Building a Routine

Building a Routine
by Jay Pendergast

Let us travel back to December 2019 (good old days of handshaking), a young, energetic, handsome, long-haired man joined the club as a personal trainer and group instructor. “Oh how neat” I am sure all of you said to yourselves, “another trainer to tell us how many pushups we will be doing in class today”

And I’m sure that there were some reservations about this goof ball, I will say that good looking goofball had some reservations himself. I weighed 205 pounds then. I am 5 foot 9 inches tall (5’10 on my license) and I used to weigh 165 pounds when I was a collegiate athlete (yes that was a brag about being an athlete once). Well you might ask “what happened to you chunky magoo?”. After college I lost an incredibly vital part of the process of health. My Routine.

With health, and trying to get healthier, a routine is the framework in which you will build off of into the healthiest version of yourself. Oh “Lord of Routines” why should we trust you when it comes to routine, you just said you gained 40 pounds since college because you lost your routine.

Well my sweet Bellingham Tennis and Training club member, you didn’t let me finish my story. Let’s cut to today, this giddy goofball is now 175 pounds (still 5 foot 9) and pushing close to how fit I was back in college. Here is how I did it. I built a routine.

Boom, that’s the launchpad I built. I began to resistance train 4 times a week, I took ride class 2 times a week and I filled my weekends with hiking, yoga and walks around town. I got the holy grail of routines when I adopted a dog (Willow) and I walk close to 3 hours a day with her on top of everything I do.

The routine I described above is my routine now. I did not start with all that immediately. I started as small as I possibly could. The first thing I did was make a list. Now did I make a massive list with all the activities listed above, absolutely not. The trick is to start small. What was my first list? Make bed…brush teeth…. go to work... make dinner…. make a list.

Here is the thing, I was going to do everything on that list regardless if I made that list or not, BUT it got the ball rolling with a path of least resistance. And did you notice the last thing on my list was “make a list”? Yup you got that right sister, just by finishing that list I got to cross something off my list. Is that cheating? Who cares, because whatever we can do to get ourselves into that positive rhythm of a routine is A-OK in my book. Get started with a small routine and once you have a handle on that, expand baby! This is how I look at building routine and my progress in 6+ months speaks for itself. Thanks for reading and go kick some fitness butt.

~Jay

Want to see Jays's Bio: <Click Here>