"The Cycle of Fitness" Includes Setbacks

I often think of someone who has made a reliable fitness routine as someone who is working out seven days a week, three-hundred sixty-five days a year, and their recovery days are so well-planned that they seem as prized as a workout. They never face setbacks. They’ve been working out like that nonstop for forty-four years.

Well if that seems like an unrealistic icon, it is. Even the most seasoned athletes face setbacks.

A setback can be anything that deters you from your admirable routine. It can be an injury, a long vacation, burnout, or even a weekend DJ set that wrecks your week’s sleep schedule so badly you give up the next three weeks, just to name a few. Setbacks create the feeling of getting knocked off your horse, losing control of your routine stallion, and feeling daunted as ever to get back on.

But what if the dreaded setback is actually normal?

That’s right.

A setback from fitness is just as a part of the cycle of fitness as winter is to the cycle of the seasons. It stinks, it feels like it will never end - especially for those shivering in the Northeast - but it’s normal. And it can return to blessed, bright, brilliant hot buff summer, if we stay with it.

Setbacks, actually, can teach us a lot. They can be a valuable period of time where we absorb other goodies, explore excess, and sometimes, just recover. If you feel guilty or like you “suffered” a setback from fitness, you wouldn’t say you “suffered” winter. You’d say, you “experienced,” or “got through,” winter. Maybe you even discovered a new winter activity! So reframe it. You just experienced the “Cycle of Fitness.” So time to complete the cycle and begin again.

As it is December and we enter the literal winter holidays, I actually asked to change my work hours to accommodate adding Buff Hussy back into my morning routine so that I could hopefully add it back into yours too.

So let’s get back on our fitness stallion and ride into a warm sweaty buff summer. Even if it is abominably winter outside.