So you guys, I am finding it easier to exercise six days a week than I thought it would be. I don't have to answer the question "Am I going to work out today?" I already know the answer; the answer is yes. If I don't do it in the morning, I have to do it in the evening.
This means I don't have to deal with Sad Gertrude. Sad Gertrude is a voice I read about somewhere on the internet (maybe the Salty Running blog? maybe five-ish years ago? too long ago to remember the details) and immediately recognized. Sad Gertrude says, "But it's going to be haaaaaard," when you are trying to motivate yourself to lace up your shoes. Sad Gertrude says, "What if we caaaaan't?" as you are thinking about what your workout will look like. Sad Gertrude says, "Maybe later would be better. Don't we have enough suffering in our life already?" And at least sometimes, a person will just sigh heavily and accede to Sad Gertrude's querulous pleas.
I have hardly heard anything from Sad Gertrude this year. In years past, if I were aiming to work out three or four days a week, she would try to convince me on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday that the four days might as well be W-Th-F-Sa. And then on Wednesday she would tell me that three workouts a week is a perfectly respectable amount of exercise. Maybe you can sympathize; maybe you have a Sad Gertrude of your own. Or maybe my Sad Gertrude has gone to live at your house, because she has been very, very quiet lately.
All of my previous attempts to work out 6 days a week have felt overwhelming to me, but this one does not, or at least not so far. I think a big slice of it is having good options for home workouts, so that I am not braving ice and snow and teeming hordes of January-ites at the gym, and trying to fit in the workout plus the drive to and from the gym where there is no parking because of all the people thinking that THIS YEAR will be the their year to get fit. Another slice of it is doing less running. I am just not a very efficient runner. It feels like I am working stupid-hard to go stupid-slow. But hey! This year I can jump rope and ride my bike and do Jazzercise and lift weights instead.
In my ideal world I would be getting up at 5:15 so I could work out before the kids are awake, but I do not love waking up at 5:15 in January. So I've mostly been working out in the evening. In my ideal world I would be able to do barbell deadlifts, but our gym is pretty much a seething cauldron of COVID right now. I froze our membership until spring, when I hope the crowds will be sparser and the COVID numbers less grim. I can do dumbbell deadlifts for a while, even if they are much less satisfying.
It is kind of weird that Joe turned me into a person who pines for barbells, isn't it? Have I already recommended @megsquats and @swolewoman to anyone who is thinking that her life could use a few more barbells? I'm always happy to hear about new people to follow, if you have any recommendations for me.
Gonna try reading this book that has had such an impact on you - thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Posted by: mandamum | January 23, 2022 at 08:43 PM
Hello - just stumbled onto your blog by following a link from another blog, and I enjoy your posts. Your concern about COVID is both relatable and understandable; for some reason your comments about people at the gym refusing to wear masks really resonates with me (such as your post from 12/4/21 in particular).
Those types of people are a big reason why I have yet go to a gym. The people who glibly refuse to wear masks in the community where they reside make me feel livid, and, unfortunately, those types of people are in EVERY community.
Late in the fall last year, I took a flight to attend a family funeral out of state. Every airport was literally packed with travelers on every leg of that journey.
But consider this: no one in any of the airports or on any of the flights was refusing to wear a mask, and why was that, do you suppose?
First of all, if people want to take a plane somewhere, they can’t even walk through the doors of an airport not wearing a face mask without someone stopping them and telling them to go back out and don’t come back in unless and until they are wearing proper PPE.
Second, all people who want to board an aircraft to take a flight somewhere also have to be wearing a face mask, or they won’t be allowed to board the flight (all, that is, except children who are considered too young to wear face masks, such as those who are 3 years old and younger).
Third, flight crews now spend several minutes, pre-flight, spelling out the hefty legal and financial consequences to passengers who disrupt flights and interfere with flight crews by refusing to comply with mask-wearing rules when boardIng the plane and while it’s in-flight.
The bottom line in this scenario, that I suspect anyway, is that a whole host of uncaring, obnoxious people will stubbornly refuse to do the right thing in their own communities and will protest loud and long that mask-wearing is INTERFERING WITH their “civil rights” and their “freedoms” and their “civil liberties” and will yell their loudest that they are “anti-mask mandates” - UNTIL - UNTIL they WANT to do something, like travel.
Like TRAVEL - meaning, when they WANT to take a trip to go on VACATION someplace, and they realize they can’t take a plane to get to that vacation, UNLESS they *submit to the mask mandates* that every airline has in place now for ALL travelers who want to fly anywhere.
THEN, and ONLY then, do we NOT hear so much as a peep out of those people.
THEN they WEAR a mask, just like EVERYBODY ELSE DOES, but in truth it’s ONLY because of something they WANT TO DO (such as, go on VACATION).
You know, COVID has shockingly brought out the very worst in some people - some who won’t put the good of others in their communities at least on par with their own - it’s sad, it’s alarming, it’s maddening - and such attitudes, unfortunately, may well be contributing to why we are still dealing with COVID now.
Posted by: Mary | January 24, 2022 at 03:22 AM