Glow. in Exerbabble III

I’m trying to absorb the post-workout moment. Or moments.

Morning-of motivation varies from day-to-day. Sometimes I wake up exhausted. Sometimes I really did sleep well, but it still takes a bit to get going. Sometimes I wake up at 3 am, rested, and have to wait for the gym to open. Sometimes I’m mentally drained and don’t feel like going.

Veteran gymrats can get away with the “additional rest days will pop up due to life” mantra.

I like when my arms/shoulders feel like noodles and are taxed at simply lifting them up to grab the towel. Or my legs feeling taxed while walking. Or, lighter due to there not being an external load. Or standing in the shower as the sweat washes away. Or the contrast of internal body heat meeting the cold outside. Or actually enjoying the sunlight when I emerge outside. Food almost always tasting good or better.

Or simply feeling accomplished. Whether it’s matching a workout, or getting one rep more, or five pounds more. It is delayed gratification that is worth remembering.

Won’t forget the time I had a heavy leg session, and then went hiking with some friends around the Delaware Water Gap. Both of them were into cardio. Guess whose legs didn’t flag at all while we went though diamond and double diamond paths.

A refresher on what GPP is. Stands for “General Physical Prepardness”. In layman’s terms, the ability to life. There’s a bit of specificity in what training prepares you for. Jogging won’t make you great at squatting, or vice versa. Swimming may make it easier to do other cardio. Benching won’t improve your curl. What exactly prepares you for hiking, other than hiking itself?

Fascinating stuff.

If you do nothing but jog, and then are asked to help move someone’s furniture, that jogging won’t benefit you much. If you do nothing but weightlifting and then attempt a 5k, you are equally screwed.

It’s why given the question of “cardio or weights”, the answer is generally Yes.

Though, with analysis mode, I could posit that the exertion-rest nature of weightlifting lends more crossover to hiking. Moreover, you bet that if my workout is 60 minutes, my heartrate is elevated for an hour. It’s not steady-state cardio, but the energy subsystems are still being worked.

…Or the time I got a wall A/C unit. Sucker was 80 lbs. And I lived on the 2nd floor. If it were a dumbbell, easy. But it was a massive box. One does not simply pick up a box that large by yourself and carry it up a flight of stairs. That was a full-body feat. <3

Was going to babble about how I’ve been contemplating successive routines. It’s a thing I do. tl;dr is an olde axiom to not change things much. Few more workouts and I’ll hit the requisite four week mark. Soft rest, then augment slightly, and continue. Overanalysis will fade as the weeks turn into months.