Fitness

Improvement = Training x Rest.

This is a Team in Training coaching mantra. There’s a lot of emphasis on the importance of rest, and I, being a good little rule-follower, am only too happy to oblige this week.

Tuesday night was the big night of circuit training (on top of a morning of kickboxing), and I’ll admit to being more than a bit sore on Wednesday morning. The calendar looked something like this:

Wednesday

Plan: 30 minutes of non-run workout.

I decided to take a very liberal interpretation of that requirement and just do some light stretching to prevent those muscles from tightening up any more than it felt like they already were. It turns out that it was absolutely the right decision. After the doubled-up workout of Tuesday, an easygoing day was perfect.

Thursday

Plan: 30 minutes of easy running.  Completed: 65 minutes of kickboxing.

Again with the liberal interpretation, I figure that the 30-minute easy runs are really just to build cardio endurance. An hour of kickboxing is more cardio-intensive than a 30-minute run. Therefore, it’s perfectly reasonable to swap, right? Well, right or wrong, that’s what I did.

So do you remember all of those plyometric squats, lunges, push-ups and whatnot from Tuesday’s circuit training? My body sure does. I felt fine this morning, right until I went into kickboxing and realized that today’s class focused on the same things. It was all legs and abs. Just getting through the class was a physical struggle; by the end I could barely lift my legs to kick.

On the bright side, I did manage to do 10 wide-stance push-ups before collapsing in a heap, a new record.

Friday

Plan: Rest. And it couldn’t come at a better time.

It’s all for the sake of improvement, right? I’ll be back in action for a 4-6 mile hilly run with the team on Saturday morning.