Day 17 – Recovery & Mobility… and not quitting

I really didn’t want to get up when the alarm went off at 4:30 this morning. But I knew that my body would benefit more from this workout than laying in bed. I really think the foam rolling and stretching allow me to push the other workouts harder. It’s like my body’s reward for working hard the other days.

I saw a quote this morning that said, “Tired of starting over? Stop quitting.” I like that. Albeit the past two times I’ve ‘started over’ with my fitness it’s been because of pregnancy/childbirth. But, I can relate to the tendency to stop. It’s so easy to skip a day or choose a TV show and the couch. But doing those things once or twice easily becomes doing those things routinely. And TV shows suck you in so fast, leading you to believe that you can’t miss the next episode. At least I’m easily sucked into this. The funny thing is, when I’m hooked on a show I feel like I would be missing so much without it. Then when the season breaks or I miss a couple of weeks for another reason I realize that I really don’t miss the show at all and life is lived without a screen. I’ll admit I have favorite shows that I watch online, but I can do that without revolving my life around a network’s schedule, and in less time. I’m using TV as an example, but how many other things do we schedule our life around when they’re really not that important? Why do we find it so hard to set life goals and schedule our lives around activities that will help us meet those goals? They say that it takes 30 days for an activity to become routine/habit and only 3 days to break that habit. I don’t know that I buy those numbers, but I strongly believe that it’s harder to do something than do nothing. Unless, of course, one is trying to break a bad habit and replace it with ‘nothing.’

Anyway, that’s a pretty long rabbit trail to say that every day we make decisions. Little decisions with big long term consequences. I also recently saw a quote from Tony Horton that said something like, “Today’s goal: eat healthy and exercise. Tomorrow: Repeat.” I think that’s the start of not quitting. Everyday make a decision to do something to move toward your goal. Today’s decision was to get up with the alarm and treat my body to some foam rolling and stretching. My body’s already thanking me.