Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro: 28oC, hot, Sunny and slightly overcast.
An excellent hot, sweaty and stuffy Tuesday. When I started working out about a year and a half ago, I would do seven or eight exercises; now, I’m doing between 12 and 15. The time that I have allotted for working out is almost not enough anymore.
This is progression, serenity, and the feeling of good and wellness in what you are doing. Even if I start the morning unenthusiastically, by the middle of the morning, I am already productive, and by the end, I am highly productive and happy. I know that I’m giving a lot of attention to exercise, but finding the right ideal exercise that makes you feel good is a natural game changer.
From my experience, beginning to exercise on a regular basis was the beginning of my whole change. It was the first step, the first change, and from this one fundamental change in mindset, other changes automatically came.
I feel more secure, and from nowhere, new ideas appear that I would never have thought or felt possible. This is also related to walking. I have liked to walk since I was a very young child, from the age of seven or eight.
My parents, brother, and I lived in a middle-class semi-detached house with a small front garden but an enormous back garden that backed onto fields and woods at the back of the house, which eventually led to the canals.
From my youngest age, I can remember my friends and I either playing in the street or the fields or woods or even fishing in the canal two or three kilometres away. So, from a young age, there was this activity and enthusiasm to walk.
My grandparents on my mother’s side lived in a small neighbouring village about four to five kilometres from where we lived. My relationship with my grandmother was much closer and more affectionate than with my mother. I would go religiously twice a week to visit and stay with my grandmother and grandfather.
Once during the week, either on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, depending on what my grandmother was cooking for dinner, all her food was good, and I loved it.
And every Sunday to have lunch together and to watch Formula One. At this time, Ayrton Senna was racing for McLaren and doing well. This was my Sunday, every Sunday, no matter what; it could be sweltering hot, torrential rain, Sleet, Snow, it wouldn’t matter, I would go without fail to stay the Sunday with my grandparents.
After some time, my mother began to become jealous of me disappearing every Sunday to spend the day with my grandparents. As I got older, taller, and stronger, my mother began denying giving me the bus fare to go and come back from my grandparents so I would walk.
And even if she gave me the fare, many times, most of the time, I would save the money and keep it for myself and walk there and back from my grandparents.
I have always preached the beneficial effects of walking, but only now, at 56, I know the real true value of walking. This is something I want to instil in Yasmin before I die. Walking is movement; movement keeps us alive.
Exercise is also movement, and that also keeps us alive. The truth is that any form of exercise, no matter how intense or not, keeps us well and alive and helps us with longevity. Thank you for the movement, the exercise, the changes, and my new future that is slowly appearing and taking shape.
Yasmin arrived later in the afternoon. She went and did functional training on the beach, returned, and had a shower. We played one game of chess before bed. She beat me with a brilliant checkmate. Sometimes, I feel that I am underestimating my daughter and that I need to see more of what she can do and is capable of because, more and more, she surprises me.
In bed by 11:00 pm.
Thank you.
Thanks for reading my blog. Check out my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments.
Richard
