Non-Negotiable Season

These days my gym routine is so much a part of me that scheduling around it is second nature. When I was first trying to establish it (or my bigger challenge, cleaning up my eating habits), I found I was always more successful starting before the holidays than trying the New Year’s resolution method. By January I had two months of good habits behind me and something in my life under control during the chaos that is my typical holiday season.

Life will always have something on the calendar. Office parties. School concerts. Family flying in from out of state. Year-end deadlines. Someone who needs help hanging lights at exactly the time class starts. Any one of them will happily take the hour I meant to spend at the gym if I let it.

So I don’t let it.

Important, but never urgent

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey sorts everything we do into four boxes based on two questions: is it urgent, and is it important?

Urgent and important is the fire that has to be put out today. Urgent but not important is most of my inbox (and every “quick question” that is never quick). Neither urgent nor important is the scroll. Then there’s the box Covey says effective people live in on purpose: important but not urgent. Planning. Relationships. Sleep. Exercise.

The catch with that box is that nothing in it ever demands attention. A workout will never send a reminder email marked high priority. (I will text you though!) Left on its own, it waits quietly in the corner while everything louder gets handled first.

Until it doesn’t. Skip it long enough and exercise moves itself into the urgent box. It shows up as a blood pressure number at an annual physical, needing to catch a breath at the top of one flight of stairs or a doctor using the word “prediabetic” for the first time. Now it’s urgent, and the starting point is a much harder place.

I would rather not wait for a health scare to make my health a priority.

Essential, like eating and breathing

Nobody checks their calendar to see if they have time to breathe today. Nobody skips eating because the week got busy (if anything, the busy weeks are the ones with the most eating).

That’s the category training belongs in for me. It isn’t something I fit in when the stars align. It’s what the rest of my day gets built around. Taking care of myself every day is maintenance 101 of me, the person, and it’s how I show up as the best version of myself for everyone depending on me.

Block it out

I put my class times on my calendar like a meeting I can’t miss, because I can’t. When something tries to land on top of it, I move the other thing first.

• Holiday party Friday night? Morning class first, then I walk into the party with nothing to feel guilty about except my second plate of cookies.
• Family in town? Bring them. Every family has a brother-in-law who ran one Turkey Trot in 2014 and has been waiting years for someone to ask.
• Year-end crunch at work? Move the call. Most meetings can slide thirty minutes. Class can’t.
• Kid’s concert lands on the usual slot? Swap in a weekend class instead of writing off the session.
• Traveling? A hotel room workout counts. So does a long walk with the in-laws after dinner (it may even save the evening).

The goal isn’t a perfect week, but to keep training from being the first thing that gets cut.

Consistency is the ultimate goal

It isn’t sexy. It isn’t splashy. It isn’t a quick fix. Nobody has ever gone viral for showing up on a Tuesday in December and doing a solid, unremarkable workout.

Tuesdays compound though. Day after day, week after week, those deposits go into an account we’ll draw from for the rest of our lives. Every class adds a little more strength to carry groceries, range of motion to perform better at our hobbies, endurance to chase kids or grandkids, capacity to get up off the floor and agility to catch ourselves in a fall and stay independent longer.

Consistency also isn’t going all-out every single day.

It’s taking it easy when I need to. Going hard when I can. Working around a sore shoulder instead of sitting out the whole week. Lifting light on the weeks work is eating me alive. Scaling movements smartly so I can come back tomorrow. Doing the PT homework (yes, even the boring band exercises). Staying for the cool down and the mobility work instead of sneaking out during the last stretch.

These don’t typically make it into the highlight reel, but I should remedy that! The days an athlete chooses to ride the assault bike with one arm instead of skipping class. The single-leg and upper body work from an athlete in a walking boot. The athlete willing to scale well below their usual weight and work on technique because they’re listening to their body.

These are the athletes who come back from a setback stronger in their weaknesses. They bounce back quickly because they maintained their fitness. And they get less down about an injury because they’re surrounded every day by friends who understand the frustration and respect the dedication.

Let’s hit January excited for a fresh year, ready to set some new personal records (PRs) and looking forward to our fittest year yet!

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