Progress when you aren’t looking.

I’ve been learning a valuable lesson over the last few months about when progress is ACTUALLY made.

I was working out A LOT. 6-7 days a week including on skates training. Week after week at the Dynamic Sports Academy I was getting small improvements in my weight lifting, but not really seeing any in my Vision and Cognitive Tests or my fast footwork. After a few months of this I passed my workout schedule on to the coaches there who suggested I may be doing too much and not allowing my body to make the improvements, and instead was just tiring out my central nervous system. Coupled with not enough sleep and not enough food, some of those workouts were just a plain old waste of time.

So I made some changes and after a few weeks of completely going the other way and hardly working out at all (you do what you think about right?- that’s a whole other topic for another day), I think I’ve found a balance. And you know what? The improvements week on week have been so much bigger, thanks to adding rest days into my schedule.  My muscles have time to repair themselves and get bigger before the next weights session showing greater improvements than before. Even better is the improvement in my agility and cognitive tests where I barely showed any improvements over 3 months when I was exhausted.  During my workouts that I do now I put 100% of myself in, and leave nothing left.I am also so much fresher at training that I have the energy to really push my skating skills and get my heart pumping. For a long time it didn’t feel like training was a workout, and now it feels like it is again. Hopefully that’s because I have the mental focus to push myself rather than that I’m getting out of shape….

Finally, I have more time to do something that I never scheduled in before. To relax. To paint and draw and hang out watching films. And whilst I’m doing those things I know that secretly, whilst I’m not looking, my body is doing all the hard work of rebuilding me faster, stronger, better.

*Disclaimer: 100% rest will not make you 100% stronger you lazy oaf.

Look how hard I’m working and barely breaking a sweat.