Today was fun. I trained, well sort of, walked and ate well. The reason I qualified the training portion of my day with "sort of" is that very little of it involved reps or sets, there was no real structure, and it has taken place in small bursts throughout the day. It wouldn't be possible for me to try and note down everything I have done, however it included some sets of 4 strict muscle-ups from seated, some handstand holds, some crow press to handstands, some banded pelican curls and various other bits of fun. This was done purely because my body still isn't ready for intensity or heavy loads again, but I did want to move. I also walked in the hills for around an hour with Locke this morning, which felt great! Although I don't talk about breathing much in this blog, I perhaps should, my focus today was a maximum of 8 breaths per minute even up steep climbs, and all nasal.
Equipment:
Most of today's fun happened using my tube and clamp pull-up rig in my garden. I love this bit of kit as it leaves me no excuses not to do some work while at home! This isn't an affiliate link, just the one I happen to have bought.
Food
At 10am I had 3 rashers of bacon, 3 fried eggs and some grapes.
At 2:30pm I had a ribeye steak.
At 6:15pm I had a rump steak, some liver, a kidney, and 4 fried eggs.
I followed this with grapes, Greek yoghurt and honey.
With the exception of my first meal, I did all my cooking on the barbecue today. I'll use this as much as i can over the coming months.
I talk a lot about not relying on external metrics, but rather internal feedback mechanisms, to decide how I eat, train, sleep and a range of other things. I believe this extends much beyond health and fitness, but for the purposes of this blog, I'll give 3 contextual examples of how I've responded to signals the last few days:
I've caught myself yawning through the day, and struggling to retain focus. I've addressed this with more sleep (sleeping until I wake) and working consciously on my breath.
I've felt overly sore. I've addressed this by moving through full ranges at low intensity to flush blood to the affected areas, and avoiding heavy load.
I've been craving sugar. I've responded by increasing the regularity of and portion size of my fruit intake.
All being well, these three measures should bear fruit over the next day or two; I've already been feeling much sharper and more focused mentally. Although I still feel slightly overworked, all being well, tomorrow I'll be ready to move with purpose again. Cycles of higher intensity days, broken up by a few days of lower intensity and volume are perfectly natural. As addicted to training and the buzz it brings as I may be, I still feel great after a restful day or two, and some quiet reading!