In a redneck bar

This is the time of year Pierini Fitness gets busier with his work.  He’s been subject to this grind now for almost 40 years.  It seems like it gets easier while it seems like it doesn’t.  If this year is like the average of the past 40 years, I’ll be able to deal with it because I have in the past.

One of the challenges, though, is being on guard that my fitness, health and wellness doesn’t suffer at the expense of longer work hours.  It has in the past and I paid the price.  Not last year, though, because I was on guard.  Like a turkey vulture high on a power line looking below for roadkill that will be his next meal.  It worked so I plan on doing the same this year – being on guard.

A couple of “tricks” seem to help.  One is the mantra, “Something is better than nothing.”  My workouts, lately, tend to be longer in duration.  I’ll need to shorten them, swapping duration with intensity.  

Another one is acknowledging that I don’t need to workout every day.  That day has come and gone when I was in Pierini Fitness boot camp reclaiming my long-lost upper-percentile fitness.  Honestly, two or three days a week will keep me in maintenance during my upcoming busy work season.  More likely than not, I’ll do more than this because I find fitness training is a breath of fresh air from the drudgery of sitting at my desk all day, using my brain and grinding it out hour after hour in a high-alert analytical mode.  My workouts are like elementary school recess time; a time to play.

Thanks to good training journals from last year, a year in which I did a good job of not lightening my workout load, I’ll refer to them from time to time to be reminded that it can be done – working a long time yet finding time to squeeze in a decent workout to balance out the day.

But I will be busy working long hours and the cumulative demand of it can be overwhelming.  In the thickest of this thick, at times I’ll feel like a one-arm bouncer breaking up a big fist fight in a redneck bar.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum