hmm, yeah. Motivation needs to be built up gradually just like a muscle.
Stretching is good too, especially after. Beforehand a little warmup is good -- easy arm rotations, leg jiggling, whatever.
Yay Kurt!
Finished the Challenge today. I was expecting some bells and woots (like the 'Congratulations!' Quicken gives you when you balance your checkbook) after I entered my final piece in my online logbook at Concept2.com, but in the understated style of rowing culture, I had to check another list to confirm that I had indeed finished.
Onward!
One way I've benefitted by this Challenge, beyond the physical, is feeling what it is to do something consistsently. Sometimes the workout slipped to later in the day, but it was mostly early in the morning. I just read a chapter in Jon Kabat-Zinn's book that I thought was worthwhile excerpting here:
One of the principal values of a daily [meditation] discipline is an acquired transparency toward the appeals of transitory mood states. A commitment to getting up early to meditate becomes independent of wanting or not wanting to do so on any particular morning. The practice calls us to a higher standard -- that of remembering the importance of wakefulness and the ease with which we can slip into a pattern of automatic living which lacks awareness and sensitivity. ... I sometimes speak of it as my "routine" but ... mindfulness is the very opposite of routine.Jon is talking of course about meditation, not physical exercise. I feel like this has been a stepping stone to a daily meditation practice, which is something I've wanted to do for years and have actually done only sporadically. Hatha yoga also has an element of mindfulness. Ideally I'd like to incorporate it all, with meditation as the highest priority. I just need to get up earlier.
[To overcome the usual resistances] you need to decide the night before that you are going to wake up, no matter what your thinking comes up with. ... After a while, the discipline becomes a part of you.
Who was that guy who was talking about the CRASH-Bs a couple of days ago? Someone borrowing my skin. Did better today than yesterday though, muddling through a decent workout. One more session to go to finish the Challenge!
I want to keep up Exerblog posting though, and adopt a new pattern of consistency in workouts and meditation. And stretching. "Wanna walk when you're 70? STRETCH." (Inside remark for Joe.) Because meditation is something that's best not talked about for me (though I certainly appreciate reading your reflections, Kurt), I won't post about that here, except maybe to lament any slacking off.
I'll lay out a plan for myself after I finish this. Still need to get through the final piece.
You may be wondering why I'm thinking of the Red Sox on an artic december day. Well, in '67, the year the Sox won the pennant after finishing ninth the previous year, a celebratory LP came out. It featured lots of highlights from radio broadcasts during the year. Plus a ridiculous song called 'The Man They Call Yaz'. Finally, it had an absurdly memorable "poem", narrated by Ken Coleman. Memorable because 30-something years later, I still remember many lines from it. And one of them popped into my head as I was about to start telling you here that I actually went running * yet again* today. All because of shameblog. I swear I wouldn't have done it otherwise. Anyway, the line is: "Look at 'em go/ten in a row/now our kids are second!" That's how I feel, I guess. Subliminally. Like I'm making a run for it. I just don't know what 'it' refers to. Hey, but who does?
As predicted I hit a nadir of motivation today, sitting on the machine and feebly sliding back and forth for an hour, watching the meter recede and grow, recede and grow as though I was stuck in a micro-cycle of infinite recurrence -- a three-frame flip book by Kafka.
If not for the Challenge I surely wouldn't have done this. On the surface I did it for the meters. But did this do me any good? At a minimum I learned about the value of consistency. If not for the Challenge, I would have skipped a day, which would have put me perilously close to missing another day and falling off the merry go-round altogether.
A day like this maps -- in the fractal scheme -- to an existential crisis on the larger scale; it's like a month of feeling the same way about my job or a year of angst about my general pattern of my life. "This feels useless -- is there value in keeping going?" I'll keep that in mind over the next three days as I watch my motivation to row.
I paid for it today: yesterday I slept in luxuriantly late and only had time for half a workout. Being so close to the end of the challenge (only three more days, inshallah) I didn't want to add another day, so I did one and a half workouts today. Ouch. The sound of that whirring wheel became grating at the end. I don't want that to happen. When you have to sit somewhere for 40 minutes, there are lots of ways to drive yourself crazy if you're not careful.
