Wow, a whole week! If I weren't blogging this project, sharing it with the world, I think I'd have already fallen by the wayside on it. I have to come back here and write about it every day, and there's the email discussion list where I write my daily intentions and then what I actually did fitness wise. I can't just quietly slide out the back door.
What I've noticed particularly this week is why I've not succeeded in previous efforts to get fit. I've been fit, and got sort of out of fit afterward. I knew why and how it happened, but didn't realize how and why I'd not picked myself up, dusted myself off, and gotten right back on the fitness wagon again.
And, now I think I know a big piece of why. I think I'll call it "The Injured Leg Factor." Or, maybe "The Compensation Factor." Or, "The Replacement Habit Syndrome." When one has a sore leg, one must compensate for its inability to bear the full weight or motion that it did before the injury. That is, one must let it rest, favor it until it heals. And, in so doing, one asks other parts of one's physiology to compensate by taking on more work, and/or doing it differently.
You'd think that after the leg heals, the body automatically returns to it's pre injury load sharing, motion sequences, and movement patterns. But, it doesn't necessarily do so. It will partially do so, but there may be added movements and/or continued extra work for other parts of the body to do.
When one becomes less fit than before, for whatever reason, other activities step in to take over the time, effort, and attention fitness generating activities used before the fitness gap occurred. The new compensatory activities fill and utilize the time and energy available. What used to come naturally, generating and maintaining fitness, seems like an imposition, and there "isn't time" for what used to fit in well.
I've found, this week, that my fitness project activities don't "fit" into my day and evening. They don't fit because I've filled their space with other things. And I'm loathe to push those other things out of the nest.
My job, it appears, is to restructure what I do and what seems important in order to allow fitness related activities back into my day. I'm curious about how easily and satisfyingly I can do that.
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