Getting in shape with Getting Things Done

[moises]

This really is a personal choice. We all know very effective people who seemingly care very little about their fitness. Converseley, I have lost friends suddenly who were models of a healthy lifestyle.
Some recent studies on the mind and exercise might be the most compelling. Mental aptitude tests have been conducted before, during and post workout, particularly of the cardiovascular kind. Results were quite astonishing, as many of you, I suspect, have experienced first hand.
Personally, exercise is always my first 'to do'. That's the foundation, at least for me. Oddly enough, I would never schedule it any more than I would schedule a bowel movement. Pardon the graphic.
However, if scheduling a workout works for you, right on.

pierce200,

My sentiments exactly. I know that on normal weekdays (Monday through Friday) I wake up, eat breakfast, go to the gym, and go to work. It's not on my schedule and neither is sleep.

I have found, over the years, that keeping a log is essential. At the gym I go to, I see perhaps 1% of attendees keeping a log. This includes the many attendees who are there with their "personal trainers." Yet virtually any book on fitness will tell you first thing to keep a log.

My workouts are brief and, as I already mentioned, only on weekday mornings. I alternate resistance days with cardiovascular days. At the end of each workout I do 5 minutes of cooldown, simultaneously stretching while walking on the treadmill, followed by 10 minutes of stretching.

My favorite resistance training "school" is called HST and is to be found (everything is free) at

http://www.hypertrophy-specific.com/hst_index.html

My goal is not to get huge. What I like about this method is that it is cyclical. So I don't feel stale because my routine changes each day. I used to find it tedious lifting the same weight session after session (or, trying to lift 1/2 pound more than the time before).

My cardiovascular training consists entirely of 13 minutes of interval training. I had run a marathon and used to do long, slow, aerobic training. I have found short, intense, intervals to be quite effective and my annual visits to the cardiologist have confirmed this. One plan to check out is The Doctor's Heart Cure by Al Sears. I do not endorse much of what he says (and hypes and sells). But I have found his cardiovascular interval program (he calls it PACE) to my liking. Anyway, you don't have to buy anything to do short, intense, cardiovascular interval training.

As others have said, much of this is highly personal. There is a great deal of trial and error to find a plan that works for you. The best fitness routine is the one that you will do.

A big issue for many fitness enthusiasts is what to do when life forces us to stop working out for a period of time. Travel, illness, injury, family crisis, job crisis: these things happen and force us to interrupt our fitness programs on occasion. You need to develop a routine and develop an attitude towards your routine that permits you the resilience required to start up again after a hiatus for a month or two.

Nothing I've written thus far has had any real connection with GTD. I only use GTD for nonroutine matters. Perhaps at the end of a resistance cycle I would have a NA to write a workout plan for my next cycle. And if I need to buy a new gym bag, that NA would go on my @Errands list. I would creat a fitness project in my GTD system if I were starting up a new program. Then there would be lots of actions. But I don't find GTD to be the best method for routine, daily tasks.