Just One More
FITNESS MISSION CREEP
Pop quiz:
Name the wildlife presenting the greatest hazard to scuba divers in NZ?
Nope.
Nope.
Nope.
The answer: Scallops.
Tasty morsels found scattered across the seabed in such tantalising fashion that you can always see at least one more come into your field of visibility. Just one more. And so your mollusc-meandering leads you right down the garden path; just one more, just one more, just one more. Pushing dive-time, depth limit or both until there’s just one more thing left to retrieve: a body.
Found anchored to the bottom by a catch-bag full of scallops. Watery monument of the failure to observe a critical maxim of scuba diving: Plan the dive. And dive the plan.
Grim, certainly. But this was the story told to us during my dive training 25 years ago, and the lesson stuck: for all the routine, rules and restrictions of diving, nothing will save you from yourself.
Of course, a dive plan is not set in stone and can be amended as necessary. In case of illness, a change in conditions or equipment failure, then obviously, you are not going to blindly stick to a plan. These are “negative influences” that justify change.
But these revisions are never made at the opposite end of the scale.
If your plan is a dive to 15 metres and you happen to see a tail fin with MH370 written on it lying just on the edge of your visibility at 18 metres, you stick to the plan and stay at 15. Not because those 3 metres can and might turn out to be a big deal, but because even when you can, in theory, safely explore, you never deviate from the plan. Oh, you see an odd-shaped goblet with H ly G il engraved on it. Tough. No exceptions.
Worse still, you might see a whale shark or some other once-in-a-lifetime wildlife and something to which you can’t return later. Too bad, when it’s time to go, you go.
Yes, it is about safety first, and all the boring stuff, but it’s also about achievement and enjoyment.
What do we want to do? (Always a ‘we’ in diving— and another maxim disregarded by our statistic.)
How are we going to do it?
But at its core, the plan is purposed towards anticipating and eliminating the inevitable; the (human) inclination to do really dumb shit. And it does this through one primary mechanism— ensuring critical decision-making occurs at the most advantageous time and place.
Making a plan a great idea when you set out to accomplish anything. And especially when it comes to getting fit.
Not for safety reasons, it must be said—when, if anything, in fitness this is overstated— but because both fitness and diet seem uniquely susceptible to the doing dumb shit part.
And again, especially at this time of the year, when workouts get doubled, meals get skipped, and the itch to do something, anything, everything emerges.
Suddenly, everyone wants results yesterday, and every shiny new program, diet, or training method looks appealing.
So— contrary to a Leftfield via negativa approach— you start adding. Maybe you’re following a strength program, but you also want to lose fat, so you add some HIIT. And you read about mobility, so you add yoga. And someone mentioned metabolic conditioning. And that running challenge looks fun. And maybe you should try intermittent fasting. Or keto. Or both?
Further confusing the issue is the fact that strength training, fat loss (where necessary), mobility and conditioning are all important. All vital. But each must be adopted either in order of importance or together while acknowledging their collective demands on body, mind, and time.
Throwing things together in piecemeal fashion does neither. Exploration is no bad thing, of course, but I’ll hazard that what is framed as curiosity is more often impatience —the fantasy of hurrying the process, making up for lost time. Or distraction, when the novelty soon wears off and you go looking for the next thing.
If you do not presently enjoy a body that looks, feels and performs as you’d like, even a bad plan is a good start, and serves to keep everything on point and even otherwise positive impulses like curiosity in check.
Note that this is the process of GETTING your dietary health and fitness sorted, but less so once this is done. When these things are second nature, you can freestyle all you like, but don’t kid yourself that you’ll get there by winging it.
A plan further sets your intentions in reality, which in itself might cause some resistance. It’s easy to talk about what you are going to do, but writing it down makes it concrete. Now it exists. Forcing you to confront whether you’re actually committed to what you say you want— or something else.
Because dreams and action are often two magnets of the same pole repelling each other. So if even the thought of a plan is making you queasy, you have just learned you’re not serious.
Yet.
So get serious or put your energy elsewhere. Because nothing in the fitness or dietary departments is going to do itself. You cannot buy it. You cannot delegate it. And while the consequences are less immediately severe than a lack of oxygen underwater, they converge over the long term.
So what should a plan include?
‘I’m going to get fit’ is not a plan. How are you going to do that?
I’m going to training in the morning. Okay then.
The perfect plan would address every contingency to ensure you achieve what you intend to. Anticipate, and address, everything easily foreseen:
What do you need?
• Set alarm
• Training gear
• Car keys
What else might it be useful to know?
• It will be dark
• The weather forecast
Noting that, dangerous weather excepted, nothing learned here is grounds for NOT training and is included only to best prepare you That’s a plan that sets you up for success. And you can iterate as necessary.
It’s a fraction more work, but getting in shape is hard. Much harder than staying there. You will notice that few people are. You are going to have to do what few people do.
But if you don’t want to do that part of the work, that’s okay, because I have some good news: a plan can be super simple.
• I am training in the morning
That’s a plan. Not a very good one, but certainly one that requires less work.
As long as you treat it like a plan.
Which is to say, you follow it— no exceptions. Because the rest is just details. Sure, it will be easier if you know where your shoes are in advance, and you remind yourself that it will be dark, but, frankly, none of this needs to happen, because your plan has done that beautiful thing that plans do: removed the decision.
So when morning rolls around, dark or not, shoes or not, you are off to training. Like an automaton.
And if you don’t like that—and you won’t until your body clock adjusts— you suck it up and train anyway. Because that’s the plan. That’s your plan. Feel free to review your plan at any other time except then, because you are in it, you’re mid-dive.
Maybe you’ll plan it better next time. But know that if you are going to review your best intentions at every crossroad and make decisions at times and places least favourable to what you want to achieve, there is only one possible outcome.
Fish food.
Enjoy your weekend.
- OLI