Windy Recycling Day

Yesterday was supposed to be an ME Squat day, but I decided to skip it and back it up to tomorrow.

One of the things Ive learned over the years is to listen to my body, and that’s even more important as I get a little older.  I’m having some aches, I’m unmotivated, and I’m sleeping too much, which tells me my body needs a little extra recovery time.

I think my capacity to recover will improve, so I don’t think I’ll go to training 3 days a week, but instead stick with training every other day with deloads every 4th ‘week’.

Conditioning work starts more in earnest tomorrow as well.  I find improving my conditioning through a variety of training helps with recovery.

The conditioning plan is as follows:

Squat/Deadlift training days:  High(er) intensity lower body work, like sprints, hills, climbing stairs, pulling a sled, or pushing a prowler.

Bench training days:  High(er) intensity upper body work, like swinging a sledgehammer, throwing a medicine ball, or farmers walks.  Maybe rowing.

Off days:  Walking, from 20 – 60 minutes, depending on how much time I have and how I’m feeling.  I’ll probably increase this to a walk every morning at some point.  I also might include some higher intensity work on some days if I’m feeling spry.

The important thing here is to not over do it, but work hard enough that this work compliments the strength training.  I’m not trying to get leaner, I just need to be able to better execute my strength training, and improving my conditioning will increase my work capacity.  I find the LSD work facilitates recovery, I usually feel better after these sessions.

I’ll also include a lot more mobility and foam rolling (think Defranco’s Agile 8 and upper body work you can find on the internets).

Right now I’m still on track to total 1200+ in November at the USAPL MD Championships.  Still don’t have a date set (I think they are still trying to sort out a location), but it should be right around Thanksgiving.  I’m planning to go to Napa the first week in November, so that might work out perfectly as the beginning of a deload for the meet, but regardless, I should be ready to hit 1200 (400+, 300+, 500) and move on from there.