Friday, April 8, 2011

When Everything Seems Lighter and Easier

A couple weeks ago, Rick and I were at a pool session and I commented about how my boat seemed lighter -- did Rick do something to it? "Jill. It's a plastic boat. They don't get lighter." He loves to make comments like that to make me feel sorta stupid. Getting out on the bike trails this spring I noticed my bike seemed lighter when walking through rocks or carrying it over logs - last night in particular there were some huge logs I had to lift my bike up and over. Damn this bike is light... I didn't replace anything with carbon... what's up? The only thing I did was change the tires. Could those Mountain Kings be that much lighter? Weird. The fact of the matter is for the past 25ish weeks, I've been following Coach Eatough's recommendation of push-ups as the one and only upper body exercise. Yes, I posted before on the benefits of the lowly push-up, but this one is worth mentioning again with the results now apparent on the trail and in life in general. If there's one noticeable gain I can see now from all this training, its the fitness gain made from the push-ups. Logs seem easier to get over. I'm balancing myself better going through rock gardens. And mentioned above, the bike seems lighter when carrying it through rough sections. Eatough recommended adding push-ups twice a week, three sets. Warm up the first set, then do as many as you can the 2nd and 3rd set. Being one who tends to overdo it sometimes, I do push-ups every other day (somethings I skip a 2nd day), for 4 or 5 sets of 20 or 25 depending how I feel. The first 20 are rough; but once the muscles warm up, the remaining sets are easier. My style of push-up is the traditional men's with the knees off the floor. Today, I did 100 in 4 sets of 15 and 20, then the last set at 25. I feel like Arnold. Thank you Chris for the push-up tip.

1 comment:

The Wiser Weiser said...

wow...i'm a slacker! I did 1 set of 25 and a 2nd of 20 last night--girlie style! ;-)