Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Working out with Remember The Milk
This week’s Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner, richard.rumley, shares how he uses Remember The Milk to help organize his workouts:
Inspired by the Travel Checklist that was posted a few months ago, I decided to apply the same ideas to my workout routine.
My problem was that I would go to the gym, and “forget” some of the exercises that I wanted to do.
I made a new list, called “All Exercises”. This is my golden list of exercises. In this list, I would put a single task for each exercise. Each task will include the following:
• I usually get the exercises from a web page, so I also include the URL with the task, so I can refer back to it if I need to.
• In the “Notes” column, I include the text of how to do each exercise.
• I add a tag for the equipment needed, i.e. mat, bosu ball, medicine ball.
• I put the equipment needed on the task name, so that I can sort it on my Blackberry alphabetically. That way, all of the “mat” work can be done at the same time, before moving onto another piece of equipment, like the “bosu ball.”
Example:
Task name: ball: Crunch on an Exercise Ball
Note: Sit on the exercise ball with your feet flat on the floor.
Let the ball roll back slowly and lie back until your thighs and torso are parallel with the floor.
Contract your abdominals raising your torso to no more than 45 degrees.
To work the oblique muscles, make the exercise less stable by moving your feet closer together.
URL: http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/bestabexercises/a/all_abs.htm
Richard’s goal is to hit the gym three times a week, and do each exercise once per week. From his master “All Exercises” list, he copies tasks into three separate lists representing workout days: Exercise (1), Exercise (2), and Exercise (3).
Now, I have three lists, populated with all of my exercises. I use MilkSync to sync these lists with my Blackberry. I can then bring it to the gym, and I have my list of exercises, with written instructions if I need them. When I finish my exercise, I can check off the box (very satisfying!) and mark it done. When my list is empty, the workout is done.
Each week, I have a repeating task to remind me to repopulate the three Exercise lists. I will then move the exercises around a little bit, so I’m not doing the same thing every day.
Check out Richard’s full post for all the details on this tip. Thanks for sharing, Richard!
Do you have a suggestion for our weekly Tips & Tricks post? Got an interesting set-up or idea? Head over to the Tips & Tricks forum, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. Each week we’ll give away a 1 year Pro account to the user whose idea inspires the Tips & Tricks Tuesday blog post for that week.
