This past fall has been my second year of being on the high school swim team, and I feel that I improved tremendously since my first year. I was a lot less lazy to do what the coach told us to, and I was a lot more committed to the team. I came to every practice (except the morning practice that I accidentally slept through - oops!), and I pushed myself to swim a lot faster. The results were great, and the coaches put me in more meets, and gave me much harder events (such as 100 yard of butterfly stroke) to swim. And in general, the feeling of belonging to a team, and contributing to the school's success, pride, and teamwork was great, no matter how cliched that sounds! Participating in dress-up days, be it 70's day, or rainbow day, and also cheering along with the rest of the team right before a meet, helped me get more excited and motivated to swim even faster and show everyone what I am actually capable of. There were many benefits of participating in the swim team, such as a positive attitude, school spirit, and not to mention the physical advantages of swimming five days a week for three months. Unfortunately, after those three months ended, the amount of exercise I got went down the drain. I feel that since I wasn't really being forced to swim a certain amount of laps, or jog for a certain amount during "dry land" during practice, I lost my motivation, and I just kept coming up with excuses to not go work out ( such as "I have too much homework" or "I'm too tired from school"). And the amount of time I spent on homework increased greatly, which allowed me less and less sleep each night. At this point, I am working on just getting my lazy butt up and going to exercise at least once in a while, because I know firsthand how helpful and important it is. Hopefully I will get back up to the same fitness level I was at earlier in the school year is, but the bottom line is that getting exercise is vital in helping you get sleep, do your work faster, and just have a better attitude. I know this is constantly repeated, and you are probably thinking, "yeah, yeah, I've heard this all before," but it is all very true, so listen to it.
1 comment:
I know exactly what you're talking about in this post. It's just so hard to fit exercising into my life. I mean vaguely every once in a while I'll jog a bit around my block, but most of the time during the week I spend my free time going out with friends, cooking, sleeping, and watching TV. I rationalize that by saying that I work so hard I deserve to relax and do what I really want when I have any sort of free time. But I know that I should definitely be getting more exercise in each week. It's especially hard for me because I'm not particularly good at any sports so there's never a push for me to exercise. I keep putting it off, saying things like "I'll do more exercise tomorrow"-but then tomorrow becomes today and I repeat the same quote.
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