CHAPTER 3

“Instead of calling my bathroom the ‘John’ I call it the ‘Jim’. That way it sounds better when I say, ‘I go to the Jim first thing every morning.'” Unknown

It’s early in the year, so I was to tackle what should be an easier topic.

How does a common person like me achieve Excellence in their health and fitness? I don’t want to look like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Here’s what happens. At the first of the year all of the people who set New Year resolutions start flooding the gym. There I am fighting over a pull down machine with three guys who hadn’t seen the inside of a gym since last January.

Strava, a social network for athletes, analyzed more than 31 million online activities last year and found that January 12 is the day most resolutions start imploding. (Insert sarcastic tone here.) By week three none of us are at the gym anymore so the fight for machines is over. We should all exchange phone numbers, so next January we can coordinate our failed resolutions better.

Now you know why I hate myself so much. I’m not a big fan of eating right and working out. It gets in my way of my over indulgence and laziness.

What do I need to do differently this year to change the pattern of failure and put me on my path to excellence? I’m going to try changing my behaviors and how I measure success.

I created nine fitness markers to identify if I’m reaching Excellence in my Fitness. These include:

• pushups
• pull-ups
• squats
• benchpress
• shoulder presses
• plank

Last Friday I did each of these exercises with a strenuous weight to see how many I could do consecutively to failure. I wrote each of these numbers down. I will measure myself again in two months to see how much I improved. I have not set a target goal yet, and I may not. My only goal is to improve my strength a small amount every two months.

I also decided to measure:

• My waist to see if it shrinks
• How close I come to touching the floor with my fingers in a “toe touch”
• How much I can improve on an incline run on the treadmill

This gives me a total of nine markers to see if I’m moving toward Excellence in each of these areas. For me, Excellence will not be hitting a specific number or goal, but will be determined by improving every two months.

I’m not sure if this will work, but here I go. What do you think? What am I missing? What could go wrong? What would you do differently. Let’s move toward Excellence!