An Exercise in Persistence

If you’re anything like me, you have a hard time convincing yourself to exercise, particularly in the winter. There are many excuses for this, including being too tired and just not having any time. When it comes down to it, though, it’s usually just plain laziness that stops us from doing it. At least, that’s the truth in my case.

In the past, whenever I had tried to begin an exercising regimen, I immediately ran into a problem which I’m sure many people are familiar with. I started off doing too much, which left me sore and unable to continue exercising for days. So I would exercise one day and then end up not doing it again for weeks or months.

Last year, however, it finally dawned on me that the most important part was not necessarily how much I was doing at a given time, but simply that I did it consistently. That would help me develop a habit, which would allow me to gradually increase the amount of exercise I did. So I resolved to make it a daily habit, however little I might do. I don’t know about you, but I refuse to join a gym, because I don’t see why I should pay somebody every month to do something I can do at home for free (and without the potential for public humiliation).

The next challenge was to decide on when during the day to do the exercise. I have been told that exercising in the evening can wake you up too much to be able to go to sleep easily, and in any event the idea of getting sweaty before bed didn’t appeal to me (and I’m sure my wife would agree). I knew that the ideal was to get up early and exercise in the morning before taking a shower and getting ready for work. I have never had a problem getting up on time for work, but if I tried to get up very much earlier it just wouldn’t work. In the end I resolved to just give myself an extra 5 minutes in the morning to do a few fast and simple things.

I started by doing two crunches (seriously). I just wanted to make sure I was doing something, and I didn’t want to overdo it and make myself sore, since it had been quite a while since I had done any. So over the course of a couple of weeks I worked up to a dozen or so. Then I picked up a couple of cheap dumbbells to do a few curls, and a bench-press-style exercise where I would lie on the floor and push them up. Eventually I added a few pushups. I hate pushups, but I think they’re a great exercise, since they strengthen your back, chest, arms, and stomach.

Eventually I reached the point where I would do about 15 crunches, 15, pushups, and 15 curls. While that kind of exercise is not going to win me the Mr. Universe competition, doing it every day can help keep me in reasonable shape.

There is, of course, one more important kind of exercise I had so far neglected. Cardiovascular exercise is more important for overall health than strength training, and it’s also the most time-consuming, which is problematic. In the summer, it’s not too hard to play outside with my son for a few minutes every night or go for a walk as a family. But I knew the problem would be finding a way to get that activity in the winter. Getting up every morning in the winter is hard enough without trying to add an extra half hour to go running in the morning. I considered purchasing an elliptical trainer, but they are pretty expensive, and I have no place in my home to put it (seriously).

So I decided to be creative about it. I still plan to get my own elliptical trainer as soon as we have a big enough place to keep it, but in the meantime my parents have an elliptical trainer that I can use. So I decided to go over there a couple of evenings every week to exercise. (As a bonus, I could take my son so his grandparents could have quality time with him and my wife could have a little peace and quiet. Everybody wins that way.) While I have not yet been very consistent in this last goal, I will keep working on it.

The point of all this is that exercising doesn’t have to be a grueling, time-consuming burden on your day. We are all busy, and the last thing we need to do is try to cram one more thing into our schedules, but taking care of our body is an important part of our growth. When we do so, we show gratitude for the bodies we have been blessed with, and we help develop our self-discipline, which can have positive effects on the physical and spiritual aspects of our lives.

And if it helps us look good in a swimsuit, there’s no harm in that.