Thursday, March 4, 2010

Discipline #3 - Exercise...and Resistance

Here am I at the start of a new month - time to work on a new discipline. This month is all about getting moving. Ah the joys of exercise... I've got to say that I am NOT one of "those people" who genuinely love to exercise. (I don't understand you if you are one of them!) In fact, I'm probably the opposite. I talked to one of my hostesses this week and she couldn't make it to an event because "she is working out 6 nights a week to get a beach body for summer." That got my attention - that is some serious discipline.

What if I even gave exercise a fraction of that discipline?... I can find a bizillion excuses to not get it done. But it's gotta happen and I know that. So it's time to make it a priority.

My goal is to be working out 30 minutes a day for 3 days a week by I reach the end of this month. There, I've said it. It's out there. I had to build in some accountability so feel free to ask me how it's going. :) (Thanks for asking - I just finished my first session for this week.)

I've been resisting exercise so it seems ironic that one of the exercises I've taken up is using resistance bands. They have been very easy to use and I can use them anywhere. Do any of you have good workouts for resistance bands that you would like to share with me? I'd love to get them!

My friend who told me about the resistance bands shared something very interesting that she read about using them. Apparently if you use them in any given exercise until you simply can't do one more rep, the body sends a signal to your brain. It says something like "we failed to keep going - we don't want to fail again - make this muscle stronger." I think that is fascinating - even at the cellular level we humans don't want to fail. And ironically, every time I get lazy and don't exercise, I feel like I'm failing. What a crazy cycle!

Lord, give me the grace to resist laziness in my physical activity...