It Hasn't Been All Bad, I Guess

Workout-wise, I'm being a lot more consistent and persistent than I was last year.

Don't get me wrong.  So far, 2020 has been a dumpster-fire of disastrously epic proportions.  I don't have to explain why, because you've been here for it, too, Babies.  Have you ever!

Yesterday while I was working out in my gym, though, I happened to glance up at the paper pictured on the left here.  I keep track of every workout I do in my logbook, and last year, I started keeping track of each month, figuring up the percentage of days I worked out.

For a reputed mathophobe, I really do get all hot-and-bothered by analytics, to a degree.  I track everything in that workout log of mine, for instance.  Calories burned each workout, max heart rate, average heart rate, how much time I spend in each heart rate zone, time spent.  Then I take that data at the end of each workout and figure percents.  I've never known why I do this, really.  It isn't like I do anything with the data beyond that.  As I fill the pages of each workout log I make, it gives me a sense of accomplishment, I guess, especially because the results of my hard work in the gym don't always show on the scale or in my appearance.  At least I can go back to the logs and see I did something, and therefore, I should keep going. 

Yesterday, it hit me why I transfer the monthly days worked out to paper and why I happened to hang that paper up at the front of my workout space this time.  Like I said, I've felt like 2020 has been a wasted year.  I took two weeks off from the gym recently- the last week of April and the first week of May.  I have been beating myself up for that fourteen-day slide ever since.  I keep on keepin' on, but I also keep on kickin' myself for taking that time off, for no good reason, other than I just couldn't wrap my head around gymming it then.

I was right in the middle of puddle-jumpers yesterday morning, something I hate, and I glanced at that sheet of paper.  I noticed that despite everything 2020 has brought, I am way ahead from a consistency perspective than I was at this time in 2019.  And if I had tracked data this way in 2017 and 2018, I'd be way ahead of what I was in those years, too.  I know I would. 

Before 2019, I'd start out strong in January, usually, then get sick in February at some point, giving myself permission to take off weeks at a time as I recovered from whatever illness I contracted.  Then in the summer, I'd go along fairly well until we'd go on vacation and lose all sense of ambition.  I'd pick up the gym again right around the time school would be starting, because Back to School is a natural time to begin again.  I'd chug along pretty well until either injury or illness would knock me out sometime in October.  And by the time you're into the "Ber" months, you might as well just pack it in until New Year's, because you've got the HallowThanksMas series of holidays and all the prep and travel and frenzy that surrounds that time of year. 

This year, I have stayed the course far better than I have in recent memory.  Probably the last 10 years, anyway.  And I'm glad I obsessively kept that data and posted it where I could see it yesterday morning, because it reminded me that I've had my setbacks and my falling-downs, but ultimately, I'm trending upwards.  And if that's all I get out of this kind of data that I'm collecting and processing about myself, it's worth the extra time at the end of a workout that I spend, writing it all down.  I have proof that I can see with my eyes and my brain that I am doing something right and I'm making progress. 

This helps me keep on keepin' on. 

Which is what I plan to do.  In the gym, as well as in Life. 

How 'bout it?