I'm in the final quarter of the Challenge, and according to my Theory of Fractal Motivation, I should hit a tough spot in a couple of days. That's because on the scale of an individual workout, when I'm about 80% through it I'm usually pretty tired and uncomfortable and there's a strong urge to stop. But then I yell at myself: "Quit? Are you kidding, you're almost done -- you can't quit now." Nevertheless, it's in the final quarter that most of the moaning and groaning (internal usually) happens. So I'll be on guard for that in the next couple of days. I may need your help.
Encouraged by the fact that the guys on the podium with the hammers look like semi-geezers like me (albeit a good deal more muscular), I decided to push myself beyond what I've tried so far on the machine.
Two things I noted:
I nearly took a header on a patch of ice going down the front steps this morning. So I'm a committedly indoor exerciser today. Just finished yoga tape. No need for a block. I may do some feckless gravity-wrestling w/ my freeweights after I finish typing. For the record, I did make it outdoors yesterday. Unlike Trent Lott.
I spent far more time getting this new blog look together than I'm going to spend on this post. (Thanks for the pointer to MT's default styles, Kurt). It's supposed to look like grey sweats, with a hint of some midwestern college logo in the header colors (no, I don't know which college uses those colors -- tell me, sports fans).
Similarly, this morning's row was more form than content. Half-awake pulling on the handles, lopping back and forth like a stuffed monkey. Couple of sprints for a wakeup.
Definitely wouldn't have exercised this morning if not for the Challenge. What will I do after it's over? (I'm about 61.8% of the way through it, but who's counting?) I think I'll commit to doing half of what I'm doing for another month, and take it from there. Do I have it in me to do the CRASHBs? Yikes.
Halley continues her exercise-related blogs at her place. Worth pointing to.
Well, I did jack yesterday. Exercise-wise. But today is different. The sidewalks are more suited to zambonis than runners. But I have my magic yoga tape. It's right here. I'm going to put it into the machine. Very soon now.
After visiting America after WWI, Celine forecasted, pretty correctly, that one wouldn't be able to get away from the American business enterprise. But he didn't know about seratonin's magic ability to temporarily banish non-happy thoughts.
Remember Joe Piscopo from Saturday Night Live? Remember how he was really funny until he started lifting weights?
I have the Piscopo syndrome today. I did well on the machine. I have nothing to say. But I'm hyuge.
Hey, where are youse other guyz?
I noticed yesterday, as things were melting that the sidewalks were looking pretty clear. So despite antarctic moonscape, I faced this morning w/ a clear-headed intent to slip into a gortex bodystocking and run. And I did. Started out with some serious 'i can't go on; i'll go on' moments. But i was sweating buckets by the time i stumbled back into the driveway. Napoleon had this kind of proto-totalitarian notion of 'monarchically directing the energies of memory'. Steve, your shame blog is just that! Same reason I do my stupid blog. Crush me into finishing projects. I feel better. You go boy.
Today I had to ask myself whether it's better to stick to a schedule just for consistency or to consider the quality of the work I'm doing. I woke up with a sore lower back. Stretching didn't help much. But I'd committed to going back to a longer-duration workout today, so I got started. Verrry slowly. 45 minutes later I still had a good way to go, and I hadn't even broken a sweat, but my back was feeling about the same. I convinced myself that this particular consistency was the kind Emerson was talking about, and quit, to hopefully come back tomorrow for a more worthwhile workout.
I think I may need a block.
This morning there was nothing I could do to persuade myself to get on that machine short of this bargain: just sit on it and make the wheel move for 30 minutes; that's it. And that's all I did. Actually I did more than I wanted to. It occurred to me that I could try to meditate while going back and forth in such an unstressed way. On other days when I did this as an intentional experiment, it was useful. But today thoughts kept drifting in (more like bouncing in and around like a squash ball), as they'll do most when I've been away from meditation for awhile ("lots of brush to clear" as one teacher put it).
