Sharla's Log

[Sharla]

It's Tuesday and while the week started off well (got up ar 4:30 Monday and Tuesday without pressing the snooze button) it looks as though tonight will be a late one which means my early start tomorrow will be extra difficult as will fitting in any training.

I'm at uni late finishing off some work so I can say it's done in a meeting with my supervisor tomorrow. There's never any sort of explanation accepted for something taking longer than expected so it's just more appealing to kill myself finishing it than to listen to him chuck a hissy fit over it.

I will say that I am beginning to feel the difference with the stretching and with different stretches. After a good stretch my back just feels good and I'm beginning to feel like my hips are not always tilted forwards. Probably nothing to most people but it's a great victory for me.

I'm also getting an idea of what does and does not put pressure on and tighten up my lower back. I'm becoming pro stretches where my back is fully supported and against ones where it is encouraged to arch.

I have realized that Scrap whilst modestly showing me a couple of stretches in September had taken all this into account fairly well. Plus his ball hamstring stretch seems to - if i understand the theory - stretch the ilipsoas and work the correct abdominal muscles mre effectively than the heel slide exercise I found on the web!

I am nutting out ways to incorporate safe strength training now since when my hip muscles do start to release my midsection feels strangely weak. Perhaps I am paranoid - i have not pushed it yet - but I feel if i was to do real challenging resistance work straight after stretching I might reverse the effect of the stretches.

Perhaps I should have one week of stretching and very limited resistance work + cardio and gradually bring the resistance stuff back in once the stretches have had time to work.

[hfahrenheit]

keep at it.

[Sharla]

keep at it.

Thanks

It's always nice to get encouragment!

Unfortunately I'm a bit embarassed about how the last two weeks have actually gone.

I haven't achieved much training wise at all.

Basically I haven't been able to juggle my uni workload, job hunting and applications and my flatmate seems to be going through the breakdown of a long term relationship at the moment too. I can't just walk out and leave her to cry and i've been equally pathetic lately when things have gone wrong at uni.

I gave up my weekend cleaning duties last weekend to spend the full weekend preparing grain for a major experiment. I had boxes coming made by an engineer delivered on Monday but when they arrived they were not even box like.

It turns out that my ability to glue what is basically shallow trays in sets with one transparent and one opaque black is better than what this 'engineer' could do so I'll be doing it myself.

Nonetheless I had a good sook when I'd slept at uni on Saturday night to prepare my grain after going to a job interview in the morning and worked all day Sunday just to spend Monday night working out that while I could dribble acetone on the glue in some parts I couldn't take apart many and the acetone marks up the acrylic anyway!

I'm still working out where this leaves me with uni work and training etc so I have no plan. Plus there's a chance my flatmate is going to buy a one way ticket interstate to go back to family if her relationship caves in properly tomorrow - then i can add flatmate finding or moving to my list of to dos!

I think ultimately i'll have to arrange a fitness program aimed at destressing which doesn't take a lot of extra time out of my day. I still want to get back into a training routine because I think I'm happiest when I have one. Not sure what an interim program might involve just yet but I will update my log if i think of one!

Of course any suggestions would be great!

What do other forum members do for training in these situations?

[Salty]

I'm stuck in the same situation except not nearly as bad as you. Uni exam time has me stressed out and I tweaked my back last week so only done about 4 or 5 workouts in two weeks. It's weird going from 100% to crap all, I feel like i'm on almost on edge. Today has just been me sitting in front of my computer learning a semesters worth of economics ad it's been frying my brain. I can even imagine what this time is like for a Phd student.

All I can say is the heavy bag is great for stress relief, burpees are great for a quick full body workout and a shower does wonders for your state of mind

[Sharla]

Thanks Salty

Yeah i've been nervous/paranoid about doing short sessions of high intensity training since perhaps unreasonably i've always felt that I really need a long warm up to prepare for it.

Maybe I'm worng - at least I can't think of any real reason why I wouldn't be able to do a short, fast workout with a normal warm up more safely than a longer run.

I have been considering going to check out another boxing gym not far from me just for casual equipment use to begin with at least.

