This question becomes especially relevant at the beginning of the summer season, although for some – many – it haunts all year round. What we just do not do to motivate ourselves to a healthy lifestyle, proper nutrition and regular physical activity. But, sadly, our fighting spirit throws out a white flag as soon as it begins to loom on the horizon – laziness. And what if we do not fight it, but agree?
To be honest, I love sports. Most of the time I love sports with a platonic, sublime love. Sport even permeates my dreams and fantasies of a better future that will surely come one day – all by itself, without the slightest effort on my part. So that I don’t have to fight laziness, because – another honest confession – I have no chance against it.
Surely such dreams are familiar to many: here I see myself joyfully running to the music in the player along the empty morning alleys, here I finish the marathon, here I coped with the triathlon, and at the same time I finally learned to swim not only breaststroke, so I took up sports dancing, here she hung an iron-woman medal on the wall … it sounds inspiring, but things are still there. In fact, it was there until recently.
I have a bike, and I really like to ride it, I even occasionally go to races in some forests, fields and other off-road conditions. But not because it is sporty and meets the criteria of a “healthy lifestyle”, but because it is fun, especially in the company of friends.
I have special yoga pants, but I use them as home wear. I have running shoes, but I don’t run in them, but go to work and go for walks with the children. I have incredibly beautiful and very comfortable sports leggings that lie in the closet and cry because I only wore them three times, one of which was in the fitting room of the store where I bought them.
Dumbbells are gathering dust somewhere, devices for attaching a phone to my arm during runs and trophy T-shirts from races left over from the time when I was still not lazy.
There are as many as three applications in the phone that are designed to record all the details of my sports achievements. Needless to say, I run these applications at most several times a year when I dust off my bike and go to unwind a little along the embankments of my native city or into those same roadless forests?
To say that all this depresses me is to say nothing. Because, let me remind you, deep down I love sports and with all my might lie in its direction. I tried to arrange morning runs with myself and friends who live in the neighborhood, but every time someone suddenly canceled the plans, or it started to rain, or the planets did not line up in the right order.
I tried going to classes in a club where I really liked the atmosphere and instructors, but I got too lazy to go there before work. I tried to participate in the system of home workouts, but I was enough for four weeks – then another season of some exciting series came out, and the series won.
Basically, I almost gave up. Or gave up. And if I had lived in a different time and in different conditions, the story would have ended there, and no happy continuation would have happened. And I wouldn’t be writing these lines now. But I — and all of us — are lucky to live in the age of technology, which helps, if not to defeat laziness, then at least gently, carefully negotiate with it.
First I got a watch . “Why do you need a sports watch if you do sports once a year?” – some friends joked caustically. And really, why do I need them, I thought to myself, but I still put on the watch – simply because they are stylish, compact, look great on a woman’s hand and you can install different cool dials on them.
It quickly became clear that they still do a lot of useful and interesting things – they count the pulse, analyze sleep, measure the level of stress … they even have a special breathing exercise to “calm the mind” (and it really works, I was even surprised).
But most of all I was impressed by the fact that they themselves recognize when you start to actively move, and automatically start recording your workout. Now every trip to the subway, kindergarten or store pleases me with encouraging notifications on the dial – well done, keep it up! Cheerful step, keep up the good work!
And you know, it really helps. A brisk step – on the verge of running – has noticeably increased in my life.
Sensing a ghostly chance that a platonic love of sports could still turn into a real one, I decided to delve into the topic and study the application. , carefully pre-installed on the smartphones of this brand, including on my model – . And here I realized that it is very possible to agree with my laziness.
The app records and analyzes everything it can. To begin with, I set myself very modest goals – walk so many steps a day, sleep the right amount of hours, consume no more than a certain number of calories. And, to be honest, when the clock, which was instantly synchronized with the phone, began to praise me for every small victory, my mood, oppressed by the lack of sports, crept up sharply.
Are you sitting for an hour without moving? The watch offers you to perform a simple exercise that will take a couple of minutes, and you don’t even have to get up from your desktop. Completed? Well done keep it up! Walked for lunch at a fast pace? Well done again!
It seems to me that we were praised like that only in childhood – well done for eating porridge, well done for sleeping, well done for taking a walk. It’s a very cozy feeling, and I sometimes feel like a lot of us miss that in our adult lives. Really, how long have you been praised for getting eight hours of sleep, eating soup, or walking a mile? And every day now they praise me so much. Although this is not a mother, but a watch, it is still pleasant.
Generally speaking, the abundance of useful and, of course, pleasant “chips” in the watch strikes even my fertile imagination, but if you want something simpler and more budgetary, try using another gadget – a fitness bracelet . In the bracelet you can choose the most unimaginable types of training, and this list is very inspiring – you want to try everything in general (but not right away, no).
It also syncs with your phone, so your sporting exploits will definitely not go unnoticed. The bracelet also has a “younger” model – with very similar functionality. It makes sense to choose it if you are absolutely sure that all the bells and whistles of a watch or an older model Galaxy Fit you won’t need.
But I’ll note on my own that once I’ve tried all these bells and whistles, it’s already very difficult to refuse them, and I just don’t want to, so I still opted for the watch Galaxy Active Watch.
Having mastered the “brisk step” and other relaxed activities, which even laziness did not resist, I decided to use heavy artillery and finally figured out the tab “Together” (“Together”) in the application Samsung health, which allows you to cooperate in your struggle for an active lifestyle with other similar “sufferers” striving for a brighter future with daily sports, healthy eating and everything that comes with it.
Needless to say, my beautiful leggings are no longer crying in the closet, the bike is not gathering dust, and my running shoes have a wonderful new life? And – yes, it’s just like in those old dreams: I run in the morning along the empty alleys of my favorite area, listening to music. With the only nuance that I don’t need a player for this, because I can listen to music using applications in my watch and wireless headphones (I chose a mega-positive yellow color) – all these gadgets are perfectly synchronized with each other, and you don’t even have to take your phone for a run – all the information will be recorded on it anyway.
By the way, other phones and OS can also be synchronized with these watches, bracelets, headphones and applications, but it was more convenient for me to follow the “principle of unity”.
Under such an onslaught, laziness had no chance even for a peaceful settlement of the conflict – she simply sighed, muttered something like “There are so many of you, but I am alone,” and stepped aside, revealing to me – and thousands more like me – the road to that “bright sports future” that I recently mourned, preferring TV shows and a soft bed.
However, the series and the soft bed have not gone away, because over time, we still came to a compromise with laziness – she has her time, and sport hers. Of course, we agreed before, but now I have super-gadgets behind my back that do not allow me to lose ground, and, most importantly, living people who cheer and inspire from all over the world. Thanks to them for this, and to everyone else I’ll just say: join, agree with your laziness – doing this together is much more fun!