Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Forever never made it back to the gym


Last evening I resumed fitness training after a 3-week training rest and recovery sabbatical, managing to arrive at my gym around 6:10 p.m. Since time was short, I took it easy as planned and did a workout that was fast, safe and targeted my whole body. The loads I chose were light and the reps and sets were moderate. I was done 20 minutes later when the clock struck 6:30 p.m.

My workout consisted of a 5-minute warm-up of 25 reps each of the combo shoulder dislocates/overhead squats using a PVC pipe, followed by 4-count cherry pickers. These two warm-up exercises are my favorites to wake up my hibernating body. Afterwards, I completed 5 sets of 5 reps of these three exercises performed as a circuit combo: #1 = front squats - #2 = standard grip pullups - #3 = wide-grip behind-the-neck push press.

As easy as this workout was, I’m sure that by sometime tomorrow afternoon my body will be greeted with delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS). Quite frankly, I’m looking forward to it.

In a reflective moment as I began my cool-down, I thought about how good it felt to jump back on the fitness training saddle. Three weeks is a long time off, or at least that’s my perception. I’ve always said that, as a middle-age man, I’m only as good as my last workout.

My reflective cool-down ended as I pondered how many out-of-shape and overweight men and women there are who at one time were fit and trim, took some planned rest and recovery time off, and forever never made it back to the gym.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

2 comments:

DaveFSS said...

Do you take 3 weeks off on any kind of regular basis or was this a first?

Pierini Fitness said...

This was the first time in my middle-age man fitness journey that I took 3 weeks off. Getting the flu earlier this month started the 3-week fitness sabbatical but I had actually been planning to take a week off.

Thanks for the visit and have a great day!