Still squatting; stopped counting

My ridiculously severe neck injury pretty much put an end to my 100-squats-a-day experiment, so I have nothing too exciting to report about it. On the plus side, I learned something from the attempt: The little bits of exercise you can squeeze into a busy day—like while you're waiting for the kettle to boil—do count for something. Which is nice to know if you're someone like me, who might go a week without stepping outdoors, let alone going to the gym, during a freelance work tornado.

The other interesting thing I learned is that trying to count 100 of something over the course of a day is annoying and makes me neurotic. So I still do squats now when I feel like it, but I don't try to count them. I'm sure it doesn't add up to 100 most days, but as a wise man once told me (it was Dan the Physical Therapist): "Muscles can't count."

What a revelation. Since the Ironman I've been trying to let go of tracking and quantifying and recording everything I do—although so far it's been impossible to turn off my mental swim yardage counter—but I had not really thought of not even counting the number of reps you do while lifting weight. It makes sense, though. There's nothing magical about "10."

P.S. I have a new "Use it (or lose it)" experiment to tell you about next time. Teaser!