Oh my goodness, I had the best run/walk with Louie this morning! For one thing, I’ve been anxious about the encroaching dark, but the hat we all got for Christmas last year with a built in headlamp worked a charm, and so did Louie’s safety vest. Perfect! I chose the right clothes, which was also a happy surprise. It’s 28° right now with the sun up, so I was worried about making poor choices. But tights, a thermal top, a light down vest, and my serious mittens were just right. Little chilly at the outset, little sweaty arriving home. Perfect! I was worried about the mittens being awkward with the leash, but no problem at all, and Louie was pretty much at a beautiful heel the entire time we were running. Good boy! Also, my foot behaved. No issue with it. Happy!
Best of all, I wasn’t stuck in zone 1 the entire time. In fact, I barely spent any time there at all:
Thats a good cool down slope on the heart rate. I can’t recall what its called, but the cardiac PT’s would always measure and time that before I was allowed to leave. It had to get below 100. Also noteworthy, if I went to my happy place (snorkeling in the gulf of wtf) it would plummet. So sort of a relaxed breathing and semi-meditation worked real good for that.
So I got sucked into a rabbit hole over this last night, and discovered that you’re right - I have what appears to be very good, maybe even excellent, cardio recovery. I am of course very pleased with myself, and now am bent on improving it further. I will try your visualization/breathing scheme and see what happens. lol
You need a calming happy place to visualize. Mine was in the Gulf off the west coast of Florida last time I visited my brother. Cruised out a few hundred yards where it flattened out, then just paralelled the beach for a couple hours. Really serene, floating weightless in the cool water on a nice mid morning. Chasing snails & whatnot.
Then deep but not straining diaphragmatic breathing.
I’ve always found movement to be meditative and calming.
30 minutes cardio. Louie now barks pretty much the entire time I’m doing this. It seems to be a happy bark, and he’s intermittently running to get his toys out of the basket to put on the couch, so I guess that’s how we do things now. I can only assume that husband is lying in bed, laughing at me. Certainly he’s not sleeping. Now that Louie has had a chance to work on it, the bark is a fairly deep one. Doofus.
I was thinking about this as I worked out, trying to decide what my happy place is, and then I realized it’s here, where I live. After the run, which takes me past fields and a pond and sometimes a horse at the world’s tidiest small farm, I’m walking past the side of my house to round the corner to the driveway (house is on 2.6 acres). The kitchen light is on and the sun is just beginning to rise. Right now it’s late fall, so becoming a little bleak, which I like, particularly with the cheery light in the window. And I’m breathing the way you do after exercise, so diaphragmatically I imagine.
Honestly, if I have an opportunity to go to Heaven and it’s not a lot like where I live, I’ll be disappointed.
Deep diaphragm through the nose makes your belly rise and fall. Not up in the chest though. Thats stress breaths.
Your happy place sounds beautiful. And less than 1200 miles away. Very convenient! Thats really is nice that you’ve come to a place in life where your ideal happy place is actually where you live. Home is where the heart is.
CG Max day 6/50 - static lunge, shoulder press, banded hip thrust, pullover, banded RDL, chesty press, rear flies - with 15 minute/1 mile cardio warmup. Today was a slow day - heavier weight, less reps - and I think I added weight to most lifts. I felt strong and good. (Tomorrow may be another story, haha.) I continue to love working with Girvan. I love the way she mixes workout focus. And I continue to adore being told what to do so I can spend my workout counting or letting my thoughts wander, whatever, and it’s all okay as long as I track which side I’ve just done for lunges and such, which sometimes challenges me, sadly.
And I continue to adore being told what to do so I can spend my workout counting or letting my thoughts wander, whatever, and it’s all okay as long as I track which side I’ve just done for lunges and such, which sometimes challenges me, sadly.
I genuinely wonder if there is something to this. For people in more cerebral professions, I feel like it’s a luxury to be able to just be a worker bee in our free time. I know it’s one of the reasons I love cruise vacations: someone ELSE is doing all the planning and thinking and I can just shut off my brain. And it’s the same reason I fell in love with Tactical Barbell: it’s all written out and I just gotta go do.
So happy for you that you’re getting that joy out of your training as well.
YES! I just want to enjoy spending time with my body - I don’t want to HAVE to think, and I also want to be free to think about other things if I want to. It can be a good time to process stuff from work.
One of the friends we’ve traveled with a couple of times LOVES to plan and direct. And the rest of us love to fall in line behind her like a gaggle of happy preschoolers.
This is what I am liking about 531. I just have to go lift what the day says. However, I do seem to have trouble counting to three on occasion. So that’s not great.
CG Max day 7/50 - stability ball rollouts, lateral raises, goblet squats, sweeps, bulgarian lunges, chest flies - 15 minute/1 mile cardio warmup.
Great session! I have other things to talk about, but husband and dog are waiting impatiently to run with me to the office to grab a notebook. Not sure why, probably because I’m so thin and shredded.
. I still have my sushi training wheels on, aka the cooked stuff from the grocery store.
