30-day Habits: Habits for January

“Sometimes I get the feeling that we're just a bunch of habits. The gestures we repeat over and over, they're just our need to be recognized. Without them, we'd be unidentifiable. We have to reinvent ourselves every minute.”
― Nicole Krauss, Man Walks Into a Room

The third habit for January is Exercise - yep, the same as many other people.

This is to make the body more effective - maybe no stretching!

For those wanting to know how to make exercise a habit, I have stolen from this fantastic site the following:

Set a time. Decide whether you’re more likely to stick with it in the morning or lunchtime or evening, and stick with that time. I’ve set the time of 5:30 a.m. every day, and I’m trying my best not to vary from that time. If you don’t set a time, you’re more likely to put it off until you have more time or energy, and then put it off until the next day. Soon, it’s not a habit at all.

Send yourself a reminder. I use Memo to Me, but there are a number of ways to send yourself an email or text reminder, so you’ll never forget. Then, when you get the reminder, do it right away. Don’t brook any delays.

Start small. This is perhaps the most useful suggestion of all. When I start exercising, I always start with lots of energy, enthusiasm and ambition. I think I can do more than I can. However, doing too much in the beginning leads to burnout, which leads to quitting your habit. When you first try to make exercise a daily habit, chances are, your body won’t be used to that kind of stress. The key: only do 20 minutes in the beginning, and do it nice and easy. Nothing hard. Even 10-15 minutes is fine at first, if you’re just starting out. The key is to get out there, get your body slowly used to daily exercise, and form that habit.

Progress later. Once your body is used to daily exercise, you can slowly start to increase the amount and intensity of your exercise. Wait at least two weeks before starting to increase — that’s the minimum your body needs to adjust. Once it begins to feel way too easy, you can start increasing the length of your workouts, to 30 and then 40 minutes, and eventually up to an hour. Once you do that, you can gradually increase the intensity — running faster or harder, for example. Try not to increase both distance and intensity at the same time.

Make it pleasurable. If you associate a habit with pain, you will shy away from it. But if it’s fun, you’ll look forward to doing it. That’s why, in this beginning stage of my new habit, I’ve been focusing on pleasure. I go slowly, enjoying the scenery, the fresh morning air, the beautiful sky as the sun rises, the quiet time of solitude and contemplation. It’s actually something I enjoy doing. An mp3 player with some great music helps.

Lay out your gear. The fewer obstacles and less friction there is in forming your new habit, the more likely you are to be successful. If you have to not only wake up early but get a bunch of gear together while half awake, you might just want to go back into bed. But if you lay out your workout clothes and shoes and watch and mp3 player, or whatever you need for your exercise, you’ll be ready to go with no friction at all.

Just head out the door. My rule is just to get my running shoes on and get out the door. I don’t worry about how long I have to go or how hard it will be. Just get out and get started. Once I’ve done that, it’s a piece of cake.

Mix it up. One thing I like about triathlon training is that daily exercise isn’t boring — instead of running every single day, now I’ve got a variety of sports to do, and that makes it much more interesting. But perhaps just as important is that with each sport, I’m using different muscles, especially with swimming. Sure, some of the same muscles are used, but they’re used differently with different stresses on them. What that means is that I’m not pounding the same muscles, every day. That gives them a chance to recover, because without recovery, you’re just breaking your muscles down over and over.

Have a relative rest day. Again, recovery is very important. Which is why you need to give your body a chance to rest. If you’re taking it easy, and only doing 20 minutes, you should be OK without rest days. But it’s still good to have one day of rest, where you’re not doing the same exercises as the other six days. You don’t want to skip the day completely, because then you’re not being consistent with your habit. That’s why I do one day of strength training, where I don’t use the same muscles as swimming, biking and running. If you need more rest, you could just do 20 minutes of walking, or even just a session of meditation. The key is to do something every day, preferably something that gets you moving (meditation isn’t the best example, but at least you’d be doing something) and keeps your habit formation going.

