#in30 Fitness Challenge: No More Excuses
By Amanda Renner
When I first heard about the #in30 challenge I fell in love with it… or at least the idea of it. Who doesn’t want a pre-made, at-home workout handed to them at the beginning of every month? Apparently me. While I raved about the program to friends and coworkers, it took me months to finally commit.
Hear me out though. August was busy. I was traveling, hosting visitors, and in my final month of training for Mount Whitney. September was hectic. There were tons of work projects, I was recuperating from our trek and caught up in engagement celebrations. But come October I’d exhausted all of my resources. My excuse reserve had run dry and I was left with a month of burpees that would peak on Halloween with 100 reps.
The beginning of the month was a breeze. A coworker and I would head to an empty conference room every other day at noon and complete our required reps. Once finished we’d return to our desks a little sweaty and out of breath and check that day off of the calendar we’d printed from the #in30 website.
Nevertheless, by mid-month I was feeling a bit sluggish. My coworker had dropped out, Ben was home from a gig, and there were mid-week concerts, house warming parties and work functions galore. My performance started slipping. Some days I would do part of the required burpees,and other days I would ignore them altogether, telling myself that climbing and trying to do 75 burpees in the same day was overly ambitious.
But I made a commitment and didn’t want to flake. So I started looking for patterns, repeat behavior that might have been influencing my poor performance. The most recurring problem I found was my knack for making excuses.
It wasn’t that I didn’t have the time to do the burpees, which usually took no more than a combined 10 or 15 minutes a day. It was that I didn’t want to so I looked for ways out. It was way easier to excuse myself from the routine than it was to motivate myself to stick to it.
Even though I’d started to slack, I didn’t want to drop out entirely. Now conscious of my excuse making habits I started calling myself out on them and through my self-discipline I learned to make the workouts work for me. Sure there were days when I couldn’t finish them, when I slacked off or traded a salad for pizza at lunch, but at the end of the month I completed 100 burpees in a day and felt really good about it. Near the end, I even began noticing small differences–a little toning here, a little definition there, as well as some improvement in my climbing.
November’s #in30 was just announced and it is a GREAT introduction to the program–one that will hopefully teach slackers like me a thing or two about consistency. Don’t get me wrong, I understand–life is busy. But it’s not slowing down. If we wait until we are well rested and stress free we’d never get past talking about wanting to lead healthier lifestyles. So take a walk, ride a bike, run on a treadmill. Whether you’re an athlete, a student or a stay at home mom, move–a mile a day for a month. I think you’ll be surprised at what it does for your body, mind, and mood.
(Late to the party? No worries! Check out this month’s challenge here and jump on in! Just be sure to check in with @Stonewear, the @in30challenge, and the rest of us participating with you on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook!)
Read more from Amanda on the Stonewear blog: ‘Cause It’s Worth It and 22 Simple Steps to Improved Fitness. And check out Amanda’s blog here.
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