Monday January 18, 2016

Trevor took the reigns this morning and came up with 4 short AMRAP workouts

This is a great format for the gym or the road.  It keeps you interested, and changes things up regularly so that you are, in fact, giving your best effort.

On Thursday, I felt tired and had significant signs of over training, so I backed off the workout.  Friday, I still felt tired but did the workout anyway knowing I had 2 days of rest coming up.  Yesterday, I still felt tired so I decided to listen to my body and take this morning off.  Not only did I take it off, I slept in!  I will see how I feel today and tonight and decide if I will train tomorrow.  I can count on my hands how many times I have done this.

I have been training very hard for 20 years now.  Admittedly, I am one of the most stubborn people you may ever meet and this has been one of the secrets to my success and also the prime factor for many of my failures.  Specifically, my stubborn nature results in failures of the physical form.  If I have had a goal and felt over trained or run down, I would just train right through it.  Sometimes that works, but sometimes, your body sends you signals that you can either choose to heed or you will either be injured or sick soon after.  After 20 years, I believe that I have learned to speak this language that was so difficult to understand when I had a little less experience. 

Feeling run down does not mean that I will always take complete rest...if I did that every time I felt a little tired I would never train.  However, being able to distinguish the different signals is of supreme importance.  Sometimes, I will simply lay off a certain exercise or type of exercise or ratchet down the volume or intensity for a day.  Other times, I will spend more time stretching or train something like my neck or dips or pullups.  I could do any of these without getting my heart rate through the roof. 

Today, however, I got the clear signal to take extra rest and I did.  I will train in some way today that will help my recovery.  Wim Hof breathing and some mobility work for sure, but I will probably lay off the high intensity for today and tomorrow. 

Thanks for running the show, Trevor!