Do you have a weekly treat for yourself?

I work out with a personal trainer every week. Does that sound decadent or frivolous?  The first time someone commented that I must be rich to afford a trainer every week I was taken aback. As a nurse, and now as a teacher, I can assure you that I'm not rich. I budget every week to make ends meet and get my family what each person needs. One thing that I budget for is my family's gym membership and my husband's and my weekly appointment with Bryce at www.bryceatkins.com. It is a treat that I need and enjoy each week.

When the comment of not being rich enough to afford a trainer was said, I thought about it. Was I being frivolous? There are many things that people choose to spend their money on as a "treat" instead of a "necessity" -- fancy coffees on the way to work, happy hour drinks on Friday nights, sport tickets, concert tickets, enough shoes to fill a closet, weekly housekeeper visits, and other smaller sweets and treats that sneak into our lives and homes without much thought. These are not things that I spend my money on, but I make sure that I have put aside money each month for my trainer.

I don't consider my weekly training session as a splurge (something I might feel guilty about spending the money for), but as a treat. It is something I do for myself that makes me feel good and that feeling last through out the week. I can workout on my own, and do 2-3 times a week at the gym. But for 1 day a week, I have someone who knows me very well, mix things up in my workout routine, pushes me past my comfort zone, and checks on my form. Working out with Bryce also gives me a different kind of accountability. I want to use the workouts between our appointments to continue what I do with him in order to workout that much harder the next week.

Everyone should give themselves a weekly treat that they don't feel guilty about, but makes them feel better or makes them enjoy their week just a little more. I highly recommend investing your "treat" budget for at least a few sessions with a personal trainer. It will help you set up some routines that help you meet your personal fitness goals or grow more as an athlete as you set up new, more challenging goals, or prevent getting in a rut  of monotonous or mundane workouts. I choose to spend 1 hour a week with Bryce challenging me in ways that I can't do on my own. What is your own weekly treat?

Does solo mean alone?

When I first started working out I wanted to do it alone. I didn't have the confidence to share it with anyone except my trainer. I felt very vulnerable and awkward, as if I was pretending to be an athlete. As I got more comfortable with myself and my physical efforts,  I found that I wanted to share my experiences, good and bad, with someone else. The most obvious person would be my husband, but he was avoiding working out at all costs at that time. He didn't want to share in my experiences as much as I wanted him to. My family and friends were supportive, but I could tell that some of them couldn't understand the change that had come over me.

Fast forward a year and I have created a network of support with those same friends and family. I still enjoy working out alone most of the time. It is my time to sort thoughts out, conquer demons, and push myself beyond what I am comfortable doing. I look forward to my training sessions with Bryce once a week, but beyond that I do my runs and training sessions solo. But I don't feel alone in the process. My husband has ventured into the gym and now goes regularly 3 times a week. He is reluctant to work out with me. Instead of feeling resentful about that, he and I share time outside the gym. Comparing and talking about our workout sessions has become a typical dinner conversation over the past few months. I was even able to come up with a monthly challenge that Brian agreed to do with me -- 1 minute planks every day for the month of September. That is a new venture for us to do together. We both understand and support each other's separate and personal fitness journey. Our journeys are different, but our healthy outcomes are similar. We share and support each other, even though we workout separately.

There might come a time where I find a training partner who has similar workout methods and goals to train with, but until then, I am content finding support away from my training sessions and my runs. My friends and family are there to celebrate my victories with and commiserate in my frustrations and sore muscles. I work out solo, but not alone.

Preplan to overcome desires

My reward for working an hour after school on Friday was a cold, rainy afternoon. Life is ironic at time.  It would not have been that bad, except that I had a 4-mile run scheduled. After a long week of school, it would have been so easy to just scrap the run and enjoy the evening with my husband. But I had scheduled my run and so I treated myself to run on the trail where there was some tree coverage from the rain. If I had not purposefully planned not only the run, but the distance, I would have had an easier time of skipping it altogether. Not that I didn't think about it on about mile 3, but I knew that I had already written down what I was doing and I didn't want to go back on my own schedule. I was faced with similar temptations on my 5-mile run before an early football game on Saturday morning and a bench press session on Sunday afternoon when a nap would have been greatly enjoyed.  I have learned that I have to do more than just plan a time for my runs and training sessions, I have to decide what I am going to accomplish each time. I write down the length of the run or the exercises I plan on doing, including weights, reps, and sets that I will accomplish. It is a contract with myself that I will do. Taking out the guess work takes out the negotiation with myself. Instead of planning on doing a workout .... I plan it, write it down, and then I do it. It sounds easier than it is and it takes practice and planning on a daily basis just like any habit. The goal setting and positive mental chat is something I have had to learn from my trainer this past year. The payoff is that I feel good about following through with my plans that will get me closer to my goals. And running 9 miles in less than 18 hours and having a 90 minute lifting session makes me feel productive with my weekend. Taking care of myself takes time to plan and do, but it is worth it. I am worth it.

My anniversary to my beginning

This week marks my one year anniversary of starting strength training with a trainer. I was lucky enough to know my trainer because he was also my counselor. His philosophy was to have a healthy body, mind, and spirit. Bryce was starting his new life journey by setting up his life coaching business, Legacy Life Training. When he shared this news with me I knew that one of my prayers had been answered. I had prayed for a person to show me how to get stronger physically after I had spent one year getting emotionally stronger. Bryce opened that door for me and I walked through with some conditions. My main condition was that I wanted to have him show me a 20 minute all-body workout that I could do in my own home so that no one would see me. I didn't think that I could do more than 20 minutes 3 times a week. And I knew that I could never workout in front of others. I felt safer doing it all by myself. I smile as I type this because one year later I have made my way into a gym working out in front of others, although I realize that no one is watching me because they are busy with their own workouts. In March I ventured into the gym to use heavier weights than I had at home. I had never squatted, dead-lifted, or bench-pressed with free weights.  Earlier this summer Bryce challenged me to set some goals that were big enough to scare me. So after some thought and wavering back and forth with myself, I decided to train and compete in a local power-lifting competition in July of 2015. Boy is that a change from a year ago. Now I am reading power-lifting books and watching videos from other female lifters to learn the correct form and rules of competition, and using Bryce's training and my research to write my own training plans for the 3 lifting disciplines I am training for.
I realize that writing is not my passion, but keeping track of my journey is something that I want to do so that I can see my own progress, physically and emotionally. During my training session with Bryce today he suggested that I blog about this leg of my journey. So here I am writing my first post in my very own blog. I want to track my mental workouts, as well as my physical workouts, as I train for my end goal, the Show-Me Games in July 2015. I expect that I will use this blog to work through my "blocks", vent through my frustrations, and celebrate my successes. I invite whoever has worked for a challenge that scares you so much that you get queasy just thinking about it to check in with me every once in awhile. As I get started in another new venture, blogging, I see new fears popping up, but I feel that this will be a good challenge to tackle too.