Week 10: Fitness

4/10/2019 11:21 PM

I hate excuses, whether it’s myself making them or others. I haven’t gone to the gym this past week, making it at least two weeks since I’ve gone. Regardless of how busy I’ve been, both academically and extra-curricularly, I need to make time for my personal health. This chapter contained a lot of good information on lifting, cardio, and how to create the time necessary to maintain my physical health. What’s important now is that I set small, achievable SMART goals to get back on track and keep making progress. While I haven’t really gained any weight (at least not that I can see), I am certainly not where I would’ve liked to be this late in the semester. I’ve only got about a month left, so time is of the essence. This week I’m going to make the SMART goal of completing two full workouts: a squat day and a deadlift day. I’m going to cut back on all of my weights because of how long it’s been since I’ve lifted, but I need to get back on track and that starts by actually going to the gym. Quite honestly I’m very disappointed with myself for not going.

On to the chapter, I found the FITT principles for both cardiovascular health and muscular strength and endurance to be very helpful and enlightening. I learned a lot about how to go about my cardio workouts by striving to actually set a goal and an objective for the workout and go from there. For instance, the frequency and intensity of your workouts will dictate how much endurance you gain and how quickly. Also, through varying your intensity, you can achieve various results through manipulating the percentage of your maximum heart rate you wish to exercise at: for example, if you want to burn fat, you need to work somewhere between 50-65% of your max heart rate, while if you want to have an intense workout to quickly improve your endurance, you need to work anywhere between 85-100% of your max. When it comes to weight, how much weight you move and how many times you move it are both important. If you want to gain strength, you need to move weight greater than 60% of your 1 rep max with less reps, while if you wish to gain endurance, you need to lift less than 60% for more reps.

Despite all of the different obligations I have between my classes and my personal life, both socially and dating, I need to make time for my physical health. The chapter included a lot of tips for me to create a better schedule and create a plan that works for me. For instance, I’ve been trying to change multiple things at a time, both diet and exercise-wise. I need to focus on getting back in the gym, as my diet is largely self-regulated at this point and isn’t the problem. I also need to set reasonable expectations, as I’ve inflated them lately, and the lack of progress/not meeting those expectations has discouraged me, which isn’t helping me to get in the gym. I need to go back to my mindset goals from week 1, those being focusing on changing one thing at a time and setting reasonable expectations for myself and my progress.

To close out this blog, here’s another photo of a paint date I went on. I love painting and it’s something I’ll definitely continue doing. I also recently re-discovered my bass guitar and have been playing around with my amp and re-learning different songs; it’s been a ton of fun so far.