Monday, March 7, 2011

Consistency-I Always do That

Think of activities you perform every day. Activities like, eating, sleeping, drinking, peeing. If you stopped doing even one those there would be terrible consequences, up to and including a hospitaliztion with a breathing tube, IV, and catheter. That's not what you want, is it?

In my previous posts over the last couple of days I talked about the importance of recording your workouts. Today I'm talking about the importance of recording those workouts consistently.

If you're recording your workouts, it's very easy to look back and see how consistent you are, or how consistent you are not. If you're not making the gains you expect, perhaps you need to workout more often.

Philosophers argue over whether or not we always do what we most want to do. You say you want to run a sub 7 minute mile, but you never get off the couch and run. I think it's apparent that you really don't want to run a sub 7 minute mile. Your actions prove it.

Being consistent not only means logging enough workouts, but recording consistent gains. You record a run three times every week, but your mile is at 10 minutes every time. Perhaps you need to exert yourself to find those gains, even if it's just one second each run. If you run slow on a regular basis, you'll get really good at running slow.

Keep in mind, it is possible to record too many workouts. Virtually everyone recommends rest. You have to give your body time to recover. You don't bench every single day. By logging your workouts, you can look back and find patterns. You may find that you make your biggest gains with four days of rest between bench days instead of three days. You might run better week to week by running four times per week instead of just three.

So consitently working out and consistently logging it work together. It may even pay off. I've been recording my workouts for awhile, but I recently learned that my health insurance plan pays out rewards for exercising. I go to their website, log in, and record my activity. They assign a certain amount of points to each activity, and after accumulating so many points, I can receive a gift card to any number of businesses, including a cash debit card. So far this year I've earned $50, which I put towards some cycling shoes on Amazon.com.


(You can see the above image, and others like it, here.)

Time out: Bob Knight just cussed on ESPN. Is he allowed to do that?

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