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Motivation

Recipe for Recovery

In my last post, I described my setback.  How I’ve been lacking discipline and allowing bad habits to creep back in my life. I also described how I hurt my groin. In this post, I’ll write my Recipe for Recovery and how I am recovering from my groin injury.

  1. Rest and Relaxation
    Well, For the first few weeks after the self-diagnosed groin pull, I just iced my groin and rested.
  2. Stretching and low intensity
    I re-introduced my stretching and really slow walking with very low incline. This is difficult for me. I love to have the incline at 6 or 10. It keeps my Heart Rate up. At low inclines and low speeds, my heart rate doesn’t rise as much as I’d like.
  3. Real relaxing.
    I had a family vacation at Disney World. Although, I had to walk all over creation. My leg hurt, but was bearable. Mentally, it was quite nice to break from the couch potato time. In fact, I tried my best during the vacation to stay off email, twitter, Facebook, and the internet in general. If I had screen time it was with the kindle app.
  4. Return to low-intensity training
    My groin had a set-back due to all the walking at Disney. So, I went back to slow walking, but I added swimming in the pool and stretching.
  5. Slowly increase intensity.
    Only recently, have I re-introduced my dumbbell exercises and weight lifting. Although, I’ve kept my squats workout simple.
  6. A return to Books.
    Instead of TV watching (since I’m not on the treadmill or elliptical as much), I’ve been reading a ton more. Not just internet articles either. I’ve been reading books. Normally, I’m reading two to three books at time time. I stopped that since the Internet candy reading supplanted much of that.
  7. Mix in better weather.
    I’ve been able to get out on the bicycle a few times. I’ve been able to walk outside, play with the kids at the park.  I know I don’t have any control, but getting out in the Sun really does help the body.
  8. Friendly Challenge and competition.
    My brother dared me to a little challenge both physically and creatively.  It jump started my motivation to reign in my eating habits.

This is where I’m at:

Its really a bummer when you want to exercise, but physically you shouldn’t. I was planning on doing two or three Olympic Triathlon races this summer along with a few smaller warm-ups mixed in. I’m not sure that’s happening. I’m only committed to doing the 2011 Chicago Olympic Triathlon.  I still would like to add a long bike ride and possibly a shorter Triathlon, but I haven’t found much yet.

As my bad habits came back in droves, so have my good habits returned.  As soon as I made a commitment to myself to reign in my eating habits, my exercise habits followed.  Add in, I’m blogging a bit more, I’m doing some new creative work.  I have my ups and downs, but I know I’m on the road to recovery.  In my next post, I will take a look at lessons I’ve learned while going through this process.

1Photo source: National Library NZ on The Commons

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