I have a confession to make: I have generally terrible posture; terrible to the point where it does harm to my back on occasion.  This is a fault that I readily recognize, but also a fault that is hard to work on.  When I think about it, I try to correct my posture to the best of my ability.  However, this only occurs when I realize how I am sittting or standing.  My general pose at my computer is leaned back in my chair, providing no support to my lower back, or leaned forward, resting on my elbow with a curved spine screaming its aches and pains at me.

When I try to correct for this, my back screams just as much: I tend to over-correct.  If I just took the time to scoot back in my chair and use it how it was intended, I would be in much less pain at the end of the day.  The interesting thing that I noticed yesterday is that when I am generally walking, I still have my characteristic bad posture.  I slouch.  My years as a runner have made it so my lower body moves in a rather fluid way, so the only suffering my body goes through is my back.  When I fix that, I do not over-correct; I move directly into the proper position for my build.

The amazing thing is that when I correct my posture, I feel better about myself.  It brightens my self-image perceptibly, though in imperceptible ways.  I couldn’t point to what exactly it changes, but it just seems like the world is more in tune with me and I with it.  That pays dividends to how the day goes.  I think a large part of this is one of the things that J.D. pointed out on Get Rich Slowly today:

To think confidently, act confidently. You’ve heard the phrase “fake it ’til you make it”. Research has shown that faking confidence actually leads to the real thing. If you’re in a situation where you’re not sure what to do, act like you know what to do. Act confident and you will become confident.

A proper posture helps one feel confident due to feeling “right”.  It is impossible to feel great if you mistreat your body and that abuse subconsciously harms your self-esteem.  Without a healthy self-esteem, there is no drive to treat yourself well; thus forms the downward spiral for posture.

A goal of mine is to slowly correct my posture so that I am treating my body properly within a year.  I think the rewards I will reap from this self-investment will come back and pay off many times over.  The problem is that I am not quite sure how to go about changing the wiring in my head to say “sit up and stand straight” instead of “slouch and be uncomfortable”.  Are there any suggestions for accomplishing this?

20 push-ups.  62 sit-ups.  These are my starting points for two very easy fitness programs that I started today.  One Hundred Pushups and its sister site Two Hundred Situps are urging people to get in better shape with easy, fast programs designed to stimulate the average person into keeping up with his or her fitness.

The goal of each is simple: complete one hundred pushups (or two hundred situps) consecutively in about 6 weeks.  The ease of each program is the hook to get people to try them: the programs only take roughly 30 minutes per week to complete and 6 weeks is not a long time to dedicate to one goal.  The go-at-your-own-pace nature also helps to spur people into bettering their health, as the completion of the program involves no competition except the competition against oneself.  Of course, both sites also offer a bragging page for those who have successfully completed the program.  This is an important part of the social web today and also can give featured bloggers a bit of a push in readership, due to being linked off the heavily-trafficked program sites.

As for myself, I plan to post my progress at the end of each week.  This is an effort to push myself to start posting in my blog and also an effort to spur a completion of the program.  I have been wanting to lose the 20 pounds I put on when I stopped running in 2003; it’s mildly horrifying what a major disease (mono) can do to a fairly fit teenager.  It’s equally horrifying how hard it is to undo the damage done by a life event such as that.  The lethargy that every college student seems to feel entitled to is a major barrier in such pursuits.  Hopefully this time I will be able to overcome it and push myself to be a better me.

The first week of the programs will look like this for me:

Based on my starting numbers, it looks like I will be starting in the top tier of week one for the push-ups and the top tier of week three for the sit-ups.  This will put my completion date for the sit-up program two weeks ahead of my completion for the push-ups!  I already think I may extend the sit-ups to my own “Three Hundred Situps” program, which will hopefully put the completion date more in line with the day I finish the push-up program.  Doing them concurrently will definitely be beneficial, as I will feel more accomplished at the end of a workout session.  The completion time for each session will only be 10 minutes or so as is, so I am not worried about it taking too much time.

My current fitness goals are as such: complete both the One Hundred Pushups and Two Hundred Situps programs, then at the completion of the programs, start a full-body fitness program.  This will involve running and strength training.  I plan to purchase a bicycle suitable for endurance rides.  Currently I am riding a NeXT bicycle purchased when I was 15; it is too small for my adult-size frame and badly needs replaced.  Once I purchase the bicycle, I will start training with it.  Depending on where I end up in the fall, I also plan to start swimming.  The ultimate goal is to compete in a sprint triathlon in the early summer of 2010.

Through this fitness plan, I hope to increase my upper body strength, lose some weight, and decrease my waistline.  I also hope to rebuild my cardiovascular and running musculature to the point where I can consistently run 5k races.  Just running to completion is the goal; once I attain that, I will maybe move on to improving my speed.  A 5k and sprint triathlon are definitely attainable in a little over a year are definitely attainable if I can keep myself motivated.  Perhaps I will be able to coax some of my friends into exercising regularly with me.

For an idea of how to start my full-body fitness plan, I looked at J.D. Roth’s Get Fit Slowly fitness blog and how he has a plan in place to move one mile every day starting this month.  This is a great example of an easy, simplistic plan to get active.  While it doesn’t start as much, just the idea of starting is the important part.  I will look at instituting something similar later this month that will be a basis for my program.  I am imposing a definite deadline for a draft fitness plan for the end of this month.  That gives me a little less than two weeks to look into it.

Does anyone have a plan to start exercising?  It really is an art to create a program that you feel you can accomplish, yet still better yourself by completion.