(Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 and 11)
Let's talk about juggling.
Juggling is the sort of thing that is learned in stages: one object at a time. First you learn to handle one bean bag, tossing it from hand to hand, feeling its weight. Then two, passing the first from hand to hand while the other comes down from the top of the arc. Eventually you can add more: three, then four. Once you can handle four bean bags, you're looking pretty impressive.
This is where you are, busy person that you are, handling your four bean bags nicely, hardly ever dropping one. And if you've never really managed to fit personal exercise in your life, I'm not asking you to add one more bean bag. I'm asking you to juggle three bean bags and a bowling pin.
How are you going to do this? Do you start by swapping one bean bag for one bowling pin? Give it a try if you like, but please, when everything winds up on the floor, I hope you won't tell yourself "Bowling pins are not for me." No, the way to learn to do it is to become a beginner all over again: set down ALL the bean bags and pick up just the one bowling pin. Toss it back and forth, feel its weight, how the new size, shape, and weight changes the timing of your tosses. It doesn't behave the same as the things you're used to handling, and you need to understand how it rotates, how it smacks into your palm. Those bean bags aren't gone forver, they're just waiting: Once you get good at tossing and catching that bowling pin all by itself, then you can start adding the bean bags back, one at a time.
What are these bean bags?
- some of your kids' lessons and classes
- some of the work you put into meal preparation and cleanup (please, do not sacrifice planning time---but be willing to plan simpler fare)
- some of the work your family puts into housekeeping and home projects
- some of your family's recreational activities
- daily Mass, weekly holy hour, and other scheduled devotions (I am not a spiritual director, BUT... see this fantastic post by Jen at Conversion Diary. Remember, we have a minimum obligation for a reason... and mothers of families have got different duties from cloistered contempatives, however attractive their duty-set can sound sometimes.
- volunteer work and other obligations you've made to people outside your family
These are all bean bags that can be set aside, temporarily, to produce the time you need to learn to juggle the awkward, scary bowling pin of personal exercise. Get good at the bowling pin, and you can start adding the beanbags back one at a time. If you think about paring these activities less as "quitting" and more as "a temporary measure that is part of my plan to increase my weekly physical activity" perhaps it will be easier. I suggest that you and your family set some date several months out---not a date to add things back in, but a date to re-evaluate whether to add something back in.
* * *
So... how much time do you need to scavenge? There's a short answer.
Start with less. Leave room for more.
There is a useful minimum, and at that minimum you should begin. It is not "30 minutes of vigorous exercise, three times a week," no matter what the researchers say. The minimum amount for beginners is "enough to feel like a real change. " It is enough for you to say, "I am regularly exercising. It's not a LOT, not yet, but it is certainly regular." It is the amount that sends a signal to yourself that you are taking a real step and are really the kind of person who gets regular exercise. It is the beginning of working up to the new you.
Assuming that the single biggest hurdle preventing you from of getting regular exercise is finding the time and showing up for it, there are two basic ways to start small and work up to more: ultra-short daily sessions, to be gradually lengthened; or normal-length sessions, to be gradually made more intense and possibly more frequent. I suggest beginning with one or the other:
(a) Five minutes a day OR
(b) Two sessions (20-60 minutes) a week.
In one approach, you'll begin with very short blocks of time, taken every day, and gradually lengthen them. Ultrashort sessions are workable in "easy-on, easy-off" scenarios, such as walking on a home treadmill (see shovelglove.com for another idea that's well outside the box). I suspect this approach is best for people who begin with profound physical challenges and need to work up verrrrry slowly towards sustaining normal activity. Five minutes every day can be slowly increased to six minutes, to ten, and so on (no more than ten percent increase per week). Once you get up to a time block long enough to need to be "fit" into your schedule --- somewhere between twenty and sixty minutes --- you can begin increasing the intensity and decreasing the frequency, if you like. You can even switch to the twice-a-week approach.
I took that approach, the twice-a-week approach. This is where you start if you settle on a scenario that demands longer time blocks from the very beginning---enrolling in a thirty-minute exercise class, or using a gym you have to drive to, or deciding to ride your bike to work. I suggest beginning with twice a week. I can write more about this from experience, because this is how I started swimming. I imagined that a swimmer should swim forty minutes, several times a week; so I started swimming forty minutes, twice a week.
Twice a week is enough to shake up your weekly schedule, to make a real change, one that allows you to do different things on different days. It's enough that one missed day doesn't equal "Oh man, I missed a whole week." It is enough to get your attention.
Is it enough to turn you into that person you imagined you might become? Did you think that she probably got to the gym three or four times a week? If so, don't forget that; but save it for later. Twice a week is not inferior to three times a week; it is the necessary step that comes before three times a week.
Believe me, once you get past the initial thrill of something different, twice a week will feel difficult enough. Not the actual exercise, most likely, but the arrangements, the schedule changes, the working out who has the kids when, the asking for help from a friend. Perhaps real courage will be called for, to appear where you weren't before, feeling that you don't belong; that can be exhausting. (I still remember how nervous I was the first few times I had to share a lane at the pool! I always over exerted myself, thinking if I was too slow I'd annoy the other swimmers.) Go easy on yourself. Twice a week is a really good beginning. And you can go on being a beginner for a long time.Stay there until twice a week feels easy. Until you've had experience fitting it in through various obstacles and challenges, until you've had to use your backup plan (more on that later), until you've really learned and internalized that you can make a plan and stick to it. You can stay there as long as you need to. I stayed there for a year, a whole year at twice a week and no more. That was the first year I never quit, the year I committed to only twice a week, the year I committed NOT to increase it to three.
When you begin at twice a week, you should set aside the whole block of time you hope for, even if you're not yet physically able to exert yourself for that long. If you hope to run on the treadmill for thirty minutes, but you can only manage to run for two minutes, then begin by running for two minutes and walking for twenty-eight. If you hope to swim for forty minutes (and it takes twenty to shower and change), then set aside that whole hour, even if you can only swim for twenty; spend the twenty extra minutes stretching, or sitting in the whirlpool, or practicing your breathing. You have months to work your way up to filling the whole time block with vigorous exertion. If the time block is already set aside, you are free to use the whole in the way that is best for you exactly where you are.
Now a word about consistency. Your a-number-one priority is not to complete a workout, but to show up for it. If you start, but you quit early, you have still done the most important thing: you have shown up. Give yourself credit for arriving at the gym, getting changed, and getting started. Give yourself credit for stepping onto the treadmill in your house and turning it on. Did you plan thirty minutes? If you finish ten minutes, you didn't do "ten minutes instead of thirty," you did ten minutes instead of nothing. Fantastic! Did you plan five minutes today? If you stop after one minute, you didn't do "one minute instead of five," you did one minute instead of nothing. You get a gold star!
When the habit of consistently showing up is well and truly established, then you can raise your expectations of performance. For now: Schedule the time, and show up. Put down the bean bags, promise yourself you'll revisit them later; pick up that bowling pin and toss it around a little. See how it feels. Give it time: a few weeks for certain, maybe months.
But, of course, the time block is only part of the scenario. In the next post I'll write about place and path. choosing a sport. (Corrected 3/10/09)
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