I have always been fitness conscious and until last year, I had frequent football classes in school to keep me fit, but since DP started, I found myself too occupied to dedicate the same amount of time to football. In order to overcome my lethargy and gain fitness, I even temporarily joined a gym in grade 11. However, that too flared out. But when we entered quarantine due to Covid-19, I had no choice but to motivate myself and work out at home. In doing this, I taught myself to overcome the mental barriers I had set up for myself and tried to maintain consistency in my workouts. There were days when I felt lethargic and wanted to quit but I continued to push myself, even if it was just to cross out work out from my to-do list. In the process, I gained confidence and fitness – my posture visibly improved while doing some exercises and I could hold out exercises for longer. More than anything, it convinced me that I could do whatever I aimed for!

Lo1, Lo2, Lo3, Lo4, Lo5, Lo6

Before starting, I knew that my legs and glutes were my strength due to years of football but I struggled with arms and core. I made it a point to find workouts focused on improving my strength while also working on my weaknesses. I modified parts of my workout to make them more arms focused and made sure that I was doing easier versions of exercises I deemed too difficult. Moreover, while planning the workout, I already knew that I would be able to commit better if I took up a “challenge” that held me accountable day by day. So I ensured that rather than brainstorming my own workouts, I picked up small video challenges, for instance, I tried to do Chloe Ting & Popsugar’s challenges. I also knew that I needed external accountability and tried to find other people to follow the challenges with me or join me in my workouts. Moreover, I alternated the workouts to ensure that I was burning fat as well as building strength – I planned cardio and weight training workouts accordingly.  When I felt like I wouldn’t be able to complete the workouts, I allowed myself to change the set timings and tried to psychologically convince myself that the workouts would provide a break from studying and feel more strongly about working out.

An area where I struggled ethically and morally was that many highly recommended workout challenges were expensive and I was tempted to attempt to find pirated versions of the same. Instead, I chose to practice academic honesty and reminded myself of the struggles of all of the people financially impacted by COVID-19. Knowing that I would not be able to buy these workouts, I opted to use workouts on youtube where I could watch the ads (which provided good breaks!) to pay for the workouts ethically.

All in all, although I was very daunted by the challenge already, I found out that some conviction and appropriate planning got me to stick through the workouts. There was a time when I switched challenges but ended up not working out for about 2 weeks. But I chose to opt for the external accountability technique to make sure that I got started, knowing that the momentum would carry me through, and had my parents remind me and take updates.

In the end, I am grateful that I was left option-less and pushed to break my mental barriers.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW3FM_qznt0[/embedyt]