Thursday, February 9, 2012

Make It Count

It's sometimes hard to fit training around work, life, etc. I have a tendency to want to check everything off my to-do list before noon. It's extremely satisfying on the rare occasion I can actually accomplish this. I've learned I can't do this with training though. Stacking all my workouts together might get them done sooner, but the quality goes downhill quickly.

Workouts are laid out at different times in order to allow me to recover, refuel (!) (trust me, the queen of bonking should get this one by now....), and actually rest a bit between workouts.

The other thing I have noticed is that when I do the workouts at the correct time, I tend to rush through them less (because I threw my intention of getting everything done before noon out the window), which also means I focus on the task at hand more. Rushing tends to mean I forget about the goal a bit. The goal of a workout is to get the most quality I can out of a session, not finish it as quickly as possible.

Thanks Justin Mezzell for the great illustration.

Not rushing can apply to just about anything in life - bike commuting, grocery shopping, shuttling kids to and from soccer. I know I need to practice it a lot, but when I actually am able to slow myself down and breathe, tasks become so much more enjoyable.