Continue reading “Day 29: Time”Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
Ephesians 5:15-16
Apparently I’ve been exercising all wrong. According to my teenage son, who fancies himself an expert on fitness, there are three phases of strength training one ought to do in order to maximize the benefits. Silly me, I’d just been following the number of reps and sets suggested in my program, gradually increasing the amount of weight for each exercise. But my son set me straight. One ought to rotate strength, hypertrophy, and endurance workouts for the best results. With a strength workout, you add as much weight as possible, enough that you can only lift 2-6 reps for each set. Hypertrophy is the “normal” workout, where you do 8-12 reps with a challenging but doable amount of weight. And endurance is a slightly less challenging weight so you can do 15-20 reps per set. All three of these work together for the best results.
I find that the less time I have, the more efficient I am. For example, when my kids are in school all day, I get relatively little done around the house. But when they had VBS a few weeks ago for two hours each morning, boy howdy, did I get stuff done. I accomplished more in those few hours each day than I normally do in an entire week. Since I knew I’d have the house mostly to myself, I planned ahead for the “big chores” like steam mopping and cleaning the garage and using a shop vac on the van. I made the most of the time and cut out other distractions to finish what I needed to do, knowing that I had a fixed amount of time. Same holds true for the vacation we just had going “back home.” Living 1300 miles away, we can’t just go there for a weekend. It’s a huge ordeal to get back, so I had to plan ahead to make sure I saw everyone I wanted to see and go everywhere I wanted to go. We basically had to pack an entire summer into 9 days, so we made the most of every moment. After all, the clock was ticking.
TruthNotes 