I am amazed, it’s day 34 already and here I am, still working out and still blogging about it. It’s amazing, considering how much I procrastinated and found excuses to not workout… “I’m to tired,” “I don’t have time,” “I can’t do it,” “I can’t afford it,” “my job,” blah, blah, blah… heck you’re talking to the queen of excuses here.
I giggle when I hear someone say “I don’t workout because I have no energy,” or my favorite: “It takes too long and I have no time…” so why do I giggle about it? Because I can relate. I’m a mom, my toddler needs my TOTAL attention when I’m with her, I am also in school full-time (online getting a degree in English literature that requires a lot of writing… I am just finishing up a 6,000 word essay that is due this weekend,) I also work full time, sometimes even up to 60 hours a week. If it weren’t because of my husband who helps me get my daughter ready for pre-school in the morning and sometimes prepares lunch or breakfast (he’s an AMAZING cook so we take turns cooking), I wouldn’t be able to do it all. But truth be told, this is my health we’re talking about. I need the energy I get from exercise to be able to do everything I do. So guess what? Even if I “feel” like I don’t have the time, I SCHEDULE it and I do it.
A friend a long time ago said to me that she doesn’t workout because she doesn’t like to sweat. Well, sweating is my favorite part of working out. So is the soreness of a good workout. There is a difference though from being sore from working out and another very different is pain from having done too much too fast. The latter is dangerous because you can suffer an injury that may stop you all together from working out. You should never workout to the point where you get nauseous (yes I say it again), nor should you workout until you feel pain and, there is no need to absolutely finish the whole DVD the first time you do it. There’s time, ease into the exercises, do as much as you can while keeping GOOD FORM that’s what’s important. Doing the best you can like Tony Horton says, doesn’t mean that you should push yourself to exhaustion and bad form, it means doing the BEST you can, pushing yourself as far as it’s safe to push yourself while keeping good form to avoid injury.
I have always been very committed to exercising (well almost always without counting the past 3 years). When I had foot surgery at the end of 2001, I would workout with my foot in a cast, I’d do weights with my legs to strengthen them. The funny thing is that my doctor was shocked because although I was supposed to heal in 90 days, my foot healed in 30. So much so, that the cut in the bone he had done, didn’t even show on the X-ray, it was as if the bone was completely new. Six months later, I ran my first 5K completing it in 23 minutes (my best time ever). But even though this may seem radical and crazy, I was smart about it, I worked out in a way that I made sure I wouldn’t hurt myself. I allowed my body to heal and recover. Even in this case, there was a smart way to workout and it payed off.
So why am I writing this? Because I’ve heard from a couple of people that the P90X caused them to feel nauseous. So to them I say: Don’t quit! Don’t let that get in the way of your fitness… just be smart about your workouts, allow your body to ease into the exercises, don’t do ALL the DVD, do what you can, you don’t have to keep up, remember the people on the DVD are already trained, have been working out for months and many even years, so don’t be arrogant. Arrogance can only cause an injury, be humble and be smart.