So, I have an exercise bike, the part I was missing is the plan and it’s the exercise plan which is the bit which is going to join me and the bike together in a way that I can achieve my goal. This is where I got really lucky and my stars aligned.

This is because my friend is taking a college course. It’s called Leadership in Health & Wellbeing in the Workplace and a part of her course is to design and develop an exercise plan to improve the health of participants. For this a subject was needed to test her plan on, and I was asked to be that subject – how lucky did I get.

For me it was perfect, as my friend knows me well and knows what sort of plan she could design that I would keep to. She also knows my thoughts on why my breathing has been reduced, I think it’s because of the dust I’ve inhaled, she thinks it’s because my belly is too big. Sometimes it’s good to have an honest relationship no matter how much the truth when its delivered is painful to hear. Well to be honest she didn’t actually say my belly was to big what she actually said was that my belly was the reason my breathing is impaired, I chose to hear it that way instead, I guess we all do that at times – hear what we want to hear not what actually gets said.

Anyway, back to the exercise plan. Because I already have the bike and I quite like it this was the bigger part of the plan. This was because It would exercise my muscles and also exercise my lungs – for me the better word would be to test my lungs because I don’t really know how much the dust has got to them but exercise they will get. The other part of my plan was more physical which was walking on the spot, I thought this would be good too because it would exercise my whole body, my back, my arms and my core so I would get a good overall workout.

So the plan was set, I would start off doing 2 minutes on the bike in the morning and 2 minutes walking on the spot in the afternoon. Now before you start thinking that’s not long enough to get you fit, you might remember that I said my friend knows me well. She knows that when I do things like this I go at them near on full speed, so if you haven’t exercised for a while try getting on an exercise bike and pedling really quick for 2 minutes and see how you feel after that, if you went quick your legs will be burning and you’ll be out of breath too, trust me 2 minutes was long enough.

My friend was wise and knew this too when she was designing my exercise plan, she also knew that I would have to increase the time each day which would give me new goals to keep me motivated. The plan was to increase the duration by a minute every other day. This was a good plan for me as I thought that my legs would be able for it but I wasn’t entirely sure how my lungs would cope – time would tell but I was feeling both positive and hopeful.