DAY ONE:
Today I began to enact my first resolution for my time here in Panama. I usually love making resolutions and almost always have an official list at the beginning of every year. I usually make one for the New Year, then of course another one on Chinese New Year and then one to celebrate each season. This year I had a list for what I wanted to get done while I was in Panama but it lacked the power of an official resolutions list. The list was so long that I could not wrap my head around it. I think a lot of has to do with me feeling guilty about taking a year off of work at this point in my life. I am 44, practically the middle of my best work years and maybe right in the middle of my life if I am lucky enough to live to 88. I feel really guilty about it. Luckily, it was a point in my career where I would have really benefited from a sabbatical so I went with it. But now two months into my sabbatical and I feel paralyzed by what I know I am going to have to do in order to change my business into a sustainable career. I wont bore you with the details right now except to say that I decided that I had to just focus on one of my sabbatical goals at a time and decided that that the first thing that I had to do was to rethink my exercise and health regimen.
For the last three years I have not been consistent with any exercise routine except run between 20-30 miles a week and maybe fit in a yoga class once every couple of weeks. The only reason that I have not injured myself from just doing one thing is that I mostly ran well groomed trails and I don't ever push myself to go fast or hard enough to really do that much damage. That has not prepared me for running in this part of Panama that we have moved to. The trails in the cloud forests here are really beautiful so we have decided to make them part of our weekly mid week and weekend run. But the trails are wet and slippery and I noticed myself pulling muscles when sliding on leaves or going under a fallen tree limb. Not only am I stiff, I am also weak from not doing any strength training so I feel very injury prone. So I decided that I needed to methodically address all aspects of my health and exercise routine so that I would not end up so imbalanced again.
These are the elements and how I will address them:
Mobility and Agility: Mobility exercises.
Strength: Kettlebells
Speed: Two running speed workouts a week
Endurance: Two 3 hour trail runs a week
Flexibility: Find time to stretch everyday. This will be the hardest thing to do.
Balance and Coordination: Woss system (which is a suspension bodyweight training system like TRX)
Muscle awareness and massage: Look into sports massage and Thai yoga massage.
Today I worked on mobility and stretching, Since these are two things that I have no experience with I chose a basic step by step program for each. TBT on DailyBurn ( an online exercise program ) for mobility and A book called The Genius of Stretching by Bob Cooley for stretching.
Lets hope that I have caught myself in time and don't get injured right now while I am trying to fix years of neglect.
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