John Kabat-Zinn wrote a book about meditation called Whereever You Go, There You Are. Sort of a book-on-tape-in-a-book. In the jacket flap notes, it says that he has worked with many athletes including the 1984 US men's Olympic rowing team. When I rowed 10 years ago, the excellent coach Tim would say that he wanted a bunch of idiots rowing, and also talked about a head being a 7-pound bag of sand that needed to be balanced. I think he was also trying to induce the image of mindful rowing, because it does require great attention, but attention only to what's going on in the boat and your own body.
But that's nothing like I did this morning. It was just no pain.
Temperature this morning? 20 degrees F (sun streaming through the bedroom window this morning playing a joke on us.) Sidewalks? Deadly. Time for yoga tape. Anne agrees to join me. We have an old tv set and vcr on our third floor. More snide low-in-the-sky sunshine streaming in. First scrunch down into 'simple sitting pose' is deadly for some reason.
Tape: You may need a block.
jm: Why?
Tape: Step back to dog pose.
Tape: Lift your sitting bones.
jm: Fuck you.
[Wait. I'm yelling at a tape.]
Anne: Do you think he waxes his legs?
After I'm finished I feel transparent, like a cat in sunlight. I go to the basement, high and centered. I lift some free weights. I've been doing the same routine there for years. It never gets easier. I listen to some music I'm working on between sets of 16 reps, 125 lbs. "All watched over by machines of loving grace," as Richard Brautigan once prophesied.
Yesterday I waited until the afternoon to row, with the excuse that I shoveled in the morning. In the afternoon I got caught up as usual in work and ended up home later than I wanted to, forcing me to row at the hectic time when I'm usually helping get dinner going, etc. This caused some upsets, and I had the visual image of this commitment to row as a heavy rock in a rushing stream. Normally the lumbering stone is off to the side in a nice morning eddy current. Move it to the middle of the stream and there's turbulence, though the water manages to flow around it.
During the workout I pushed myself harder, telling myself I needed to finish faster. Then I gave myself a goal, saying that if I met it I wouldn't have to row tomorrow (I lied, but the beast fell for it).
These mind games reminded me of watching a very inspiring tape of the Hawaii Ironman with my family (my wife's choice, and an excellent one). One competitor mentioned "all the little races within a race", which made me smile thinking of the earlier fractal-nature post. Each effort really is made up of many smaller efforts -- even the effort to begin.
Now to push that stone back.... ooomph.
I used to play basketball. That was my exercise. Everything else seemed dumb. Not dumb. Pointless. Running? wtf? I stopped playing though because I stopped enjoying the 'point': I.e., beating the other team. I took up running. Well, jogging. I lived in San francisco for many years. The weather there, 55-75, 52 weeks/year, traps you into running every day. Now I'm back in new england. I have an insidious addiction to running. But I can't do it 52 weeks/year. I'm too lazy to go to a yoga class; but I have a yoga tape, where the guy tells me I may need a block. But doesn't say why. Otherwise it's a great tape. When I can't run, I do the exercises on my tape. It's my methadone. I also stand on my head; forearms wedged. I learned this, not from the tape, but from Saul Bellow's description in 'Humboldt's Gift'. This morning I did a different form of exercise. I shoveled several million tons of powdery snow off of my front and back steps, sidewalk and driveway/unused-basketball court. This was never an option in San Francisco. San Franciso has winter-you-can-drive-away-from. Also known as Lake Tahoe. Are you reading this Weinberger?
Well, seems like I'll be the low water mark for this group. I am overweight. I have no exercise life to speak of. At least since the bastards at my nominal gym got rid of the racquetball courts and installed more torture, er, exercise machines in their place.
I have a Health Rider(tm) I got at a garage sale for a dollar. Yes, a dollar. I probably could have negotiated free for the service of hauling it away, but it was a church garage sale after all. It is not so much an exercise machine as it is a sculpture symbolizing my slug-like nature and reifying my laziness. The dust on the Health Rider(tm) is an essential part of the scuplture.
