Monday, June 17, 2013

KAIZEN

So excited when I got up today because Round 6 of Best Body Boot Camp starts today…

Best_Body_Bootcamp.jpg

Last night I reviewed the exercises that make up today’s workout, again, and I formulated and wrote out my 2 nutrition goals for this week.  Makes them more real when I actually write them down…  Do you write down your goals?

I am going into this Best Body Boot Camp with an intenion in my mindset…. 

At the beginning of the year I selected a mantra, a single word that would help motivate me through the year. 

KAIZEN

It is a Japanese word, and loosely translated to English, it means daily improvement….. continuously getting better, a little at a time.  And I chose it to remind me that it is more important for me to make progress, and not be perfect… both with my fitness and my nutrition.

Recently I read a book called The NEW Evolution Diet, What our Paleolithic Ancestors Can Teach Us About Weight Loss, Fitness, and Aging…. and this came across a passage that ties in with my mantra so well…

“ The main goal here is to reach for intensity.  I don’t want this to sound scary, but each workout needs to take you to an extreme.  Your body should be required to do something it has never done before. I’ve seen people who turn their gym workouts into a routine as predictable s any other , like a task they can do on autopilot.  They don’t realize they need to push themselves, so they settle for a mildly taxing session that pretty much replicates all the workouts they’ve done before.

This defeats the entire purpose of exercise.  You should be looking for an experience that will change you, inside and out.  Each workout is supposed to leave its mark on you, alter you – to make you a better specimen of human being than when you walked in the door.  And that’s only possible if your exertions reach the point of intensity.  “

Those simple couple of paragraphs are so powerful… and really motivate me as I am about to get into my workout gear this morning and take on my first strength workout of this current Boot Camp session. 

I am stoked… I am excited… and ready to give it my all.

Do your workouts change you… do you work out with intensity?

4 comments:

  1. That sounds amazing! OH YES, I am intense! :)

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  2. Yes! (Except for when I'm teaching, then I push others to work out with intensity!)
    Looking forward to hearing about your BBB experiences!

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  3. I love the idea of daily improvement, but I don't think every workout needs to be intense. I get injured running because I am not good at "easy" runs! I'm doing BBB for the first time and it is challenging!

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  4. Sometimes I'm way more into socializing than actually working out, but friends can also inspire me to work harder. Hope your workout was intense!

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