I don’t know how my walking pals Jeri and Neena are feeling today, but my butt is sore!
It’s possible that I overdid it a bit on the endurance walk, yesterday… Not the smartest act, possibly, since today’s program calls for another walk for distance at a moderate pace.
See, I found a new trail and took a detour. It was fantastic, all woodsy and peaceful — I saw a pileated woodpecker quite close-up, very cool — but it added about 20 minutes to the 50-minute walk I’d planned to do.
Feeling it in the rear-end muscles… that probably means this exercise is doing me some good, right?
5 minute warm-up
35-50 minutes walk at level 6
5 minute cool-down
stretching
Craig Harper, that wild-and-crazy Australian fitness motivational life coach guy, says that a lot of people are wasting time (and money) at the gym (or wherever their exercise takes place) by doing the same old thing all the time.
Our bodies are particularly adapted over time to whatever we normally do. He gives the example of the body builder “who can lift a Toyota” but couldn’t run out of a burning building without keeling over… No change in activity? No change in the body.
Your body will only adapt when it has to.
When you give it a reason.
So… give it a reason.
Which means, I guess, it’s good to push to the point of some discomfort (if you don’t have any health conditions that would make your doctor advise against a particular exercise activity or level of intensity, of course).
So, are we challenging ourselves a bit with these daily walks?
Are those muscles talking back?
I haven’t reached the point where my muscles are getting all that sore… there’s a balance between cardio endurance and muscle workout, I think, and I’m still to the point where I work my heart harder than my legs.
My feet get sore, though, if I walk too many days in a row or wearing shoes that aren’t great (like today’s downtown trekking in Dansko clogs rather than walking shoes).
Tomorrow’s my first longer endurance walk… we’ll see how it goes.