Tuesday Tactics

The moment my alarm goes off, I have an idea of what kind of day I'm going to have by the action that happens next.  I will either get up and do what I planned on doing (work out) or I reset my alarm and go back to sleep.  Really, for me, it is in those few crucial moments that my entire day can slip away from me, mentally.  It is really easy, at 4:30 am to say, I don't feel like caring about all this stuff today.  And that is it, in it's truest form.  It's not about whether or not I have the energy or the health or even the ambition or motivation.  Its about whether I feel like caring about it or not.  Sad, really, but that's how it goes. 
This morning my alarm went off at 4:30 and I reset my alarm.  But not because I didn't feel like caring.  I did it because the roads were covered in frozen rain and blowing snow the gift that Wisconsin bestowes upon her residents over and over and over this year.  I slept an additional 20 minutes and got up to dance in my bedroom instead of risking my life to get to the gym's treadmill.  If it had been a weight training day, I would have gone to the gym, but it worked out really well that it wasn't.  The dancing isn't mean to be a high-intensity cardio session, it's just a fun way to start the day on a high note.  My muscles are really sore from yesterday's workout, but the cardio actually made them feel a little nicer.  And scraping all of the ice off my car got them warm again and provided another ten minutes of unintended cardio. 
I think I have another one of my pitfalls pinpointed.  I tend to get off track when I over-complicate things.  Like when the Live Fit Traniner got to a point where I couldn't do it (because of the knee) I wanted to try to design my own mix of stuff from that program, but the combining of things, and trying to figure out which moves, how heavy, how many and in which order was so compilcated that there were mornings I simply had no clue which body part to train, and I told myself, whoa!  I better wait until I have this figured out better.  And days and weeks passed.  No time to do it now, I've got that statistics exam coming up I'd tell myself.  But now I see it was partially an excuse to not care, and partially the reality of how I tick.  I need a plan in order to follow through with things.  I need to know that Mondays are back and biceps days, and that I will aim to max out at 10-12 reps.  Then I can get fancy with supersets or dropsets if I feel like it, but at least I have a plan.  So I am simply planning out my week like that.  Monday/Wed/Fri will be weight training, saving legs for Fridays so I have the whole weekend to recover the part that usually gets the most sore.  I'd rather have stiff legs at home than at work.  Not sure what I will be able to do for legs, but I will attempt a few things.  Yesterday I did T-bar rows (for the back) and my knee was moderately irritated by it, but a change in position eased it a little.  The last thing I want to do is delay healing in that stinking knee. 
So I have a plan in place, and I will try this for a while.  I know it isn't written in stone, but I do so much better when I know what to anticipate.  Whether is still a factor, and there may be days when I simply can't get to the gym, but I still have my home gym and some equipment I can make work if I have to.  I sure can't wait until spring!  Last year was one of the most snowless winters we've ever had, this year we are over our average amount of snow.  I can only look forward to bright, warm days.  And I am smiling as I type this, because I know I am moving in a direction that makes me happy reguardless of the weather. 
Happy Tuesday, friends!