I worked out every day I taught this week.<\/p>\n
I know, to those of you who manage full-time office jobs and still work out every day and have great self-discipline, it sounds corny.\u00a0 Though for the record, I tended to find it easier to get in my swim when I did work in an office a block from a pool.\u00a0 Just hit the pool every day on my lunch break!\u00a0 I don’t have that option when I teach, so I must choose some other option.\u00a0 I chose getting up at “Oh my God, it’s early!” and getting it out of the way before I have a chance to make excuses about how I’m “too tired”.<\/p>\n
I’m trying to get my mind into a “No Excuses” mentality for working out.\u00a0 This doesn’t mean I’d try to squats on a broken ankle or swim the crawl with a torn rotator cuff.\u00a0 That would be breaking Rule One in new, appalling and exciting ways.<\/p>\n
But honestly?\u00a0 I’ve been working out hard<\/em> for the month before I had my teaching week.\u00a0 The result: I am simply not in agony at the end of the teaching day now. \u00a0 That’s become a big motivator for me.\u00a0 It got me into the pool this morning, boy howdy, let me tell you!\u00a0 While I’m a morning person, I’m a morning<\/em> person.\u00a0 At 5:30 it’s still night<\/em> at this time of year, dammit, and I can’t bounce out of bed singing Zip-a-dee-do-dah until the sun starts coming up.\u00a0 I’ve often blown off working out the week I’m teaching.\u00a0 You know, “I’m tired” and “Dammit, I’m doing enough<\/em> today!” and all sorts of other excuses.<\/p>\n This week has been a real eye opener for me about how the excuses are shooting myself in the foot.\u00a0 Well, more like creating a situation where I feel like a scalpel is scraping the inside of my hip joint, and some uncouth soul is stabbing at my ankles with a pike, but you get my drift. \u00a0 Oh sure, I’m tired at the end of the day. I’m an active, animated teacher.\u00a0 I don’t care how damn fit I get, I’ll be tired <\/em>at the end of a day.<\/p>\n But “tired” and “shaking from fatigue and limping from pain from being on my feet all day” are two different things. \u00a0\u00a0 The simple and direct benefit means a lot to me, and it’s really motivating me to keep it up in a way that “you need to exercise to get skinny” never could.<\/p>\n If you have pain issues, ask your doc if he thinks it’d work out for you to try a couple of months of strength building.\u00a0 Might help.\u00a0\u00a0 No, it doesn’t erase the pain, dammit, but for those of you who live with this crap you know the difference between “contant ache” and “Kill me now!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I worked out every day I taught this week. I know, to those of you who manage full-time office jobs and still work out every day and have great self-discipline, it sounds corny.\u00a0 Though for the record, I tended to find it easier to get in my swim when I did work in an office … <\/p>\n