I've also been told that there are some positions for swimmers able to pass a fitness test to become lifeguards and get all the necessary qualifications.

If I decide I'm too cheap to go to a pool or a gym there is grass around which i can do sprints etc on so I don't really have any excuse.

I might see what I can do based on maybe 40 min sessions for a while I guess!

It's good to know other people are going through the same thing Salty! Although i have a slight suspicion you're still training more effectively than me at the moment!

[Salty]

Trust me you have nothing to be worried about on the injury front and once you go high intensity you never go back

Here's a nice quick one for you to try which only takes 15 mins...

30 second intervals of each exercise, doing as many as possible, each round totals 3 mins, with 30 to 60 seconds break between rounds. Do 4 rounds in total.

Burpees
Jumping Jacks
Split Jumps
Burpees
Jumping Jacks
Pushups (sets 1 & 3) Squats (sets 2 & 4)

I usually only do a bit of skipping and stretching as a warm up for this, just make sure your quads are stretched. Then afterwards do an ab circuit and you have done a great, time efficient workout in under half an hour. If your feeling adventurous, do some bag work afterward. Now you have no excuses Sharla

A few of my mates have been lifeguards, pretty cruisy job most of the time, well paid; I'd go for it!

[Sharla]

Ok in some ways I've procrastinated a lot today but I have a clearer idea of a few things.

Basically on top of my usual disorganized state I have difficultly prioritizing things so when the first plan I make which I'd like to stick to falls through I don't usually have a back up or any logical easy conclusion as to what a back up plan would look like.

So a job application I had to fill in this week gave me some idea. Basically one of the earlier Qs it asked on the job specifications was for an example of experience prioritizing work. A later Q was about time management.

I answered the prioritizing Q as if it was time managment and had to rethink it when i got to the time managment Q. I think i wrote a decent answer for the prioritizing Q but until they made me think about it i didn't really have much of a concept of it.

So basically being crap at it I made up an Excel spreadsheet today to help me nut out how to manage things. When I thought of all the criteria I'd assign to things to different things to assess how much of a priority they are I realized dropping some things like my exercise recently was not really that smart.

I have scores attached to everything now and some things like exercise were higher on the list due to the fact they help me relieve stress, maintain my health and perform more efficiently in all things than I would without them.

So based on Salty's excellent advice (rep when I can get it to you) I've decided to train 4 times a week, once in the pool minimum. More than that will be lower in priority but i'll do it if I have time.

I'll keep stretching every day but only 30 mins on non training days and I'll probably choose a few stretches most likely to combat computer posture for non training days.

Today was a stretch followed by a 5 min walk, 5 min jog warm up then 5 X 4 min intervals with 1 min walk recovery between them. i did the 4 minute intervals at a hard intensity and I really feel like I've done something unlike I would with one of my 30 min easy jogs. I finished of with some more stretches in between ab work.

I think I have had a few injury phobias that have been justified and a few which I've taken too far. I think especially when I'm not in a routine or feeling unfit I am prone to worry more than is perhaps justified about whether or not I can get away with training at a high intensity.

I'm kinda glad Salty made me think about it in a slightly more rational way.

I won't be doing burpees until I join a gym again though since I'm allergic to bees and restricted to training either outside or in my house and I believe you are best not jumping on anything other than sprung floor boards. If I try doing burpees at the moment I'm bound to either squash a bee into my hand or hurt my knee or back pounding on the floor inside my unit (ok let me keep a few phobias ).

There is a casual run on Sun Dec 7th. It's set up by the Adelaide road runnes club. Since I'm only planning short training sessions I'm going to enter the 5 km.

I won't aim for a time just yet but I think just having an aim - something to look forward to and give my training some focus - will keep me feeling a bit more positive in general because even though i won't be training much I'll know I'm achieving preparation for something. Also it'll keep my spirits up when other things at uni etc are just going really wrong.

Maybe next year I'll have a more interesting log and some more interesting goals but for now this is it so I'm sorry to bore the hard core amongst you who are doing a lot more than this!