The importance of “Planning”

Here we go, my first blog entry is here! I’m literally 5 weeks away from heading over to Turkey for a week for what will hopefully be a sunny and relaxing holiday with some of my best friends which will be followed by some work travel to Germany the following week.

In those couple of weeks I will be aiming to lay off the gym completely and just rest BUT during these coming 5 weeks I will really try to step up a notch on my gym antics to try and get in my best shape yet.

Let’s consider these 5 weeks the first little fitness journey which I will share with you and over these coming weeks I will be looking to give you an insight into the kind of things I will be doing in the gym, with regards to my diet and about my general lifestyle. I would not recommend anyone copying exactly what I do as we are all different and the things I will be doing is what I found work best for me.

In general my goal in life is to keep on improving myself in all aspects each day to become a more accomplished individual however for this little journey I have a very specific aim and that is to try and beat what I believe to have been my best condition yet last year (picture below).

With this objective in mind, today I wanted to start off by highlight one of the key foundations which should hopefully help me to really go after that goal and that is: Planning. Now I believe that planning is not only key for my fitness life but for my life in general and having said that I would say that this is probably one of, if not, the most important elements to achieve any objectives in life.

Having said all that I have decided to plan out my next 5 weeks in terms of gym and diet which lead me to create the following calendar:

This calendar will ensure that I keep myself motivated (another key element I will be discussing later in the blog) and on track to reach my goal. As you can see from now until I go away I have planned my workouts as well as the meals I will be having on determined days – more details on my workouts and meals will be shared later on.

Now I know it’s hard to plan out exactly my daily activities from now until my holidays, especially given working and social life deviation – i.e. I have a best friend’s birthday coming up and I sure will be drinking and dancing away on that night. All that said, this calendar will still serve as a great guideline of what I’m expecting of myself on the daily basis and I will try to stick to it as much as I can.

A question I get frequently asked is: how do I manage to have a corporate job and still find time to workout twice a day?

My answer to that is very simple: if you love what you do you will find time for it! A day has 24 hours, my daily job should take up to a maximum of 10 hours of my day leaving me with 14 hours; I seek to sleep anywhere from 6 to 8 hours each night (say I go for the latter one) – leaving me with 6 hours. Now these 6 hours is really where planning becomes key. In all honesty I am lucky to say that the social aspect of my life is pretty good as I live with two of my best friends, work with great colleagues and know quite a few people at my gym hence my home, working and gym time can all be considered to have somewhat of a social factor attached them; but of course I still like having my own personal time and I do try to take at least an hour each day to just myself. For those who have a long commute each day of 2 hours this will obviously impact your own time reducing it 4 hours but there is a very simple way to tackle this issue – just ensure that this commuting time is enjoyable and include it as part of your social or personal time. So if I was to breakdown a typical day in my life into the different times I would it would look something along the lines of:

Sleeping – Upto 8 hours

Working – Upto 10 hours

Gym – Upto 3 hours

Personal – 1 hour

Social – 2 hours [Although I believe that this is actually also included into the first three categories]

So this is my first entry to the blog, I hope you have enjoyed it. Over the coming weeks I will be sharing with you more specific details about gym, workouts, diet and other aspects of my journey. Meanwhile if you want to ask me anything or that would be a specific topic you’d like me to cover please contact me on my Twitter or email me on carlos89@hotmail.co.uk

As I finish this entry I’d like to leave you with some food for thought by quoting Robert Collier:

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”