The three virtues of a calisthenic workout regimen

Audio recording of the post, ‘The three virtues of a calisthenic workout regimen’

It has been months now that I have been doing the same workout, a calisthenics workout, and I wanted to reflect on what I’ve learned so far.

I’d say:

  • patience
  • consistency
  • reflection

Patience

You can’t rush a routine. You have to warm up. You have to practice drills. You have to perform difficult exercises. You have to cool down after. And you have to do each step in order.

The only way you can empower the next step in the routine without injury is by patiently applying yourself to each step in the present moment.

Consistency

You can be sure you are making progress by testing today’s performance against the previous performance. The way you do this is by keeping a standard routine going.

Yes, that’s right.

The workout is exactly the same. The reps and sets are exactly the same. Every time, same routine.

Doing the same routine hundreds of times, iteration after iteration, will show you where you’ve changed and where you are going to change. But the only way you get there is by being consistent.

Reflection

When you have patiently and consistently applied yourself, you are going to ask your self why and what are you doing.

Is this an exercise in futility? Are we actually getting better around here?

Ways that you can expedite your progress and bolster your patience and consistency with your process is to ask your self primed-for-positivity kinds of questions. Here are a few examples:

  • What have I done well in this past performance?
  • What do I want to improve on?
  • How can I prepare for that improvement?

With proper reflection, you will open your mind to what actions you are doing right, what is wanting to be improved and where to go from here now that improvements have been identified.

My guess is that if you patiently apply the improvements in a consistent way…

You get the idea.

Wrap up

I am about to head over to the gym and these were my thoughts about the work out I have coming up today. I hope that you know, my readers, that working out on a regular basis has been one of the most important decisions I have made with my life. And the benefits that have come from it are abundant and profound. Both of which I would love to share with you.

I’d hope you’d share what you have learned from your fitness regimen. I don’t know everything and I love to learn from others.

So with that, I turn the time over to you, what have you learned in your workouts lately?

Sound body, sound mind, sound leader

Audio recording of the post, ‘Sound body, sound mind, sound leader”

Coming to you live from the gym. Just got done with my routine; well, most of it anyways. Still healing.

The thing I wanted to share today is an article that someone shared with me on Mastodon. Essentially the article goes over the bio-mechanical processes that counter-act aging and age-related diseases as a result of Physical Activity. Props goes out to ghose for the great share.

In addition to that, I wanted to share a sound bit I found on Mastodon courtesy of tinfoil-hat. It is an incredible thing to hear leaders proclaim the importance of a strong physical culture as well as live it too.

<audio clip>

Really admirable.

So with that, I hope you’ll take an hour out of your day to cultivate your mind by cultivating your strength.

Returning home from a mini-retirement after a month abroad; or, a hard-learned lesson soaked in blood

I sit at my computer in a pool of blood and around me are the relics of who I was before this mini-retirement.

To better preface, sometime over the 18 hours of traveling home, carrying mine and my wife’s backpack by foot, taxi and airplane, I tore a hemorrhoid I had develop in few days leading up to our flight home from Mexico.

Yes. Disgusting.

What’s more, my readers, is that the crust and congeal I feel beneath me is a quaint reminder. Of what, you ask?

That the way I was living before Mexico, before this mini-vacation, this mini-retirement, was a vain-foolish effort to push my hell-bent mania into being. And it took the food, people and countryside of another country to pop that sick way of living and leave me embarrassingly bloody.

My readers, this of course is not the most flattering topic to broach with you – but you too are pushing too hard. You are huffing and puffing, sweating even, to make your life into something – and for what?

More money? A nicer car? A larger place to live?

Abandoning the life I had here in the states has brought me to a profound sense of humility. I was sick, my readers, ill even, with the over-reaching ambition to make what I felt in my gut to be true a reality for all way too soon. And for what?

Another achieved accomplishment? A validated sense of self? A holier-than-thou spirit?

Aye… so much pushing and fighting, and now I am left with pain, remorse, and an opportunity to take the time to heal from who I was.

Slow down my friends, we all know that traditional retirement is a scam, that the pursuit of riches beyond measure doesn’t add up, and that the best things in life are free/cheap/abundant. Let the process unfold with you and enjoy every moment of it.

Or prepare to sit in the bloody mess of who you are.