Changing the Plan

One of my coachies just sent me a text asking, "Is it OK to do swimming laps instead of Kenpo X for cardio today?"

YES!

Fitness is such a life-long pursuit, we can not possibly stick to the exact schedule of P90X for the rest of our lives.  It's good and very important to have a plan!  You have to have both short term goals and long term goals for your own fitness, but at the same time, be able to modify to keep things fun and alive. 

Today, for example, my workout scheduled is Insanity: Cardio Recovery.  It's a great, low impact workout to round out my recovery week.  However, life popped up!  I learned of a fit club happening close to me that is doing P90X Interval X today.  It's a chance to go workout with a bunch of new Pittsburgh based coaches and meet and learn from them.  Of course, Insanity will have to wait - I'm going to fit club!

Now, I'm going to be straight with you.  If this is your first round of P90X or Chalean Extreme for example, please stick to the schedule as best you can.  They have done a ton of research to find out the best way to put the 60 or 90 day program together.  But after your first 90 days, you have to mix it up.  Tony Horton has said more times than I can count, "Variety is the spice of Fitness."  I can't agree more, of course it is!  Mix it up and find new and challenging ways to work your body.

If you do the same exact things every single day, you will plateau.  It's just a fact.  That's the way muscle memory works.

I do try to stick to the lifting weights every other day idea, and the yoga once a week idea, but if a friend calls and wants to workout, I will change things around to have someone with me. 

Invite your friends and family to workout with you.  They'll most likely say no at first, that's fine - expect it, then invite them AGAIN!  It's like a castle wall that you have to beat down - not just for them, but also for you.  Just this week alone, I only worked out once by myself.  A year ago, I did 7 solo workouts a week.  (Maybe more in fact if I was doing double workouts!)  Times have changed! 

How did this happen?  It wasn't over night - that's for sure!  I started putting myself out there.  Many of us don't like to tell people when we first start working out or "dieting" (I truly hate that word - more on this another day).  Why is this?  Why would we keep something so healthy and good for us a closely guarded secret?

Because we are PREDICTING FAILURE.

Think about that for just a second.  When we first start a new healthy lifestyle, we are assuming it will fail, and that the old us will come back.  I know this first hand.  When I first started P90X, I only told about 2 people, and even went further to tell them not to mention it to anyone.  This way, when I eventually failed, only a few people would be there to rub it in my face.

This isn't even rational.  Who would rub failure in your face?  Not a friend, certainly - yet - the fear of this, kept me huddled down in my dark basement (which has since turned into a really nice home gym!) for months.  Only when people started noticing serious results (around day 60) did I start telling people what I did.

Life would have been so much easier had I burst out of the box telling everyone I know that I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired and I was putting my foot down!  Who wants to join me?  A few years after that point, I continue to use Beachbody products to get in better and better shape, and now, I'm not secretly knocking out my workouts at midnight, I proudly dragging my friends and family along.

WHO WANTS TO JOIN ME???