Off Season Day 18 - Stepping Out

Since my most recent post about my off season work I have completed the following:

July 14 - Core / Arms
July 15 - Legs / Skating
July 16 - Rest
July 17 - Core / Legs
July 18 - Arms / Running, Upper Core

The 'Legs' session on July 15 was limited to a set of sumo squats before heading off for an hour's skating.  I'll count that hour towards aerobic conditioning, particularly as I didn't drive myself to the limit.

The exercise sessions on the 14th and 17th each lasted 40-45 minutes and took their respective muscle groups to the point of fatigue in a systematic fashion.  Today, I did a double circuit of weights in the afternoon (along with sets of chair arm lifts for the deltoids), giving myself relatively long recovery times between sets to emphasise muscle mass.  This took about twenty minutes.  Then I went for a run.

Going for a run is a momentous event for me, I have never before approached it in this systematic manner despite having always been a relatively accomplished runner when I've put my mind to it.  I used a variation of my regular inline 'river circuit', with the addition of a hill climb to start with and a detour across the primary school oval at about a third of the disance.  I think I'll keep using this as it has a good variety of surfaces and slopes, as well as many available minor variations if they are ever required.

My pattern was to run for a few hundred metres then walk a similar distance until my breath returned and I re-energised, then ran again.  The only variation was a pause at the school to conduct a few necessary stretches.  It took me about half an hour to cover the 3-4 kilometres.  Got back at the point of muscle fatigue, but not quite.

I was going to leave it there for the day, concentrate on core exercises tomorrow (give the legs a break), but realised as the evening drew in that I would have felt a bit guilty of this 'corner cutting' of my original strength programme.  So I did a full circuit of upper core exercises, about thirty minutes.

Have added a few more exercises to my repertoire.  Swedish Ball hyperextension, McColl 'crunch', and a couple others whose names elude me at the moment.

But the big thing today was the run.  It is something I'll be able to do at least twice a week.  The way I'll do it will allow for measurable improvement, and can be expanded (thanks to the primary school oval) with the injection of a bit of High Intensity Anaerobic work into the routine.

Looking forward to the next week, as inline hockey training and games enters the equation.