Fitness Framework

It's been about a month since I started the routines in the last post (morning routines.) I couldn't sustain 5,6,7 and 8, so these have dropped from mandatory-habit-installations to optional-tune-up activities.

Mental agility will be addressed later, but I needed to flesh out my physical framework and get it snapped into place so that it energetically supports my other projects and activities. This habit installation approach is working pretty well, as long as I maintain flexibility in discarding what's not sticking and replacing it with something better. Sometimes stuff sounds good in my head but doesn't mesh with my personality in practice.

So what's been established and now requires minimal to no effort to sustain:

• T-Th-Sa: martial arts for a total of 5.5 hours (est. 2 years ago)
• M-Sa: morning routines 1-4 (est. 1-2 months ago)
• M-W-F-Sa: 30 minute evening walk, hot bath and stretching (est. 2+ years ago)
• Sun: not a damn thing. by design.

This adds up to about 9.5 hours exercise a week, or 570 minutes. Every country and organization has their own guidelines, but 150-300 minutes a week seems to be the median recommendation for the amount of exercise needed for robust health. Regardless, there are some improvements to be made before I can just put this on autopilot. These are:

1. Need to lose about 15 pounds still and this mostly comes down to diet. Not as in any particular diet, but improving my eating habits and perhaps exploring some intermittent fasting regimes. I also do well with additional protein. The tact here will be to become more conscious and take small steps, the first of which is keeping a daily food and supplement diary. 
2. Add interval training on M-W-F. 2 minutes warm-up, followed by bursts of 30 seconds and recovery; starting with 4 intervals.
3. Add strength training to supplement interval training. Basic functional body weight routine: pushups, assisted pullups, planks/roll-outs, squats, + one wildcard; starting with one circuit, 1 minute per exercise and add one additional circuit per week up to 4.
4. Add recovery stretches from Stretch to Win to routine after hot bath.

 With these tweaks, I think I can move on from focus on my fitness to other areas of endeavor while being supported by a solid baseline of physical vitality. I will reassess in six months.