Building a Fitness Plan...and Following It!

When you walk into a meeting at work, you are handed an agenda; when you arrive at your first class of the semester, the professor provides a syllabus; when you walk into any conference, there will undoubtedly be a schedule of events; and even when you go on vacation (especially if your named is Clark W. Griswold), it is not uncommon to have a detailed itinerary of fun activities.

The common thread through each of these examples is that they are planning tools with an end goal in mind, and they help someone to achieve something...right? The meeting agenda helps the meeting organizer to, well, organize his or her staff and ensure that operations are running smoothly. The course syllabus helps the professor to map out the semester and set appropriate expectations. The schedule of events sees to it that conference attendees are in the right place at the right time. And the vacation itinerary doesn't allow a family to miss the world's largest frying pan as they're driving through rural America.

In this context, it should stand to reason that we would, as physically fallible humans, put together fitness plans for ourselves. After all, our bodies are indeed "breakable" vessels. We are susceptible to disease, our bones can break, our stomachs (and the rest of our bodies) can swell to large proportions, our blood can cease to flow smoothly, and our lungs can struggle for the right amount of oxygen. Yes, it should stand to reason that we do our best to ensure that we give our bodies the best chance of staying intact...but do we?

If you're like I was until last year, you've probably uttered things like "I need to get in shape" or "I'd work out if I had the time" or "it's too late to go workout now...I'll just get started tomorrow."

These were the words that came out of my mouth for about twenty-five years...when I was no longer playing college baseball, when there was no longer a "reason" to work out, when there was no longer a coach to answer to, that's when my body started becoming more fragile and, thus, "breakable."

But last September 24, I finally made my overall health (not just my diet, as I talked about last week) a priority and put together a formalized fitness plan for the first time in my life - yes, I had been told what to do by my coaches in the past, but I had never actually put together a plan of my own. To this day, I don't allow myself to lose sight of this daily, weekly, monthly, and annual fitness schedule...yes, I currently have it mapped out through January 2014. Oh sure, I make periodic updates to the plan, but if you ask me what's on tomorrow's docket (or next week's), I can tell you exactly what I'll be doing to work toward my fitness goals.

So now you're probably thinking (and some have said to me, both directly and indirectly)..."little over the top, don't you think?" Well, maybe so...but you might think differently if you ever ventured well onto the wrong side of the Obesity Line, if you ever smoked a pack a day for about twenty-five years, if you ever found yourself polishing off a bag of chips (solo) or a second Big Mac while watching Sunday's third football game, or if you ever looked into a mirror and wondered just who the heck that person was and why was it that he looked so unhappy. As I said to a friend earlier this week, at the end of the day, it's not at all about how I look...it's about living and dying; and to me, that certainly warrants being a "little over the top." Don't you think?

Anyway, for accountability's sake, since I've just about gotten everybody caught up to the present, I will now be adding my weekly training plan (and my monthly weight ins, when applicable) to my blog posts...and I'll keep you posted on the progress, which is to say that I'll let you know whether I'm actually continuing to follow the map.

Until next time, enjoy your journey...