Self Regulation
Stamina, Fatigue and Pace
Comment of a Lifetime
It made me laugh and is so true
Hearing that comment will stay with me for life
Someone watched me finish up one day
Then that individual said to me
"You don't seem tired at all"
I have stressed the importance of reasonable warmup
As well as the necessity of maintaining reasonable speed
After silently appreciating the glorious innuendo of this comment
I reflected on the idea of choosing how far to go on any given day
And choosing how much to apply myself to any given workout session
I came up with an easy idea that makes a lot of sense
Somewhere in me is the idea of a "maximum workout"
Let's call that the "100% of my capacity and capability"
I later learned my capacity was around 80 laps at the time
It is probably much further now but I haven't tested it lately
Testing the upper limit takes a lot of planning
It often requires a nap afterwards
Plus lots of rest in following days
IF 80 laps is the upper possibility of my upper actual limit
Doing 40 laps is really only half of my limit
Doing 20 laps is a quarter of my limit
Doing 10 laps is 12.5%
With this in mind, doing a quarter to a half of my upper maximum
Is no big deal at all! What my onlooker observed is perfectly true
I can finish up my swim and look like I've barely broken a sweat
What she didn't see - is everything
I probably went home that day
And had a long, restful nap
It's deliciously wonderful
To make room in life
For breaks and rest
Restoration is such an underappreciated art and necessity
Some people "are not nappers" - to each their own
I gave up a long time ago trying to convince people
To slow down - even as I'm doing that in this book
What I can say is that your body - your soul's mate
The physical version of you loves taking extra rest
Even if you don't think you do, or won't make time
What would taking extra rest even feel like (I guess I'm selling naps)
Think of things that don't get done when you're too exhausted from work
Think of things not possible when you are booked in back to back appointments
If you reschedule the busy work errands - to clear time for truly important things
You might find the important things start to occupy more and more of your time
"You look like you could jump back in and do it again"
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MoneyPenny: What a delicious thing to hear from a stranger
The idea with home budgeting is to pay your saving accounts before your bills
Now do that with your body in the form of time for conditioning
In fact that statement absolutely does reflect how I train
There is a whole target advisory for that
It's how people train for marathons
The basic concept around training for a marathon goes like this:
You end up doing about half of what you could actually do
Your practice is exerting half capacity at any given time
Hey that sounds like my swim training zone right??
Exact halfway point of full capacity does not matter
In the pool, you will need to retain your stamina
Get accustomed to your training zone
Blood oxygen matters
Power to the People!
If you don't feel like you could jump back in the pool and do your same workout
You are not working at the "50% to capacity" recommended ratio
That means you are attempting more than half of your max
If your body starts hurting, that probably means you are far past halfway
The way this works again, is to keep moving during your restful breaks
The magic of Lazy River gives you the distance you need to make it
We must reach a moment where we are doing little more than treading water
We must be capable of doing an activity without feeling tired or exerted
We must maintain activity periods of 5-45 minutes and more
For someone who is good with swim
You'll be utilizing different forms of the back stroke
As well as the breast stroke, in addition to free style
If it is not easy to wrap your mind around the concept
Of continued movement on your rest break
That is because you're over exerting
One thing helps with that - if you think you are on duty
If you think you're following someone else's strategic plan
You may come to resent that order to keep moving on your breaks
Only if you yourself feel vested in making this time goal
Will you sincerely and eagerly work this into play for yourself
No one gave this goal, you adopted it - now finish it on your own time
