Decadethlon – Just Track It!

I bet you don’t know anyone who has recorded their every workout for the past decade. Well, now you do. And watch out, this might take you a decade to read. (Which is why I’ve divided “Decadethlon” into a series of digestable chapters, like a good, small chocolate before before a workout.)

My German engineering genes have kept me on task for 10+ years in a row, recording my workouts on a daily basis. Let us not call this “Anally Retentive Behavior.” Let us call it “Discipline and Dedication” (that makes me feel better). I may have skipped weeks at a time and certainly days at a time, but the reasons for either skipping workouts or doing them have turned out to be interesting to track, and here’s why:

I learned that if you record it, you want to record more, hence you do more, whether it’s in the realm of workouts, chocolate consumption, or social scheduling. My husband says, if you record it, you get better at it. He is referring, of course, to recording expenses and watching the budget. After 15 years of recording our every US Dollar, Deutsche Mark, French Franc, Swiss Franc, Croatian Kuna, European Euro, English Pound, Singaporean Dollar, Russian Ruble and Japanese Yen spent, I can say with confidence, that, at least in this case, he was right. Looking back, we can even learn a bit about our history and the world, and a bit about ourselves, for better or for worse, when we keep track of ourselves.

Over the past decade, I have tried various workout styles and sports, in order of appearance, more or less, they are: outdoor and treadmill jogging, indoor cylcling, frisbee, weight lifting, swimming, aerobics, yoga, pilates, spinning, ellyptical machining, American football-throwing, soccer and Tae Kwon Do. I have Yoga, swimming and some good German chocolate to thank for my recovery from two major surgeries to my abdomen after a ruptured appendix in 1996.

My workouts - consisting of a minimum of 20 minutes and a maximum of 2 hours of some activity  - have ebbed and flowed during the course of any given year, depending on what was happening in my life. It’s very telling to look back and see to what extent events such as moving, pregnancies, surgeries and giving birth had on my workout routine, and, if I can remember or have it recorded in my calendar, how my health and productivity were affected (income, social life, expenditures.) It also helps to have a significant other who shares one’s interest in working out and makes as much or more of an effort to stay in shape and battle the bulge.

Below is a table showing this year’s data thus far, as an example of how I’ve kept track of  workouts and percentages:

  

2012	Days worked out	Days in Month
January	21	31	68%
February	13	29	45%
March	18	31	58%
April	11	30	37%
May	11	31	35%
June	16	30	53%
July	13	31	42%
August	25	31	81%
September	25	30	83%
October	25	31	81%
November	0	30	0%
December	0	31	0%
Total	178	366	49%

Tune in next week for the next installment, “The Origins of the Decadethlon”!