Hey everyone! How are your New Year's resolutions doing? Are you nailing them all or are you part of us, the "ok, let's count January as a warm-up before we do great things in February" team? If you resonate with the second option, don't worry! Nobody plans on being part of this team, especially me. Moreover, I actually planned and structured all my resolutions into 12 well-thought steps.
I have already explained the concept of 12-months-challenge on my Instagram Account (check januarychallenge in my Highlights). Shortly said: it's about implementing one resolution at a time. That means that you have to think of 12 habits that you need in your life and start to work on one of them for 30/31 days.
The choice for the first challenge was obvious- after all the Christmas and New Year food overload, I needed a sporty resolution/habit. This is how #onehourcardio and #januarychallenge started! It was something I would enjoy, yet something new to my routine. Everything actually looked nice, well-structured and meant to succeed.
The first 10 days went FLAWLESS! I was happily going to the gym, no matter how late it was (even after a party *again, check the januarychallenge highlight). I had some physical issues on the first day (as I over-estimated myself and completely ignored tracking my pulse), but from the second day on I couldn't enjoy my training more.
Beginning with day 11 I've got extremely creative in finding out excuses not to go to the gym. First I was skiing (which is already a physical activity, right?), then I was very very ill (I had a fever of 37 degrees Celcius for 3 hours) and many many more. So how come? How could I fail right at the first resolution?
1. One hour of cardio was not a one-hour activity
Although I was doing the cardio for 60 minutes (which is really not a lot), I actually needed 30 minutes to get to the gym (+ 30 minutes back), 30 minutes for stretching and 25 minutes, all in all, to change and take a shower (yes, I am super slow). I was spending 3 hours on this challenge whereby only 1 hour was of actual value-creating.
2. It started to feel meaningless
Even if I had some little difficulties at the beginning, I've got pretty quickly back on track and was doing almost effortlessly the cardio. Yet, although I was changing the type of machine every day, I started to get the feeling that there was no progression behind I simply got bored.
3. Guilt
I am not the best student in my study program, but I've also never failed an exam before. Now imagine how much it hit me when I didn't pass one of the biggest ones. I changed my learning system and spent a lot of time getting ready for the retake. Still, I was so afraid to fail again, that I had the feeling that doing anything besides studying was wrong (which is obviously not true).
Long story short, yes #januarychallenge and #onecardio were a big fail.
Would I recommend it to someone? Rather not, as it becomes pretty monotonous.
What would I do differently? Probably set a final goal ( eg. after one month I want to run 10 km in 20 minutes) rather than just focus on one activity.
Is this challenge even a good idea?
Let's think out loud about it!
- Lumința Florea
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