2015–A Fitness Assessment

2015 still seems like a New Year, so it’s mind-boggling that all of a sudden we’re faced with doing our annual review of personal fitness/health.

You may recall that last year at this time, I used a 5-part fitness performance assessment, with metrics of my own invention, in order to boast about how I’d improved over the prior year. Ironically, the following week I broke a bone in my toe — ouch, painful! It took months and months to heal, which definitely curtailed my fitness activities for the first part of 2015. Was this some sort of karmic payback for my darned cockiness? — Yes, I think so! . . . ‘Pride goeth before the fall’ . . .

Needless to say, I won’t be boasting about how fit and healthy I’ve become this year. In most regards, I’d say the trend is negative or, at best, NO CHANGE. I can think of only 2 things that show any improvement when comparing 2015 to 2014:

Steps — My Fitbit shows that for the 12 months ending today, I’ve taken 3.4 million steps, whereas in 2014 I had 3.1 million steps — up almost 10%. I’m going to resolve to keep up that upward trend in 2016.

Abs — As documented in MoveGirlGO, I added a new resolution in January 2015: “Add 10 minutes to workouts to focus on abs”.

It was slow to see any improvement, but now I can feel the muscles acting like a girdle to hold me in. I can see some more midriff definition when I look in the mirror (or maybe I’m just getting better at sucking it in). I’m definitely keeping my resolution to add frequency, duration, and intensity to my abs workouts.

Looking forward, 2016 will hopefully be a year of motivating myself to get to the gym and work work work. More specificity in terms of what I’ll be focused on will surely be revealed in future posts.