I tend to be one that wants some schedule, some regularity, to my workouts. I like having a “training schedule” for running, even if I’m not planning to race. I like knowing when my twice-weekly weight lifting sessions will be. Same with biking, yoga, and martial arts.
But what happens when I don’t feel like doing one or any of them? I’ve been kind of dragging myself to the gym for weight lifting out of necessity these past couple of weeks. My body needs the strength, my shins especially, but I find it hard to focus and do the reps correctly, and I feel the workout’s wasted if I just throw weights around. I know it’s not a complete waste, but still.
I had a pretty nasty asthma attack last night, and I woke up (for about the fifth time) this morning about an hour before the run I was supposed to do. It took me that whole hour to psych myself into going out and running, knowing that I’d lost my inhaler, and knowing that I was at high risk for an attack, especially since I was still wheezing while lying in bed the next morning.
Maybe it’s just the start of my usual winter doldrums. Getting myself out of bed before class to exert myself seems arduous, especially given how interrupted my sleep’s been. Just two months ago, I was so happy to have classes starting at 10:00 so that I would have time to knock out a full hour of exercise before tackling the day.
The big question is, perhaps, “What’s my motivation?” I’m telling myself to get out and be active because I want to get in shape (which I define as purely stamina, not body weight/shape), help my asthma, mebbe lose some weight, and because it makes me feel good (in that order? maybe.).
I feel in part like I have too many goals to remain focused. I see weight lifting as separate from running and both of those as separate from biking. So while I have a “schedule”, I don’t have a cohesive workout… vision. I don’t flow from one workout to the next, and I think each should be reinforcing the others.
So the question is, how do I fix it?