| |
|
yeah, kilos. sorry, should have said.
aka "weigh 10 stone even, bench 15 and a half-ish"
> > also good are "wind sprints". essentially, do 8 x 60m sprints. each one as hard as you can.
> Woooo ... don't know if I could. What kind of rest break are you allowing between sprints? 30 secs or so?
as long as necessary to get breath back and heartrate back to near normal.
so for your first time, probably about 30 secs after your first run, then a minute after your second, etc.
for most people starting out, by the time you reach your 5th or 6th run, you're lookin' at a rest break of about 3 days.
no matter -- maximum intensity is the maximum you can do on the day.
> This sounds very similar to the programme linked to, by moi, upthread. My real concern here is buggering up my knees... I'd assume you run more on your toes in sprints so are in less danger here, but they feel a bit "delicate" this week. Annoying!
i used to be in the same boat as you (possibly worse, with an exploded knee courtesy of a rock sitting under a knee when i landed upside down after a bike malfunction at speed downhill flipped me over the handlebars), and discovered by accident by dint of being forced in the UK to just do gym exercise, that the previously-avoided Squats are actually SUPERB for your knees. reason: they mostly work your hamstrings and glutes. your knee, like your shoulder, is an unstable joint. so it relies on its supporting muscles to keep it together. improving hamstring strength really helps your knees. (and for martial arts, glute strength (plus qui gong) really helps your balance)
take it gently at first! maybe start with a few sessions of just doing leg raises and hamstring wossnames, to get the legs aware they're about to be stressed muscularly.
but yeah, you always get times where the body sends you clear signals it's not up for something. pay attention to them. your body is your friend.
> Active/dynamic stretching is best for warming up (bouncing/ leg-swings etc), as it's prodding your body to wake up, and is not so dangerous as it is generally made out to be.
this is what is commonly taught in the UK, along with "warming up" on an exercise bike or by jogging.
it is horrifically wrong. MAJOR injury risk, in the sense of gathering stiffness and unwillingness to exercise/move as muscles o-so-gradually clog up with scar tissue. if you're taking it gently as you bounce, you'll be fine for a couple of years, then you'll just give up under the weight of the discomfort. happens every time. every gymnast, runner, and martial artist i've ever come across who's made a practice of dynamic stretching as a warmup has essentially given up their sport less than a decade after they start it because "they're getting too old for it". stiff, sore, weakening, etc.
as opposed to the non-dynamicstretch warmeruppers who just keep on keeping on.
i'm not in any sense suggesting there's no place for dynamic stretching. i do it all the time. but it's a technique i use carefully, and only when i'm half-limbered up and if i have a joint/muscle-collation which is not moving as freely in all directions as it should. in essence, it's a method for applying PNF to that entire muscle-collation without knowing exactly which particular muscle is clogging: you're forcing all the golgi organs to switch on, in the hopes more of them will switch off afterwards.
if you're not warmed up and you're doing any bouncy/"dynamic" stretching : if you're getting within maybe a third of your maximum stretch, or going much past your immediate utterly-comfortable position, you're starting to tear particular muscle cells and hence gradually adding scar tissue to your muscles. no biggy, but it WILL creep up on you over time.
if you're physically cold, go take a hot shower. or sit in the spa if you're in a good gym. then do pushups.
THEN start your "warm-up". ("limber-up" is probably a better way of thinking of it)
but don't bounce-stretch in a warm-up or to add flexibility.
they're good for warm-downs, though.
Lula: what illmatic said. the body adds fitness amazingly fast. and loses it almost as fast, sadly. and Intensity is the way to add fitness, not duration or sweat.
Generally (talking towards Legba's original post):
treat your body as an amazing self-regulating machine, and you/your consciousness as something communicating with it by the demands you put on it. it will respond to what it thinks you're asking it to do.
if you feed it lots of sugar, it will turn into a pudding.
if you jog or bike slowly for hours a day, it will turn into a shape that will be suitable for jogging or biking for hours at a time. think: strong stick. e.g. paula radcliffe.
if you indicate to it that it needs to be able to explosively throw its entire bodyweight around, with no notice, at the highest speed it can, it turns into a shape that most people find very attractive. think: high power-to-weight ratio, flexible. e.g.: ballet dancer (m/f).
(interesting genetic implications, there, by the way.
particularly when you consider that (female;-) dancers give birth almost effortlessly.
and interesting long-term evolutionary/sociological implications if you look at how fat and clothes are used to imitate those shapes.)
you'll note that the bodyshapes most people find most attractive are not the powerlifters or the marathon runners, but rather the martial artists and the ballet dancers. you'll note that neither of the latter need to use weights or put in huge amounts of hours in order to have the body shape they have. critically, though, they exercise in a power-to-weight regime as explosively/acceleratively as possible, and maintain efforts/poses at their very extreme for much longer than most sports.
Intensity
[male sprinters and female triple-jumpers also have phenomenal bodies, but nowadays the professional athletes all tend to also do lots of gymwork as well, so it's a bit more muddled.] |
|
|
and lots of useful little tips therein.