Motivation-part 3

I thought I'd share my answers to the question "why do I exercise?" so you can see what my motivations are. Perhaps my story will give you some new ideas on motivation and possibly save you from mistakes I have made.

I love to exercise. Exercise is my date with my body. It's my time to be with myself physically. I love to see what I'm capable of physically and I push myself. I play games with myself too. If I can do my cardio at a certain level or for a certain speed, can I do it at a higher level or faster the next time? I enjoy this me-time. I like being with myself watching my mind and body work together.

I also challenge myself to come up with new ways of exercising both cardio and weight training. My clients and class members are well aware of this personality trait of mine.

I think I do this because I get bored easily. Cardio in particular is pretty repetitive and mindless. I've made playlists on my iPod which are extremely fast, up tempo songs. When I'm feeling fatigued or think I can't do one more sprint or another 20 minutes, I'll play these songs to help keep me moving. Generally it works. I look for new songs every month or so to keep the list fresh. I'll share some of my favorite songs in another posting if anyone is interested.

If I'm watching TV while I'm doing cardio, which I often do, I'll play my music during the commercials and sprint. That's excellent interval work for the length of the commercials generally 2 minutes or so.

I'm always looking for new ways to make things harder. What's the next logical progression for my body? I do a lot of reading, watch exercise videos and search the Web for new exercises and interesting variations to exercises I'm already doing. I do this for me, although my clients and class members benefit too. I'm my own guinea pig. I try all new exercises on myself first then I'll ask a couple of clients if they want to be guinea pigs.

I'm a numbers girl too-very competitive with myself. Since I wear a heart rate monitor, I know what my heart rate is during my cardio. I'll play games with the intensity of my work-outs. The Step Mill (climbing fixed stairs at an adjustable rate) works me the hardest. It took me several months to establish a baseline, now I'm challenging myself with different levels and the amount of stairs I climb in any one session.

Once I reach my goal, I'll set a new one. Keep mixing things up. I'll watch my recovery rate too. Generally the faster your heart rate drops after exercise, the better. A quick recovery is one sign of good cardiovascular health. Occasionally I'll monitor my morning heart rate. I read somewhere that Lance Armstrong's resting heartrate in the morning (before getting out of bed) was in the 30's. That means his heart is beating less than half the time an average man's heart beats with twice the efficiency. That's health to an extremely high level.

If I need a break from the Step Mill, I might do sprints on the elliptical. I set up a random program and play with both the resistance level and the speed during the work-out, that's intervals on top of intervals. Lots of bang for your buck.

I use to think that my body was all about endurance. I loved to see how long I could last on a machine and then keep building on. However I wasn't getting the results I wanted. I hired a trainer and the first thing she did was cut my resistance in half, tripled my speed and asked me to do 10 minutes. Wow, that was very tough! Being the competitive Type A personality that I am, I continued to work at my speed. I lost a considerable amount of weight and improved my cardiovascular system substantially. Now I mix up speed and resistance but use my heartrate as the overall guide to my exercising.

Many people think that the best part of exercising is the shower. I think every part is the best part. I don't know why I feel this way. I was never an athlete. Title 9 was passed in 1972; I was 12 and the sports craze for adolescent females was still several years away. Noone knew how Title 9 would be applied or what opportunities would exist for girls. I spent my high school and college years in intellectual pursuits, not physical ones. I didn't get into extensive and intensive physical activity until I started studying martial arts in my early 30's.

I never thought of myself as someone who would like exercise. But once I started martial arts, I thought exercise was nothing short of nirvana. Except of course when I overtrained, got severely injured, couldn't walk for 4 months and gained over 50lbs. Are you surprised? Being a Type A has its drawbacks. I guess I needed to learn the hard way.

I tell my clients that I've made every mistake as a client myself before I was a personal trainer.
Generally I can see my clients' mistakes coming before they do. I can tell by how they work with themselves, how they treat themselves and how they talk to themselves. I try to steer them towards more healthy choices although how they live their lives is up to them. My clients are all intelligent folks. At the end of the day, I trust their judgement although I will offer my professional opinions.

I've been a client of 3 different (all equally fabulous) personal trainers over a span of 10 years both here and in Boston. I've had a private martial arts instructor/coach as well. I've been on both sides of the exercise fence as a client and as a trainer/instructor. It's a neat place to be, I'm very blessed.

Long story short, I still think exercise is nirvana AND I am much more in tune with my body and pay attention to its feedback from my exercising. I think that's key. Having gone through that terrible 2-3 years of being injured, gaining weight, not being able to exercise, I'm much more aware now.

Maybe that's one of the points I want to make: I am present during my exercising. Maybe the games I play with myself help keep me present, I don't know. What I do know is that my mind stays aware of what I'm doing, I'm connected in to my body and what's happening. I don't zone out or daydream while I'm working out. In fact I've had friends in the gym say to me that I look scary when I work out. Oh c'mon, scary? I think that's just me being focused. Usually I'm very quick, moving from one exercise to another and I don't like my tempo interrupted. But don't worry, if you see me working out, please say hi, I won't bite your head off!

My clients know that I'm very insistent that they stay present during weight training. Many of the exercises I do myself and my clients do are difficult. If they aren't using proper form and execution, they could easily injure themselves. So it's imperative during weight training that they pay attention to what they're doing. It's also fun too and I tell them to admire themselves, marvel at how well their bodies move and how good they look.

Frankly that's what the body does best-move. That's what it's made for-to move. Sitting in a chair for 8-10 hours a day, hunched over a computer monitor, attending numerous meetings, talking on the phone (for god sakes, use a headset or earpiece!) not so much.

Why do I exercise? I love the way it feels, I love how creative I can be, how my mind keeps challenging my body, how my body responds to those challenges and I love the results from my exercising. And yes, I love the shower afterwards too.

In Health,

Laura