{"id":921,"date":"2011-04-18T07:59:28","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T11:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noelfigart.com\/blog\/?p=921"},"modified":"2011-04-18T07:59:28","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T11:59:28","slug":"but-how-will-you-improve-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/2011\/04\/18\/but-how-will-you-improve-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"But How Will You Improve, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, I talked about<a href=\"http:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/2011\/04\/15\/but-how-will-you-improve\/\"> exercise, improvement and whether or not to have goals<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A) My swimming time is definitely improving without extraordinary effort. \u00a0I swam 1050 today in half an hour while pushing enough to be a pleasant muscular effort. \u00a0I wasn&#8217;t feeling all gung-ho, but was just enjoying my swim. \u00a0A month ago, I swam 900 yards in half an hour.<\/p>\n<p>B) \u00a0I <em>do <\/em>have an exercise goal. \u00a0My goal is to <strong>show up<\/strong>!<\/p>\n<p>I still question the &#8220;Get better and better and better!&#8221; thing for working out. \u00a0Friends, I&#8217;m 42. \u00a0Not a teenager any more. \u00a0While yes, I do agree that we need to move our bodies to keep them healthy, we don&#8217;t have to be athletes.<\/p>\n<p>When we talk about fitness, I really think &#8220;Fit for what?&#8221; becomes a genuine question to ask. \u00a0The Crossfit people have their own ideas about this. \u00a0I won&#8217;t argue <em>too<\/em> hard against them, but I will point out Crossfit was created as a training program for rescue workers. \u00a0If you want to be able to perform at that physical level, I think that&#8217;s cool. \u00a0Go for it. \u00a0But accept that if you&#8217;re not a rescue worker, it&#8217;s more of a hobby than a reflection on how you live your life on a day to day basis. \u00a0(And goodness knows I can think of worse hobbies!) \u00a0I wouldn&#8217;t call it a moral imperative, even if fitness websites do often have testimonials about some emergency and how glad they are they did &lt;foo&gt; sort of training because it helped them.<\/p>\n<p>I do think, however, that looking at the life you live and deciding what you want to be able to do physically is a good idea.<\/p>\n<p>For myself, this is my physical baseline.\u00a0 I want to be able to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Swim a mile comfortably<\/li>\n<li>Walk two miles without feeling tired afterwards<\/li>\n<li>Lift a standard copier paper box of books comfortably<\/li>\n<li>Wrangle a snow-blower after a two foot snowfall (I live in Northern New England)<\/li>\n<li>Be able to stack a couple of cords of wood in a day (see previous)<\/li>\n<li>Be able to help push a car out of a ditch (again, see previous)<\/li>\n<li>Be active enough that I think driving to a grocery store is a silly waste of gas.\u00a0 This means being able to carry a heavy back pack full of groceries about a half a mile.<\/li>\n<li>Be able to lift a suitcase over my head into the overhead compartment on a train or airplane<\/li>\n<li>Be able to run from one end of an airport to another to catch a flight on too close of a connection.<\/li>\n<li>Be able to give a four to six hour lecture on my feet being physically active and animated the whole time.\u00a0 (I teach computer applications as well as rant about physical fitness.\u00a0 If you\u2019re not active and animated, you lose your audience quick).<\/li>\n<li>Be able to change a 5 gallon water jug in a water cooler without spilling water all over the floor or throwing out my back.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Notice none of the goals are particularly exciting or dramatic.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have survivalist goals.\u00a0 I live a heavily technologically-based life and I\u2019m cool with that.\u00a0 I grew up during the tail end of the Cold War fifty miles from Washington DC, a state capital, and about a dozen military bases.\u00a0 I\u2019m used to living on the slopes of Vesuvius, thanks. \u00a0If I sweated it, I\u2019d be more of a basket case than I already am. \u00a0I can pretty much do all of the things listed above already, but it&#8217;s my baseline. \u00a0 Every one of them can be\u00a0achieved\u00a0or maintained by working out a half an hour every weekday.<\/p>\n<p>Do your desired physical abilities levels look different? \u00a0I bet they do. \u00a0Know why? You live a different life. \u00a0I do think it is a good idea, though, to sit down and give what you want to be able to do physically some logical thought. \u00a0What can you do now? \u00a0What do you want to be able to do? \u00a0Do you have any physical limitations that are a factor? \u00a0I do. \u00a0There&#8217;s a <em>reason<\/em> I&#8217;m an enthusiastic swimmer above and beyond my love of water, ya know!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m curious to know what other people&#8217;s goals look like, if you want to share. \u00a0I&#8217;m curious to know how they reflect real-world daily life v. numbers measuring athletic performance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, I talked about exercise, improvement and whether or not to have goals. A) My swimming time is definitely improving without extraordinary effort. \u00a0I swam 1050 today in half an hour while pushing enough to be a pleasant muscular effort. \u00a0I wasn&#8217;t feeling all gung-ho, but was just enjoying my swim. \u00a0A month ago, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/2011\/04\/18\/but-how-will-you-improve-part-two\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;But How Will You Improve, Part Two&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fitness","category-rant"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}