This New Year, Change Your Normal

Leave a comment January 7, 2014 drworobec

***This was originally written as a Guest Blog post for Momstown.ca.***

With the New Year upon us, it seems that the online world has exploded with ‘Top 5 Ways to Get Fit’ posts. This is not one of those posts.

You see, I believe the way to get fit is to be fit as a child and then stay fit as an adult. Huh? Yep, that’s my theory: it’s easier to stay fit than it is to get fit.

Every year, people all over the world make resolutions to get fit on January 1st. Often, these resolutions hold true for a month or two, and then the ‘get fit’ goal slips by the wayside. This is made quite clear in a big-box gym parking lot that is full in January and empty in March. I’m not saying you shouldn’t resolve to get fit, in fact, I hope that you do. Write it down, broadcast it, tell your friends. Make it your goal. But I hope that rather than saying ‘My resolution is to get in shape’, you say ‘My resolution is to change my lifestyle to make being in shape a normal part of life for my children’. See the difference?

So on Sunday morning, go for a run with your children. Put them in a stroller or on a bike and let them see you sweat. Let them see you get winded and take walk breaks and drink water. Let them see how good you feel afterwards. Take them for walks and swims and skates. Take them sledding and canoeing and hiking. Take them to high-school basketball games, community road races, and charity hockey games so that they can see other people being active and enjoying it. Make exercise a part of their life rather than a chore on their to-do list.

Normalcy is grown in childhood and accepted in adulthood. Change your normal.

This picture makes me think of warmer days gone by…

6:00 AM

Leave a comment August 13, 2013 drworobec

6am-clock1

So, you see, I am a morning person.

In Junior High, I was that kid who would wake up 20 minutes early to run around the block before school. In High School, I would bike over to the track to run intervals at the crack of dawn. In University and during my post-graduate schooling, I had been known to get up before 5am to get in a long run…. are you seeing a pattern? It seems only natural that 6am would become my preferred gym time when I started at Crossfit Altitude nearly four years ago.

As such, I have been a regular member of the morning crew since January 2010. That’s 3 years and 8 months, minus a 2-month break for my second baby. If I’ve averaged three 6am’s per week, that’s 588 are-you-crazy-to-be-getting-up-that-early-WODs (Crossfit lingo for workout-of-the-day). Instead of the usual 7am wakeup by my children at home, I drag myself out of bed at 5:30am while my house is still silent, and trade 90 minutes of blissful sleep for 60 minutes of sweat and camaraderie, effort and determination, accomplishment and improvement.

Back in 2010, the morning crew was sparse. There was a regular group of three or four of us, and a busy day was five or six. It is now a regular occurrence to have more than 15 people already well into their warmup at 5:55am. Amazing. My husband caught on to the morning-crew adrenaline a couple of years ago, when pregnancy nausea kept me in bed, and now he’s hooked as well… in fact, it’s become a battle in our house to see who gets that before-the-dawn spot.

The buzz surrounding the 6am class has grown. People are giving it a try. Usual evening gym-goers are coming to see what all the hype is about, what the people are about, what it’s like to start your day on such a high.

You think you can’t get out of bed? You can. You think we like getting up in the dark of the pre-dawn and the cold of the Winter? We don’t. But we do it anyway. And you can too.

Give it a try.

Come join us.

Do it Anyway

4 Comments July 30, 2013 drworobec

I am a competitive person, and I was faced with a big challenge this past weekend: a half-marathon ROW. Yes, you read that right… 21.1km on an erg.

You see, the Crossfit Games took place last weekend in California, and competitors were surprised with this endurance challenge two days before their three-day competition was to begin. The buzz around my gym soon changed from ‘wasn’t that workout announcement crazy?’ to ‘do you want to give that a try?’. Seven of us took the bait.

The calm before the storm.

I signed myself up last Thursday morning for Sunday’s morning’s event. That meant I had three full days to think about things. And worry about things. And worry, I did.

I worried about being undertrained. I worried about not being able to finish. I worried about what people would think if I quit. I worried about the pain. I worried about the blisters my hands would get. I worried about the mental stamina this would require. My worry brewed from lying just under the surface to full-on bubbling over on Saturday night- I packed and re-packed my gym bag three times, I set two alarms, and I paced footprints into the carpet in my hall. Then this conversation happened:

Husband: Why are you so nervous?
Me: I’m nervous about tomorrow. What if I don’t finish? What will people think?
Husband: Who cares? At least you tried.

Huh. That’s true, and that pretty much sums it up. At least I tried. After all, if you don’t push your limits, then you’ll never know what those limits are.

I was scared, I felt pressure, I feared judgement, and I did it anyway. The thing is, pressure is a perceived emotion. And so is judgement. You can only feel pressure if you perceive it that way, and you can only feel judgement if you allow it.

Don’t perceive it that way. Don’t allow it.

Do it anyway.