I have had several such sculptures mocking me from the corner of my bedroom over the years. Two exercycles to be exact. Though I like rowing well enough, I'd never own a rowing machine because I have a policy that I will never own a piece of exercise equipment that cannot function as a makeshift clothes rack.
And so I blog. I resolve to hang up my laundry on real hangers, dust off the sculpture, and give that Health Rider(tm) something to really mock me about. This afternoon, I promise.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Kurt mentions that he gives priority to his morning meditation/journaling. Morning meditation should be a higher priority for me too. I was just becoming semi-consistent with it, and I've long seen the difference it makes, especially over time, and I believe (sort of on faith at this point) that it can lead to much deeper changes. I knew I wouldn't have time for it if I took up this exercise challenge. So why did I go for this? A couple of reasons:
By the way, I haven't exercised yet this morning. Shoveling took precedence. It's strange to be writing here without being sweaty. I feel like a slacker. I'll row later today, I promise!
Steve just asked me to join this exercise blog since I never shut up about working out over at my blog. So, thanks, Steve -- You catch me on a day when I haven't worked out at all and I've been eating tons of chocolate thanks to co-workers back from a trip to Europe. Big, fat, rich dark chocolate. So delish.
My rowing machine has a meter with several ways to keep track of your pain:
1. Calories burnt. I never use this. I'm a despised endomorph who can eat anything and not get fat, so I don't care. But rest assured, if there's ever a famine, I'll starve first.
2. Watts. It's instructive to see what my body can put out in terms of lit light bulbs. Surprisingly few, even at peak. When I remember what it takes in sweat, I turn off lights around the house obsessively.
3. Estimated time. You set the distance goal and it gives you a constant readout of how long you'll probably take, based on how you've done so far and how hard you're pulling now. It's motivating to pull harder to save five minutes. But what will I do with those minutes? Blog about the workout.
4. Average speed. This is the most cruel setting of all, but every kid should try it to build up a good Puritan work ethic (do I really mean that?). Any letup in intensity and your average starts to drop immediately. Early on in a workout, this is daunting, knowing that every stroke below your goal has to be made up with a stroke equally above-goal. On the other hand, you can build up some slack for yourself early in the workout, and use those brownie points later. But even taking a three second break for water or stripping a shirt feels perilous. I'm not a type-A personality -- I make excuses for myself in many ways, saying I deserve this or that bit of relaxation. The Average Speed setting slaps this attitude upside the head and with an eastern-european accent says "you are weeeeak. you are the weakest link."
At night I check the alarm, set for the same ungodly hour. When it goes off (and why do alarms and bombs go off, being things that are emphatically on when they're in action?) in the morning, the part of me that responds has no knowledge or memory of the creature within that set it. It nudges the adjecent part, which mumbles "mmmf?" and pokes its neighbor, until the deeply embedded slumbering exercise-motivated little being is shaken awake, and swings my unknowing legs over the side of the bed.
This process of course takes awhile. Anywhere from five to twenty minutes depending on the viscosity caused by last evening's wine.
On many different scales, my motivation to exercise is similar. When I'm starting a workout it's a little slow. Once I'm warmed up I get the young-dog urge to surge ahead, unconsciously assuming this fresh feeling will last forever. Sometime my intellect interrupts: ahem, you'd better slow down a bit, sonny. Halfway through it the reality of the challenge looms. It's about the time one part of me wants to quit, and another part is faced with the tough shock that I'm only halfway there. About 80% of the way through it, there's a buckling down and final push -- the end is in sight. I throw a competitive thought at myself, like "the difference between you and the competition is what you do with this part" (nothing to believe in, just a coach-voice to prod me).
Now that I'm doing this month-long rowing machine challenge, I see similar patterns over the course of days that I experience over an hour in a workout. I've been at it a few days now, and I'm past the initial rush. Today when I finished I mistakenly thought of how many days of the same I needed to keep this up. It's like the "don't look down" warning: "whatever you do, don't look at the calendar".
Over the course of a year, my motivation to exercise also follows patterns of biting into a challenge, dogged persistence, and letting go unil the energy-sapped feeling of atrophy starts a new cycle.