Did you ever start a workout and struggle through a warm up? You know those days where you just want to jack it in, get changed and go home.
We all have them and for me, today was that day. However, I knew that if I did quit I wouldn’t have been happy, I’d have dropped behind in my program. I started with a few minutes skipping, which was fine. I moved into some bodyweight mobility drills, which felt tight and sluggish, doubts started to creep in here.
Even by the time I’d finished the standard 100 rep warm up I was as tight and sluggish as I’d started.
I then had planned to do 1 arm long cycle up the rack, 5 reps each hand.
Here’s what I planned:
1 Arm long Cycle, 5 rep l/r of: 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40, 44 I actually stopped at 32kg.
It was here I was about to throw in the towel, it just wasn’t happening. But no. I wasn’t going to quit until I was sure. So I wrote up the rest of the work out on the mirror and pulled out the pair of 24’s. Even pulling them out was an effort.
There was one last thing to try, if this didn’t work it’s all over, last chance.
I pulled out the 32’s, put on some obnoxiously loud thrash metal and chalked the hands. Kill or cure time.
32kg Long cycle x 5 x 1
NOW I was pumping!
The 32’s are heavy and today they felt extra heavy. But what they did was fire up my nervous system, get the body firing and cleared out all that sluggishness and apathy. If I’d quit after the mobility drills, I would have felt cheated. If I quit after the initial 1 Arm long cycle set, the set I terminated early, I’d have been really disappointed and that probably would have carried on till tomorrow, affecting that day’s workout. By pushing on I’d found a way of getting the body going. Granted, if those 32’s hadn’t gone up I would have quit. At least at that point I’d have been justified and could have gone home happy. But they went up, the body switched on and I was able then to move onto successful work sets.
Work sets: (all double kettlebells)
Long Cycle 24x10x10 with 2 minute breaks.
Romanian Deadlift 24x80x1
Done.
I had intended to finish with jump squats but after the slow start I thought the nervous system didn’t need the stress so opted for steady endurance work with the deadlifts. These promote lower back and grip endurance when done for high reps while being easy to recover from.
A warm up tells us many things. Today mine was saying, “Your nervous system is fatigued, you didn’t eat great yesterday, you’ve a touch of a cold and you’ve had a couple of bad nights sleep.” The warm up told me not to expect a great performance, but that I could pull something out of the hat if I pushed through. I got a workout done, maybe at a slower pace than I liked, but I got it done. The day was a success.
Regards
Dave www.wg-fit.com