More exercising stuff

[johnpalmer]

So, I'm reminding myself that the numbers don't matter quite so much as the workout. Which is not to say it's not frustrating.

Yesterday was another bad workout, where I'd hoped to do two minutes of jogging each interval, down from the 2:15 I'd been trying for. I figured maybe I could keep going for a full hour that way. Well, both my legs and my heart had other ideas... after less than 40 minutes, I couldn't even jog for a minute without my heart rate going too high.

So, time to remind myself that, doing what I'm doing, I can't help but strengthen both my heart and legs. 20 minutes of jogging that puts the heart rate up can't do otherwise. Time to remember that life is what it is, not what it should be.

I'm also back on physical therapy style exercises; the same leg pains I had a while back started to sneak in again over the past few days. I had an interesting time last night, doing the physical therapy after the interval training... I could tell that the muscles affected by physical therapy are the same ones I'm (over)using while exercising.

It started to make me think that there could be a market for a training plan that started with physical therapy style exercises for whatever exercise you chose to engage in... "You want to jog? Cool, but before you do something stupid, we want you to know how to do these. Actually, we'd like you to do these for two weeks before you start jogging... but we know you, you'll do something stupid, and need to do these while recovering from the injury you gave yourself. But, maybe we're wrong. Maybe you'll do these, and *avoid* the injury in the first place."

Ah well. The thrills of learning just how out-of-shape I was, and starting to correct it.

Comments

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

It started to make me think that there could be a market for a training plan that started with physical therapy style exercises for whatever exercise you chose to engage in...

Um, there is. It's called Pilates.:) Pilates can be general-purpose or very focused. And I've definitely concentrated on specific things for different kinds of activities.

And I'm pretty sure that you've figured this out, but it doesn't make sense to re-exercise muscles that are already over-used. Rest has its place.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

You're right that it wouldn't make sense to exercise over-used muscles, but the point of the physical therapy exercises was to work the muscles that were underused, because they're not strong enough, and not engaging properly. They were tired, but responsive and fully controllable, and I had only minor urges to rush (and thus ruin) the exercise. I ended up with that kind of mild burn that goes away quickly.

I think of it this way... if I hadn't done them then, it wouldn't have convinced me that those muscles were trying to be used, and that the PT exercises were helping, and thus, still necessary. I'm not ready to figure "the jogging exercises those muscles enough", because it doesn't, yet.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Ah. My comment was sparked by the fact that I am the queen of overstretching. Being more flexible than strong is a bad combination.