For me, the days that I least want to workout are the days that I most need it.. Today was one of those days. As everybody who's been following along here knows, the gym opens in a couple days and I still have a bunch of stuff to do to get completely ready for it. Columbus Day Weekend is a big soccer tournament weekend here and I coach my daughter's soccer team so my morning and early afternoon was spent at the soccer fields. It was an incredible day for soccer and we had a great day. We won 3 and lost 1 (to a team that we were better than) and everybody had a really good time. But here was the problem.. I'm a little stressed (OK, a LOT stressed) over getting the gym ready for opening day and the tournament was taking me away from so many things I needed to get done which just added to my stress level. But I told myself a while ago that even though I knew the gym would be a significant time commitment I was still going to commit to my daughter's soccer team.. If I hadn't, I know I would have looked back on that decision in about 20 years and said "I should have kept coaching her team even though I was just starting a business.".. And I know I made the right choice.
Anyway, I'm the type of coach who is completely committed and focused, and coaching is really mentally draining when you're as committed to it as I am.. Some people tell me I should lighten up a little, but I say if you're not committed enough to it so that you're mentally drained after a game then you don't care enough and shouldn't be doing it. Any good coach will tell you the same thing and it really doesn't matter if you're coaching U10 or the National Team. So we had 4 games today and I was spent. And the food at the tournament was CRAP (other than the pumpkin bread that Grace's mom made which was fantastic :) I left the fields in the middle of the afternoon really feeling spent mentally and run down physically. The motivation for a nap was high. The motivation for a work out? Not so much. But I knew that a workout was the only thing that was going to bring me out of it.. And I also decided it needed to be a workout that would completely torch me. So I had a pb n j on whole wheat and a glass of chocolate milk with added protein and off to the gym I went.....
Let me tell you, when you own a gym and you can go there on a Saturday afternoon and you're the only one in there and you crank the music so that it registers on the Richter scale, it is a very, very cool feeling and it is very motivating.. I decided I was going to do the 30/300/3000 workout which is the kind of workout that challenges you a ton, both mentally and physically. It's 300 yards of power wheel crawl (see video here for an example of the PW crawl) followed by 3000 revolutions on the jump rope (1500 forwards and 1500 backwards) and it has to be completed in under 30 minutes. My previous best was 29:24 and I was determined to beat it. I set it up so that I would power wheel forwards 30 feet and backwards 30 feet without stopping, rest for 3 breaths, and repeat for 15 sets.. By the 9th set I was needing 4 breaths before starting again and by the 13th set I was taking 5, which wasn't nearly enough. I finished the power wheel crawl in a little over 7 minutes and went right to the jump rope, alternating between 500 forwards and 500 backwards until I had 3000 jumps. After doing 300 yards of power wheel crawl the shoulders get very tight which makes it really hard to jump rope for an extended period. Especially when you need to keep a pace of about 150 revolutions per minute. I found that when I would throw in about 50 crossover jumps every so often that it would really help loosen up my shoulders and allow me to continue at a fast pace... I completed my 3000th jump at 28:39. 45 seconds better than my previous best!
The best thing about it was how much it energized me. I felt amazing after this workout. Especially after feeling so run down earlier.. Life is good
All the best,
Kevin
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