Saturday, August 1, 2009

An extra training rest and recovery day


Unlike when my workouts were bodyweight-only exercises 4 to 6 days a week, nowadays with Olympic weightlifting training I find that 3 days a week is the most I can handle. My body needs rest of recovery that isn’t possible with a more frequent training schedule. Lately I’ve been training on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and I really look forward to my Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday rest and recovery days. Sunday has always been my universal day of rest.

Lately I've been feeling that it’s about time to take an entire week off but I’m not quite yet ready to do that. I’m getting close however and my body and mind are sending me frequent messages about what a great idea that is.

Yesterday the message was quite clear so the planned workout scheduled for Friday after work just didn’t happen. I made a “business decision” to skip the gym and this morning I feel great and am glad that I did.

Yesterday I was jumping for joy when deciding that I was "giving" myself an extra training rest and recovery day.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

2 comments:

Franklin said...

It is indeed a gift from the mind to the body to allow it the extra deserved rest. And the body then in turn rewards the mind for temporary lifting of the controlled stress that training induces.

When I follow your example (not often enough) I am always rewarded with unbounded enthusiasm when I return to training.

Pierini Fitness said...

Hi Franklin,

For me right now it's like the soda commercial slogan "obey your thirst" except substitute the word thirst with body.