HIT Training (Hopefully It's There)

In the early days of the pandemic there was a brief period of time where you heard people (I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and call them well-meaning people) telling you that this quarantine period was the perfect time to buckle down and execute on something big. Get that major house project done, learn a new language, start that business you've been meaning to start!

Luckily for everyone's sanity that drumbeat of guilt was quickly and justifiably mocked and panned as the true reality of the pandemic set in for people. We seem to have moved on from that phase to "just try to carry on". At my very best (and even without a pandemic) I don't fit into the first category and, presently, I'm firmly in the space of trying my best to fit into the "carry on" category.

I've heard that one of the most effective things you can do is just try to keep up some semblance of a normal routine. Set a firm transition between work and home, keep up a normal sleep schedule, exercise and schedule social events throughout the week. All of these will delineate the different parts of your day and week, and will keep time passing at something like a normal clip.

Exercise is one of the things that I've been struggling with personally. The weights that I set right next to my desk never seem to make it into my hands, the reminder I set for myself just gets dismissed, and my work bleeds into dinner time, and before dinner is when I normally try to exercise. In a period when I spend more time than ever at home, my typical 30-minute work-out somehow seems like way too much.

While my routine was slipping away the New York Times started a live event series, and they did a session with the person who created the 7-Minute Workout. When the workout first came out it made some news for being one of the highest-impact things you could do in the shortest amount of time. I watched this event and decided to download the Official App.

It turns out that this was the perfect solution for me. The app has you rate your workouts, and can scale up as you get in better shape. The inital 7 minute default was a bit easy, but once I started doing the "smart" workouts it very quickly scaled up to where it was completely wiping me out (but in a good way). In about 16 - 20 minutes you can get a great workout, and one that works muscles that you don't normally think about when left to your own devices. On top of that you can see an animated instructor doing the various moves, which is important when you have no clue what a "Spiderman Push-Up" is.

I highly recommend this if you're struggling like I was to stick with a fitness routine.