I’m lazy. There I said it! To be honest I’ve never tried to hide it. As well as being lazy, I’m also extremely busy (odd combination I know!). Therefore I really struggle to implement and stick to a fitness plan! More so when it concerns myself rather than my dog as I just think “ah I can’t be bothered to go for a run”… “I just want to get into bed not do sit ups first!”.

But as well as being lazy I’m also a dreamer. I want to be fitter! I want to be stronger! Well you can’t get the dream if you don’t put the effort in and the first step is to put a plan into writing!

My plan

My fitness plan is fairly simple, each evening before bed I’m going to do 10 squats, 10 sit ups with punches, 10 push ups and 30 seconds arms held out to the side with wrist weights on. The amount of reps will increase slowly over time. Also my daily goal is 11,000 steps a day and I have set myself a goal of doing 1 cardio session a week (either a run or a bike ride). I’d like to do more cardio but as I am so busy at the moment it’s better to set a realistic goal and overachieve than to fail.

Guinness’ plan

Guinness’ is a little more structured, each evening using his tea, or for 10 minutes in the day if I’m not around for the evening, we’re going to work on one body area:

Monday – Rear Legs

• Sit to stand
• Down to stand
• Bow to down
• Walking backwards onto wobble board or step
• Walking backwards up a slope or stairs
• Rear foot targets
• Perch work

Tuesday – Front Legs

• Sit to down
• Front foot targets
• High fives and stretches

Wednesday – Core strength

• Beg/sit pretty
• Stand tall
• Beg into stand tall and stand stall into beg
• Some wobble board/cushion work (mentioned in Friday – Balance)

Thursday – Agility training

Friday – Balance/Proprioception

• Wobble board/wobble cushion
  > front legs on board, back legs on cushion
  > standing on wobble board
  > stand/sit/down on wobble board
  > beg/stand tall on wobble board
• Standing on 4 paw pods
• Walking across stones/pebbles
• Cavaletti poles

Saturday/Sunday – Cardio

Jogging or cycling, Guinness trotting at a constant speed for 10 minutes.

Let’s do it!

There are a lot more exercises available than those listed above which I may also implement, however each day we may only do a couple from the list. The point is that each day we are going to set aside time to work on each body area throughout the week to ensure all areas are being covering.

The cardio may swap around, for example last night I got in from work, Guinness hadn’t had a walk so I decided to go for a run. However that’s okay because with my plan I can ensure that I do the front leg work on our cardio day this weekend instead.

I’d like us both to do some more swimming and I am hopefully going to start booking Guinness’ into hydrotherapy more regularly over the winter, however it’s finding the time, plus its an added cost. But at least with this plan it gives a good baseline routine that covers everything we need to, and much more than what we’re doing at the moment!

I’d love to hear from you if you have a fitness plan with your dog! Drop a comment below.