Whenever you choose a fitness goal, an important part of success is having a realistic plan for when you’re going to accomplish your training goals.
Are you going to run in the morning? On your lunch break? After work?
Have you cleared that time from other obligations you’d normally accomplish then?
Do you need to arrange childcare or to prepare dinner ahead of time so it can go in the oven while you shower?
When are your meetings or conference calls scheduled? Will you need to pack a lunch if you’re going to work out on your lunch break?
What if it were tomorrow?
I like to put my plans through the “what if it were tomorrow” test. It’s all well and good to say “I’ll get up at 5 a.m. and do it!”, but does it pass the test when you walk yourself through what your day would look like if it were tomorrow?
When we make general plans we don’t always anticipate the unexpected obstacles presented by daily life that can trip up our workouts. I’ve had to skip a run because we didn’t have food in the fridge and I needed to return library books.
Making time to work out usually pays off for me with greater productivity for the rest of the day, so it’s worth it to me when I can sit down and get my ducks in a row so that working out can happen easily.
I like to sit down Monday morning and plan my workouts for the week and think about what needs to happen in order to make them feasible. I look at my calendar and plan ahead. I try to avoid two hard workouts in a row, do something a little easier the night after I have an event and might be out late having a glass of wine, think about which morning I will most likely need to grocery shop, and maybe try to coordinate a rest day for when I have a volunteer meeting or appointment so I’m not overscheduled.
It helps to be realistic; I thought I was going to go for a run on Will’s 7th birthday. Instead, I frosted cupcakes in my running gear and then changed. It was a cute thought, but really?
Example
Right now I’m working on scheduling the rest of my New Year’s goal to take every class at the Equinox… something I’m actually getting a bit burned out on (maybe you are, too… I’ll be back to normal blogging soon!) I’ve loved the journey, but the classes are getting harder to schedule, the blogging is feeling super repetitive, and I look forward to having more freedom in my workouts.
I have 10 classes left that are currently offered, and just over 10 weeks to complete them all. To give myself some margin of error, my goal is to aim for 2 classes per week so I am not stressing about this during the holiday season or blindsided by new class offerings.
What I’ve done is made a list of all the classes I haven’t taken yet and plugged them into an excel sheet showing when they’re offered. Classes in bold are only offered at that day and time, so I know I have to find a way to take them then. This will help me plan each week individually by choosing two that complement each other well based on schedule and type of exercise.
Looking at this helps me plan ahead. I know that some Thursday I’ll need to get up around 5:15 am to make it over for 6 am Boot Camp. Better plan that for a week with no late nights on the calendar.
I can see that there’s a Wednesday class around lunchtime that interferes with school pick-up – I’ll want to arrange playdates or schedule a babysitter to pick them up and feed them lunch, that’ll require advance planning.
One class is only offered at 6:30 p.m. on a weeknight: I’ll need to decide if I want to keep the kids out a little late in the playspace or arrange for a babysitter.
I think I’ve got this. I can almost taste it. 33 classes down, 10 to go, maybe a couple surprise new offerings in November or December that I’ll be ready for… it’ll happen.
But it won’t happen if I don’t plan ahead.