| SUN | MON | TUE | WED | THU | FRI | SAT |
| SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP |
| morning | morning | morning | morning | morning | morning | morning |
| HOME Systems | WORK | HOME Cooking | WORK | HOME Cleaning | WORK | HOME Laundry Grocery |
| PLAY practice | WORK | PASTIME | WORK | PASTIME | WORK | PLAY^^ |
| PLAY referee | PLAY practice | PLAY practice | PLAY^ volume | PLAY^ scrimmage | PASTIME | PASTIME |
| evening | evening | evening | evening | evening | evening | evening |
| SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP |
The big idea I'm working on now, actually have been working on for most of this year, is setting a baseline of activity all day, every day. On this chart, grey is no activity; purple is very low intensity activity; blue is low intensity activity, the matte blue being "daily living" activity and the bright blue being "fitness" activity; and orange is high intensity activity. So the bright part of the chart is the same as it ever was, threeish high intensity workouts, twoish low intensity workouts, and two rests, and the big idea is that the matte part of the chart should be all filled in. Which it mostly is, except for those four PASTIME blocks. Two of those are my two rest evenings and the other two are my Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, which at the moment I feel like I need between doing household chores in the morning and being up for fairly hard practices in the evening. I'm fine with that for now, I've mostly been focused on recognizing daily activity like cooking and cleaning as activity and switching on just a little activity at times when I'm mostly sedentary like at work, which is what BAMF was all about.
This may look unbalanced and not very restful. First of all, when I say very low activity, I really do mean very low, like a 1 on a scale of 1 to 5. But on the other hand, switching from 0 to 1 is a significant uptick. If you're used to sitting relaxed and slouched for eight hours, sitting up and engaged actually tires you out. Now here's the thing, if you don't have the endurance to sit up and engaged when you're awake, you will almost never hear me say "should," but: you should. Set yourself to it, start small by all means and build up to it, but get there. Anything else that you do for fitness is laid out on this base, it could be nothing else and you'd be covered. Or it could be a hella lot and you'll be properly supported.
Where I am at the moment is four blocks away from there, and it's taken eight months of "training" to get here. This was my offskates workout all home season. I feel like people think I'm always lifting chunks of iron with my teeth in my spare time, but not this year. This year was brushing my teeth standing on one foot with my eyes closed, walking to the train with my glutes, abs, and upper back engaged, waiting for the train balanced up on the ball of one foot, riding handsfree, taking the stairs two at a time without wobbling, and last but not least, sitting fully engaged on a stability ball and standing up twice an hour stretch it all out and reset. A lot of silly tiny habits that don't seem like they take enough to do, really nothing to write home about. Except that my balance and core strength are noticeably improved: I can take a hit, I can push through a pack, I can hang four around a turn, and I didn't do anything that made me breathe hard or break a sweat.
I mean, nothing against breathing hard or breaking a sweat. Just saying, there's this big easy box in your fitness plan that would behoove you to fill out. Then you can get back to the little sweaty boxes to your heart's content, and you'll be better at them.
