I’m still always slightly surprised each time someone is shocked upon discovering that I wake up at 3:30 a.m. Mon-Fri and am at the gym when it opens at 5.  It’s not something I usually think about.  For the most part, the only time it comes into my head is when there is an evening event and I have to decide whether it’s worth staying up for.  Otherwise, I just arrange my day with 3:30 a.m. as a given and plan the rest of day accordingly.

I understand people’s surprise.  It’s just that I’m so far from that now that I don’t even think about it.  It is not until someone mentions it and I stand outside myself and think about it that I remember feeling the same way when I heard the absolutely fabulous Ernestine Shepard (if you don’t know who she is, you should definitely click on the link!) say that this was her wake up time and I, too, was shocked (at 74 years old, looking like 22, Ernestine is my gym muse).  Given the world we live in, it sounds crazy when I think about it.  But, I rarely do.

But, I don’t get up so early because I want to or because I don’t want to sleep.  I do it because after a lifetime of coming at it from many different angles, I finally understand what I need in order for working out to work for me.

The truth is, I am a closet workaholic (more like in the closet with the light on…). I can sit at a project and work from the moment I wake up till my body screams for me to go to bed.  Once I get started, it takes on a life of its own and as Robert Frost says in his poem, “The Road Not Taken,”  as “way leads on to way” I know I am not going to stop to put working out in my day.  One time I wrote a 600-page book in 4 days.  If I hadn’t dated it, I wouldn’t have believed it myself.  So, since I know I can’t get up and begin working at any project or I won’t stop, I have to get up and head out.  I have to sneak up on the gym and do it before I get my day started.  That way, it’s done, out of the way, and before I can protest, it’s over by the time most people are just beginning their day.

Protest? Sure, I protest.  Sort of.  I only do it sometimes and then, I don’t dwell on it. I tell myself to shut up and be glad I am strong and healthy and blessed enough to be able to work out.  So many people can’t and wish they could.

In Steven Pressfield and Shawn Coyne’s 2012 book, The War of Art, they talk about our natural reticence to try to talk ourselves out of doing something we may otherwise want to do.  Like wanting to, and being able to create art but, for some reason, not doing it.  Or wanting to work out and not doing it because we talk ourselves out of it.  They say us not letting ourselves do or talking ourselves out of it is like gravity.  It is a natural, normal force that is simply there.  We deal with gravity every minute of every day.  But, the fact that gravity exists and wants to pull everything down to the ground doesn’t mean we don’t keep putting one foot in front of the other and walking.

I always think of this when I’m protesting and it brings me back to reality.  The protest isn’t real.  It’s just noise.  Just because I think it doesn’t make it real.  I do not give myself the luxury (and you need to know that it is truly a luxury) to think about what I am doing when the alarm goes off at 3:30.  If I stop and think about it for even a moment, I’d snuggle back under the delicious quilts I made by hand and go right back to sleep.

Instead, I simply get up and get my day started.  I don’t defeat myself by working out on an empty stomach, so breakfast is first.  It’s usually my biggest meal of the day. I cook (yep, cook–I just realized that it’s about the only meal I do cook!) while I get ready for the hot tub. My outdoor hot tub is where I begin exercising to warm up myself and my body. It is a gift I give myself each day. Rain or shine, freezing or sizzling, I’m there.  There is little more delicious than climbing into it on a freezing day like today, at 4.a.m., and feeling that warm water wash over me as I watch the stars twinkle overhead.  Once I get in there, I know there will be no turning back from the gym.  I’m there for nearly half and hour exercising, then I get dressed and go to the gym.  Once there, I walk at least 10,000 steps (if you don’t have a performance band–mine is the UP24 band, make the investment.  It is worth it—but that’s another post…), do floor exercises and rowing and meet my trainer at 7 three days a week.  By the time I get to office hours at 7 on class days, I’ve been up for hours.  On non class days, I’m at the gym longer, till nearly 8.  When I feel like quitting, I remind myself that it’s just gravity talking, so ignore it and keep going.  Works for me.

The lesson here is making it work for you.  Whatever “it” is.  Listen to yourself.  Figure out what works for you and do that.  Do that, and no matter how weird it seems to others, it becomes second nature to you.

I don’t recall one day of ever really protesting the getting up part.  I just get up without giving myself the luxury (and potential defeat) of thinking about it. It’s the working out part I mainly protest.  That makes sense since I have never in my life been a really physical person.  Dodge ball and jump rope, maybe.  But, I preferred to play house.  🙂 I was the last one anyone would want to pick for their junior high gym class team.  Stick me in the outfield in softball and I’m checking out the flowers rather than remembering a ball may come my way; I’d be off in la-la land and forget to run to the next base till my classmates’ screaming penetrated my thoughts.  I’m in my head too much to think about physical activity.  So, it is unnatural for me, but I’ve been doing well for the past 7 months.  I started out small and worked up to 6 days a week at the gym.  I was doing 7, but my trainer insisted I needed to let my body rest for at least one day a week, darn it.  I’m mad the gym doesn’t open till 7 on Saturdays and I hate not working out at all on Sundays.  I still get in my 10,000 steps, tho.  I try really hard to keep my eyes on the prize of feeling better by working out.

When I planned to retire and knew I would, among other things, be doing sedentary things like writing and quilting all day (which I at least had the sense to know would not be good for me) I gave myself a year to get my body ready for that.  I’m 7 months in.  I decided not to retire, but I am keeping my commitment to the year.  I may cut back some after that to maintenance, but once you’ve done it for a year and see that it works just fine, it may be hard to justify doing it differently.  At the very least, the 10,000 steps and weights will be in my plan.

When I wonder if it’s worth it, I think about the Christmas parade of 2013.  I needed to get across campus to meet up with my daughter and my two grandchildren to watch it.  As usual, I stayed too long at my desk and had to really hustle to make our meeting time and place.  The last part of the way was up a hill. It was a pretty good trek across campus and one I had not made since beginning at the gym three months earlier. At some point, nearing the top of the hill, I kept thinking something seemed weird, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.  Then it hit me.  I had hustled all the way across campus and up a hill and I wasn’t winded.  Amazing.  That working out stuff actually works.  Duh! But real insight for a non-physical like me.

Get out of my way gravity.