What am I referring to? Exercise. I used to refer to it as 'training', but that implies there is a specific purpose and goal at the end of a given period, such as a competitive activity. For me, those days are long gone, so I now refer to it purely as 'exercise'.
So why the title? Going back, way back, to when I was 17 years old, and recently quit competitive swimming (you know, the six-days-a-week gig, sometimes twice-a-day schedule, with championships and swimming competitions and galas) all because I was in love for the first time. Then said girlfriend flew off to the US shortly after for a month, to spend summer with her mother.
What to do? Being used to the regime of waking, training, school, training, eating, sleep, repeat, I did what came naturally - I trained every day, twice-a-day, running and weights (and burned out by the next month).
Fast forward to 2015. Having qualified ten years prior as a Sports Massage Therapist, Personal Trainer and Fitness Instructor, for some bizarre reason I decide, 'Let's test myself and everything I've learned.'
My body, as you can appreciate, is a different thing now. I'd had numerous surgeries on various joints, ironically, due to a life of physical training, but I was up for a challenge. So, for the month of June, 2015, I would exercise twice-a-day, every day - I posted about it, which you'll find if you look back at the year of 2015.
The images below are of day 1 in June 2015 and day 30, just to give you an idea of the progression from day 1 to the final day. That last day was a hoot, out in the garden, jumping about like God-knows-what. I would also make a note the duration each session would take to complete, and on that last day, just to jazz it up a bit, the evening session was done in reverse order from that of the morning.
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| Copyright ©. 2021 Mark Kelly. All Rights Reserved. (Feel free to use the above sessions.) |
Was it physically hard? Not really, which surprised me. Was it mentally hard? Very, which didn't surprise me. Oddly, at the mid-point of June, I would derive a palpable euphoria in completing both sessions on each day. I had a wobble toward the end of the third week, and that was me hitting my 'wall', both mentally and physically. But I pressed on and made it out the other side. One aspect I did find challenging was coming up with a different routine for each new day.
Originally, I had planned to make July the challenge month, and for some reason, on June 1st, I thought, 'Bugger it - let's start it now!'.
And here we are, July 1st, 2021. So I'm going to attempt it once again, but this time with a couple of variations:
1) Working a different job with varied shift patterns.
2) Possessing a body, that if were a car, would qualify for the scrappage scheme.
My reason for posting this is primarily to ensure I do it. There's no backing out of it now. Plus, I'm going to try and eat 'clean' throughout. Especially cutting out refined sugar, which, to be honest, is a toxin to the human body, and it also prematurely ages the skin - and also because I'm a bit of a sugar junkie, if I'm being totally honest here.
I leave you with 'Sweet Harmony', by The Beloved. Such a great tune. Enjoy.
Until the next time.
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