So it’s not quite Monday and I’m slipping in an extra post.
I meant to write it on Thursday but I ended up having a recovery day instead –
and no, writing a blog isn’t exactly a strenuous effort but I decided not to do
it then. I was feeling quite exhausted and under the weather. All due to my own
actions and by no fault of others.
As of last Thursday I have re-introduced the practice of
going to the gym. My brother and a close friend have been very supportive of
this (they have come to watch me suffer) and all in all I have gotten more out
of it than I’ve lost. This was until last Thursday – having gone on Monday,
Tuesday and Wednesday for a grand total of 8km jogged and 1.5 km rowed I was
absolutely shattered and my body, lacking any real preparation for the sudden
and significant infusion of exercise, was aching all over. Thankfully the gym
was closed on Thursday for unknown reasons so rather than gym and lunch with a
couple of friends I just had lunch. The mistakes didn’t end there, however. I
ordered the hottest curry my local pub could make to test myself – on the basis
it couldn’t be any worse than extra-hot Nando’s fare and was rewarded with the
knowledge that it was in fact at least the equivalent. So, with my body aching
and my stomach roiling, I crept back in to bed for a midday nap.
This tale is cautionary, allowing me to share from my
experiences that pushing yourself is good
in moderation but I also thought I’d share a few revelations I had while at
the gym.
Firstly, I can manage a comfortable 3km in half an hour. I
don’t mean I don’t come out of it sweaty and pretty tired; I mean I can do it
without pushing myself too far. When I can manage it 5 days in a row and not be
completely immobilized on the sixth then I’ll set the target further. I was
surprised I could manage it when I first tried, and it did require some will
power to push myself that far rather than stop early and call it a day – none
of which was provided by a burning sense of one-upmanship or the fear of being
beaten by a girl. Definitely not. BUT if I can do it so can most people – while
I have been surprised by my new found level of fitness I don’t think it is
exceptional by any means. As I have said before I think it is much harder to
drive oneself to do this sort of longer-period exercise than it is to actually
do it. The human body is an amazing engine of survival – the pilot is the one
who decides which gear to put it in. The fight is definitely to maintain focus
– or distraction – long enough to push one’s body to its limits.
My next discovery was that rather than finding distractions
inhibited my ability to exercise, I found quite the opposite. I can definitely
put this down to desperately needing anything to occupy my mind in place of my
body’s melodramatic report of flaring pain and utter exhaustion. If it’s the
only thing you are thinking about it is of course going to become worse than it
is – the mind is designed to protect the body and has a lot of early warning
systems that can be misinterpreted as last-chance self-destruct warnings. These
do inhibit the unprepared when it comes to straining oneself during exercise,
as the body throws up messages to alert you that it is under strain. Pushing
past those barriers is when it becomes a lot easier. I have found thinking about
something else, listening to music and watching any of the ample number of
televisions in the gym can just about allow me to start ignoring these messages
and once I’ve focused on something else I can keep going for quite some time
before I have any real difficulty.
The third trick I have developed is to start fast and then
reel it in a bit – I have a one-minute warm up and then go straight into a
7.5kmph jog for ten minutes before dropping down to 6.5kmph. After three
minutes at that speed I go up to 7kmph for the remainder of my half hour. This
gets my system running and allows me to maintain a slightly slower run speed
for longer. This is possibly all psychosomatic and is just a way for me to
trick my body’s warning systems but it works for me.
None of this will be news to fitness junkies or gym
regulars, and some of it may be less than optimal. It works for me at the
moment and that’s what’s important as far as my weight loss and fitness is
concerned. I will not, however, be going to the gym until Monday most likely,
although a short session tomorrow isn’t completely off the books. I will be
going to the gym more often as apart from the fitness benefit I cannot help but
revel in the extra calories it grants me. I even had a full-fat coke and chips on
Wednesday – although I would have rather traded the chips for popcorn in
retrospect.
So this post’s message is a simple one – don’t think about
exercise and the effort it takes, just watch soap operas while on the treadmill
and try to refrain from shouting obscenities at the characters for their
small-minded and idiotic decisions. That, more than anything, is helping me
train my will power and self control at the moment. Antiques shows, on the
other hand, I find oddly hypnotic. Which is far more dangerous when you’re
meant to be running at seven kilometres per hour on a machine designed to force
you to do so.
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