Cards close to my chest

In yesteryears past, I’d have a ritual of preparing written fitness and strength goals for a new year.  

Being a numerically-oriented person, these goals were expressed in numbers such as times, repetitions, training frequencies, loads lifted and the like.

I’ve always favored objective measures because my weak mind can easily deceive me by using perceived effort as a barometer.  I firmly believe there’s deception in perception, at least for me.

Well this year I have no written fitness and strength goals.  I’m taking a more relaxed approach.  It doesn’t mean I don’t have goals but at this point in my life, they’re more contemporaneous and real time or live in development.

Imagine watching television and regularly-scheduled programming is momentarily interrupted for an important news development that flashes on the screen. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this program because we’ve just learned Pierini has announced he wants to run a six minute mile.  And now we return to regularly-scheduled programming.”

I’m sure this relaxed approach can serve me well but may not prepare me for setting any new personal world records in 2014. I’m OK with this probability.

My 2014 fitness and strength journey will still have an upward destination, or at least an upward vision while being mindful that I’m driving an older car.  I might have an unplanned minor injury or two in my journey just like an older car might break down or get a flat tire along the way.

This will be a journey best be described as “two steps forward and one step back” with, hopefully, a series of “net one step forward” advancements in arriving at my 2014 destination. 

Whatever and however it turns out to be, my goals will not be plastered on billboards across America for all to see. 

Instead, they’ll be kept more to myself as if I was a competitive and high-stakes poker player keeping my cards close to my chest.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum