Workaholic, needs discipline
Workaholic, needs discipline
Rant/sob story/need a kick in the backside:
I’ve fallen into the same trap my father fell into. At 40 years old, I’ve spent the last 15 years prioritizing my work and career over family, relationships and life in general. It’s left me fat, weak, and scrambling to avoid depression.
I feel like I’ve wasted so much time, and I don’t know where to go from here. Back in school, making friends and having new hobbies came almost effortlessly. Now, I work 10 hour days and end up working on the couch while mindlessly watching TV. Weekends I spend working a side gig or gaming.
I know the solution is to pick something interesting (like strength training at the gym) and just try it. I’m one of those people who needs to be perfect at something the first time, because reasons. I’ve been meaning to hit the gym regularly for years now, but I find myself falling off the wagon within days.
How do you maintain the discipline required to keep going to the gym?
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I feel you.
Things that helped me (sorry about the formatting; I’m still trying to figure that out):
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embracing the fact that learning new things means initially sucking at them and there’s no way around that. But vulnerability in an environment in which others feel similarly is a good thing because it can make it easier to strike up a friendship.
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if you can’t be consistent, be persistent. I’ve been working out for the past 6-7 years, with the exception of a yearlong stretch in because I had a suprapubic catheter and finding adaptive training is hard, especially in the middle of a pandemic. I eventually found one and we’ve been working together for well over two years, even though the cath came out 1.5 years ago. But the past six months have been stressful because of work. So there are weeks in which I only work out once, maybe twice. It’s not great, but it’s still better than nothing and vastly better than overtraining, which I did last year because I tried to use working out as a solution for all my stress and wound up with tennis elbow that took the rest of the year to rehab. But I’m still stronger than I was six months ago. Glacial progress is still progress!
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there’s nothing wrong with paying for knowledge from an expert, if you can do that. Working with a trainer has been super helpful in learning more about how to move with proper form and without getting hurt. I’ve applied those lessons to other forms of exercise that I do on my own (lately, it’s been steel mace workouts). I don’t think I’d have been able to learn on my own without hurting myself if I hadn’t first learned about the importance of seemingly little things, like breathing correctly.
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have a way to fill in the gaps in your routine. If I can’t go running because of poor air quality, I have steel maces and half a tire to pound on and I have an air bike if I’m limited to indoors activities or can’t be away from my desk for too long. If I’m injured, I have resistance bands and very light kettlebells
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