Action Plan for Blogs

 1. The areas of weakness from my last fitness appraisal are the following: My core strength; my flexibility; and my upper body strength and endurance (Specifically from the push up test).

2. My goal for this fitness plan is to improve athletic purpose mostly. I do not play any sports, but I do already exercise at the gym and I find making performance enhancements to be fulfilling. There is a part of me also that wants to build a better physique and get leaner (as I assume all do to some degree); however, my goals of increasing my athletic performance overshadows it. Also, I want to have fun in experimenting with new exercises that I have yet to try. My cardio is pretty good from all the work I have put into that area of training; however, I mostly want to focus on weight training during this fitness plan: specifically improving my strength and endurance on various important exercises to me, such as the bench press, the barbell squat, deadlifting, etc... 

3. Progress motivates me to stick to the fitness plan. It just feels good when I overcome an exercise that I previously had trouble with and can now advance to even more challenging ones. What motivates me also is the after-effect of physical activity: when you feel more energized and in a better mood after exercising. If I am having a bad day, I have often noticed that even by exercising a bit my mood and energy improves--who does not want that? Watching or listening to others exercise motivates me to do so as well. 

4. There is essentially one excuse or problem that might prevent me from completing the plan: having no time and energy because of school work and other deadlines. The solution is definitely to improve on time management, but this is easier said than done; how I go about improving my time management requires numerous steps. Planning all of the semester deadlines in a clear single document is a great way of staying more organized (which I have already done during the start of the semester). By staying organized, I can better plan out how I am going to work on completing the items on my deadline document. The only issue from this point is stress. I usually get stressed (as most do) when there a large number of upcoming deadlines and procrastinate to escape from it. I have to treat this stress in order to keep moving forward and not get myself in the trap of procrastination. Exercise usually gives me more clarity, but also meditation and talking about stress issues are tools I would be interested in trying. Once the planning and stress is taken care of, the execution of it becomes more effective and efficient. I think that I will be sailing more smoothly if I can manage my stress and deadline planning. This will, therefore, give me more time to exercise, which will boost my motivation to get it completed.