Don’t skip a day. It’s easy to say, “No problem, I’ve been doing it for five days … I’ll just skip today!” But that will make your habit formation harder. Consistency is key, so try not to skip a single day. If you do, don’t beat yourself up, don’t judge, don’t feel bad — everyone messes up sometimes, and habit formation is a skill that requires practice. Just start your 30-day challenge over again, and try to identify the obstacle that led to your skipping a day and prepare for it this time.

My exercise habit is very specific.

I am going to set myself a series of challenges using the information at Neil Arey's site What i like about this site is that a) Neil replies to emails promptly without trying to sell anything and b) all the stuff (so far) there is FREE.

I have downloaded the following challenges:

1. 30-day flexibility challenge
2. 30 days of strength
3. Splits in 30 days

I will also be using routines from Chris Zaremba's site

Always trying to make sure I do the exercises correctly

For me, the important thing is consistency of exercising i.e. to exercise at specific times and to mix up the workouts. My testosterone will increase and my metabolism will speed up

Therefore I will be doing strength exercises and also (from the Mercola site ) a mixture:

Stand Up Every 15 Minutes. While not intuitively obvious, emerging evidence clearly shows that even highly fit people who exceed the expert exercise recommendations are headed for premature death if they sit for long periods of time. My interview with NASA scientist Dr. Joan Vernikos goes into great detail why this is so, and what you can do about it.
Interval (Anaerobic) Training: This is when you alternate short bursts of high-intensity exercise with gentle recovery periods.
Strength Training: Rounding out your exercise program with a 1-set strength training routine will ensure that you're really optimizing the possible health benefits of a regular exercise program. You can also "up" the intensity by slowing it down. For more information about using super slow weight training as a form of high intensity interval exercise, please see my interview with Dr. Doug McGuff.
Core Exercises: Your body has 29 core muscles located mostly in your back, abdomen and pelvis. This group of muscles provides the foundation for movement throughout your entire body, and strengthening them can help protect and support your back, make your spine and body less prone to injury, and help you gain greater balance and stability.

Foundation Training, created by Dr. Eric Goodman, is an integral first step of a larger program he calls "Modern Moveology," which consists of a catalog of exercises. Postural exercises such as those taught in Foundation Training are critical not just for properly supporting your frame during daily activities; they also retrain your body so you can safely perform high-intensity exercises without risking injury. Exercise programs like Pilates and yoga are also great for strengthening your core muscles, as are specific exercises you can learn from a personal trainer.

Stretching: My favorite type of stretching is active isolated stretches. With Active Isolated Stretching, you hold each stretch for only two seconds, which works with your body's natural physiological makeup to improve circulation and increase the elasticity of muscle joints. This technique also allows your body to repair itself and prepare for daily activity. You can also use devices like the Power Plate to help you stretch.

So really as long as there is a mixture of intensity, strength, flexibility etc - that'll suit me. I might follow one of these plans and of course, be careful what I eat after exercise

Here are some exercise hacks:

Start slow.

Increase but gradually.

Crank it up.

Schedule workouts.
Make it a habit.
Forget about weight loss.
Forget the gym.
Reward yourself.
Do a 30-day Challenge.
Join an online group.
Post your results on your blog.
Do a journal.
Make it fun!
Fuel up..
Hydrate.
Get a workout buddy.
Get good clothes.
Put a cover model on your fridge..
Change it up.
Do it early in the morning.).
Squeeze it in during lunch.
First thing after work.
A little and often.
Just lace up. Join a race.
Get good gear..
Forget about the gear.
The 10 percent rule..
Rest. It’s important.
Hard, then easy.
Listen to your body..
Strength is good.
Set goals.
Take photos of yourself.
Workout first, diet later.
Star chart.
Get a coach.
Join the club.
No pain … that’s good.
On stretching.
Go for the long haul.

For the context of the above, read here