Hey. Still here, last two weeks have been hectic at work. Drained me physically and mentally, didn't have courage or mood to workout. At the back of my head i also had the resting thing too,
ah damn. was probably a good thing that you got some rest in, after all, you consistently go hard. maybe your quads will be miraculously fixed too once you get back under the bar. :F
like everyone else in here i am unable to rest myself on demand to heal up sth, i just try to train around it. So forced rest sometimes is a blessing.
ya that seems to be a major problem EVERYWHERE. many of us are too addicted to training. if we're hurt, we know we should rest, but we train around it because "There are no rainy days" <insert motivational commercial, campaign, movie, etc>. We most often give solid advice to others, which includes rest or progressing slower; but we don't heed that advice ourselves. We also have this fear that gains will disappear if we rest, and in some cases they begin to, or at least feel like they do. If gains are not disappearing, but simply feel like they are disappearing (physically or mentally), well that's enough to wreck us mentally - and get us back out there.
There's this one running article I posted a while back where Lagat talks about how American runners simply can't rest. He says that in his experience, American runners feel like not training for even just one day, will lead to them getting worse. On the flip-side, Lagat takes one day off per week mandatory, runs much less than traditional runners (~70 miles or less per week) and takes 5 weeks off per month. He's looked at by most as having serious longevity in the sport; he's still performing/competing at the highest levels and he's over 40.
That shouldn't be news to us.. we've seen that mentality on this forum (admittedly, myself mostly), other forums, everywhere. We've seen professional athletes "suck it up" and play through pain/injury, as if it's a badge of honor.
I think we can draw an analogy between this mindset, and a corporate/wall street mindset (even the tech startup world). They have a similar issue in their culture; work every day, sleep is for the week. One of the very best ways to grow our intellect, is to get enough sleep. Yet, many of these folks wear 'lack of sleep' (~4 hours or less) as a badge of honor. Interestingly enough, probably the only way to succeed with no sleep in business, or no rest in athletics, is drugs; cocaine/adderall in business, various PED's in athletics.
Myself personally, i've been trying to change my own idea of rest into that of a form of training in itself; seemingly successfully so far. By considering rest days as more of a form of "STIM" (recovery as CNS stimulation), a mandatory method of repair, and by thinking about rest as a form of converting more IIa/IIx fibers, I think i've tricked myself into wanting to rest more than train. I now have forced mandatory rest days following any training day, and subsequent rest days if I feel like I won't be able to give 100%. This will most likely only work well if, when I do train, I train pretty hard (@ a high intensity). But needless to say, i've been trying to reform some concepts that have been deeply embedded within my mind, by various forces, from a very long time ago (25+ years). I've tossed around the idea of trying to achieve significant vert/performance gains without any weightlifting for a long time (i'm sure you can remember most of those instances), which to most, sounds ludicrous (almost rightfully so). But now, having not lifted for so long, while still training, I think i'm at the point where I might be able to start piecing it together (injuries permitting). Going this route, rest becomes an essential tool, IMHO.
Getting back at it today hopefully.
nice!!
pc!
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