One New Habit a Month Challenge #3: Building Muscle

Here's my monthly report on how I'm building new, empowering habits.

Since I failed miserably at adapting to a polyphasic sleep schedule, I did not learn any new habit this past month.

Month number three (March 20th to April 19th) will be about building muscle. One of my secret ( ;-) ) desires is to become a muscle beast. Not as much as professional bodybuilders, I don't like it when you can see every single muscle and tendon. But I definitely dream of having impressive muscles. Most of all, I don't only want to look strong, I want to actually be very strong.

Why?

I don't know why I want it. It seems quite irrational. I've long thought that big muscles are a useless thing to have and that all the effort put into growing them is a waste of time and energy. Nevertheless, I stubbornly keep having this desire for big muscles no matter what. I know deep down in my blood that it's the right path for me and that I want it. There aren't many things in my life which I am that sure about. So I have decided to go for it and to work towards this goal on a daily basis.

Making muscle training this month's habit was a difficult choice since I have so many awesome future habits on my list! But it makes sense to do it now. This way I'll be done with all health & fitness goals. Health & fitness was my main focus in 2008 but I didn't succeed in getting everything done. Now I want to finish what I have begun. I'd like to have all of my health & fitness habits run on auto-pilot as soon as possible, in order to focus on something else.

I'm still dancing and walking daily and I love it. It has become noticeably easier, which is a sign that my fitness has improved. I'm happy about it, however it's also a bit frustrating because I'm not getting as intensive a workout anymore. I think I will need something more tiring soon. For now I'll develop my musculature to begin with.

How?

I will start with five minutes a day, as the goal is predominantly to learn a new daily habit. Five minutes can make a huge difference for a beginner if the workout is really intensive, anyway.

I have no clue about muscle training. So even though I'll work out for only five minutes a day, I expect that I'll need to spend a lot of time educating myself about the whole thing.

I won't go to the gym. I already tried that in the past. Not my cup of tea. Working on machines and following a strict schedule soon became intolerably boring.

This time I'll train at home and I'll train with no fixed schedule. I will use a few tools like dumbbell, barbell, free weights, but also do bodyweight exercises, and of course play with my beloved kettlebell. I don't know the details of my workouts yet as I expect to learn a lot this coming month. One's for sure, I want it to be fun and playful, and not too organized.

What I already know is that I will definitely train for strength, not for endurance. Training for endurance would mean doing many reps (repetitions) of relatively light exercises or with relatively light weights. I won't do that. Instead I'll do only very few reps, but with the heaviest weights and hardest exercises I can manage to lift or do.

Wish me luck! :-)