For Stephen
Steve,
Good to hear from you. I am back to entering in the blog. I never really quite training but so much has gone on in the past months that keeping a log became unimportant by comparison. As you can tell, even now I barely get my workouts in. My life has turned over in a very good way but I’m working on finding my own rhythm in it.
A word about my training:
For the first time I’ve engaged a personal trainer. I simply do not have the time to put the necessary thought into making really good workouts for myself. Beyond that I found myself in a body that through injury and bad practices would not perform the basic maneuvers I desired. Kurt has been a tremendous help on that front. In the couple of short months Ive been training with him my range of motion has improved more than I would have thought possible. More important, mirror aches and pains have cleared away.
The training, so far, consists of a prescribed list of exercises that I “test” before preforming. By test I mean that I do a basic sit and reach type stretch test and indicate the point at which I first feel tension. I then perform a couple reps then test again. If I improve, my body is into the movement and I exercise. If my ROM gets worse I can tweak the exercise in prescribed ways until I find the right one or I can move on.
Right now I have 8 minutes sets for training. I do them in whatever chunks I desire but it’s usually multiples of 5 out of habit. If I feel extra tension developing in my body, I stop until it clears then proceed. If it doesn’t clear or reappears within one rep, I stop and wait the set out and move on.
As I mentioned, the life benefits have been tremendous. Kurt has pushed me to provide goals and I’ve been less than forthcoming for two reasons. First, I just love the improvement to my life and body I’m getting out of simply doing what I’m doing. Second, I just don’t know what I want to do for goals right now. I’m not achieving any more clarity by not giving a good answer though either.
I need to check in on your blog and see how it is but I hope you’re well and I’ll be in touch.
Anvil or Hammer 
on April 13, 2011 on 9:47 am
Mike,
Thanks for the update. Glad everything is going well for you. I’ll be checking on your workouts.
After a couple years of repeated injuries and parallel work and life changes, the last several months have stabilized considerably, and I’m able to bring more focus to my training.
For a couple years I continued to work on leg and hip area strength believing it would eventually translate directly to speed on the track. However, I discovered even though I was getting stronger in some areas, I was continuing to get slower and eventually repeatedly injured. Last year at this time, I experienced a serious back injury – although no MRI,s I’m pretty sure it involved a couple disks, and required about 4 months of lowered intensity in my training. I’ve been pretty cautious since then.
While at a meet a few weeks ago, it finally dawned on me that I’ve strayed considerably from one of the foundations of my training a few years ago (spine & ab/mid torso work and training 4-5 days a week). In my journal now, it is obvious my focus is back in that direction. In another month, I should be able to determine if it correlates to some improvements.