Lifestyle change
October 9, 2009
Because I haven’t been going to swim practice this past year, my parents decided to sign me out of swimming. I guess I can’t really blame them for doing that. It’s really my fault. I would only go to swim practice once a month and my parents were paying for me to do that (and sport teams these days aren’t cheap). So, now I am a part of no sport as an extracurricular and am two-faced about this predicament.
The “this is a good change” side:
- I will be able to manage when I want to exercise and when I don’t want to. I can determine how much I want to exercise everyday. I will no longer have to think of exercising as something that will take up three hours from my day.
- I don’t have to worry about being slow compared to the people on the team I was on. There is no more competition in my athletic life, which is really nice.
The “this is a bad change” side:
- I’m afraid I won’t exercise at all. I can set myself a goal to exercise every day but I’m afraid I still won’t. What if I slowly, but surely, cripple myself?
- I have to train myself to come up with decent training plans that will keep me in shape.
So, I guess there is a good side and bad side to this. I’ll see what happens.
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4 Comments
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Good luck. You’re never going to exercise again. Never.
Okay, maybe I’m just being cynical, but I think it is a lot easier when you have some sort of competition, some sort of pressure to exercise. I’ve always envied athletes because they have an excuse to get so fit and learn so many useful skills. I mean, the water polo players are ripped and tan just because of something that is part of their daily routine, that they don’t even think about. They go to practice and work out not because they need to keep up their vanity or health level (which go pretty low, beneath homework and all other obligations on the scale of priorities) but because they have to. Things are so much easier when they’re part of a routine and you have reasons for doing them and other people to do them with.
It’s kind of a sad thought, but I think people don’t really get stuff done unless they have to, even if it’s something enjoyable. Consider me and Spanish. I’ve always been trying to learn, but the phase always passes; even though I love learning languages, I don’t have the discipline to put in a few hours a week and do it. I never really got down to it until I started taking my Spanish class at DeAnza. The class is criminally easy and I feel like I’m practically cheating by showing up, but it really is helping me because it forces me to study. It makes it a part of my routine, so I don’t feel like I’m just embarking on a frivolous hobby and should be doing something else. I imagine being on a sport is similar. If you weren’t an athlete, working out for 3 hours a day would be beyond vanity, beyond insanity. But when it’s part of your daily routine you have a reason to.
In other words, your fitness is fucked. Welcome to the dark side! We have cookies!
Well, I hope you’re wrong about me staying out of shape because if being on a swim team didn’t motivate me to exercise, then I’m really in trouble…
On the bright side, maybe you’ll now exercise because you can no longer use the fact that you’re on a sports team as an excuse to say you’ll always get a chance to exercise later.
Also, it makes me laugh that one of your “Possibly Related Posts” is entitled “Be a Fit, Hip Sports Mom!”