It feels way too early in the year to have had one of those weeks. Nothing bad happening, necessarily. Or at all.
But after just the single post back after nearly a month break, utterly uninspired in the writing department. And, yes, it’s possible, certainly, that they’re connected.
But here we are. Not writer's block, by any stretch of the imagination, but I haven’t managed to summon anything that felt worthwhile. Nothing useful.
So, instead, I've dipped back into the archives and found something at the opposite end of the spectrum.
More recent posts have, necessarily, been of the broader brushstrokes, 10,000-foot view, variety. And, for reasons I've spelt out repeatedly, this is not the forum for more granular bespoke fitness guidance as the answer invariably comes down to the —boring, but true nonetheless— it depends.
But this scales up to a sweat-dripping coalface classic. Follow it to the letter and, in short order, you'll be fit as a butcher's dog.
Boxers are generally in fantastic shape. Physically at least. And if we’ve learned anything from Rocky, you get that way from smashing beef carcasses and jumping rope.
We can call it skipping because we aren’t boxers. And most of us won’t have a beef carcass handy but you can keep a rope in your top drawer. Oh, and we’ll also call it skipping cos the rope is optional.
As well as being a great aerobic workout it strengthens bones, hits traditional trouble spots the calves (muscle), as well as wrists and ankles (mobility). But, best of all it’s a self-limiting exercise: an activity or exercise that promotes good posture, strength and control but needs minimal coaching (if any).
It’s either blatantly obvious when you do it wrong, or, you can't do it wrong. And when you can’t skip, you can’t skip. so as well as being super effective, it’s perfect for you to pick up a rope (or not) and do at home.
[With the always-and-forever exception. If it hurts, don’t do it. Obvs. Not the to-be-expected muscular or aerobic straining, discomfort. I mean sharp, unexpected, joint or otherwise, plain-as-day-pain. You know the difference.]
When you’ve been on one fitness wild goose chase after the next, there are a host of reasons why you might have struggled and faced frustration after frustration.
All too often it ends up somewhere about here:
- Nothing I do works
-I’m not cut out for fitness
Those I coach will attest I’m not lacking in compassion (and am more typically asking you to treat yourself as such) but, whatever the reason— whether you cite genetics, lack of personal staff, or Saturn rising in the 4th house— you are saying as much, from a skeleton wrapped in muscular, nervous and endocrine systems, meaning you are, hand-on-heart, inescapably cut out for fitness. And assuming ‘it’ has some physiological rationale and you do ‘it’ enough, it ALWAYS works.
Ask yourself the following question: Do you look, feel and perform like somebody who skips for 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, or 21 minutes every day?
If that's a little confronting, don't worry, the fun part is coming straight up:
Now, hypothetically, let’s say you did skip for 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, or 21 minutes every day. Do you think you might be able to NOT look, feel and perform like it?
No chance. Nothing is easier, or more predictable than your achieving and enjoying a normal (and yet rare, now almost superhuman) level of fitness if you only avail yourself of small consistent efforts like this.
No one form of exercise will tick all the boxes, but this is about as close as you'll get to it without instruction. So here's your golden ticket: A failsafe, simple program that'll knock you into unbelievable shape in mere minutes a day.
The exercise is your teacher. And school time is the ad breaks.
Here’s the program in one sentence:
Skip, as much as possible, for every ad break whenever you are watching TV*.
*if streaming, aim for 3 minutes, three times every episode.
Here's how it might look in practice:
You start and get maybe 5 skips and then keep tripping over the rope and performing a series of restarts for the whole ad break.
This continues for the first couple of days. Maybe you can’t even skip every ad break but (and this is the rule) you get up, go to your skipping place, and just hold the rope for the entire break - so that you are rehearsing the habit if not the exercise.
You start to get the skipping a little more together but you are smoked after only 20secs so you have to stop and rest until you can continue - and you probably don’t even skip for 1 minute total every ad break.
Each week you get a little better until after less than three weeks you skip the whole way through a break - you have a couple of restarts here and there but you skipped from start to finish.
After a few more weeks you rarely trip on the rope and you typically skip the whole way through most ad breaks.
If you can’t get it together either to buy a rope or coordination-wise, no drama. Or excuses. Skip with an invisible (imaginary) rope to build up your fitness so you can then tackle the skill part of it without also dealing with the fatigue factor.
This is effective, painless, and ‘invisible’ exercise, i.e. it fits seamlessly into your day, every day, and is utterly immune to claims of ‘no time’.
Patience, more than grit, is the more likely virtue required out of the gate. Depending on your familiarity with jumping and/or any side-effects thereof, you might start even with one jump. Fantastic. Then double it. Then double that. But— pain excepted, as above—there is NO reason why you cannot do this. But the cynic in me over a decade of coaching under my belt tells me few of you will. Which is fine. But then spare us the fitness is hard bit.
Not being fit is hard. Permanently. And increasingly.
The good or bad news is that, when it comes down to one (optional!) purchase and you getting off the couch a few times while watching TV, how much easier do you reckon it gets?
This program is doubly positive because as well as doing something of benefit you are removing, or at least diffusing, a negative. Advertising is purposed towards making you worried, unsafe, anxious, incomplete and lacking. You can spend that same time doing the opposite. It doesn’t require a warmup. It’s progressive. It’s super-effective. And you still get to watch TV.
As you get better you can graduate to combinations, double-unders and running etc, but, I’m getting ahead of myself. Just get good at skipping.
You will steadily see your form and skipping times improving. But if you’re still in any doubt, don’t worry, pretty soon other people will tell you it’s working. You’ll certainly seem pretty fit for somebody just not cut out for it. And once you see these lies for what they are, you'll be away.
And skipping.
- OLI