Purposeful Primitives Need Purposeful Layoffs
8 April 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Another question Im asked all the time concerns how best to train while away on vacation. My counterintuitive advice is why not synchronize a purposeful layoff with the family vacation? Heretic stuff rooted in laziness, sloth and lack of dedication? Not reallyevery elite athlete knows that after beating the hell out of the human body getting it ready for a competition, the best thing to do afterwards is take a purposeful layoff. The usual reason given for a post-competition layoff is that after the intense physical and psychological preparation leading up to an event the body needs a chance to recuperate, recover and heal.
All this is oh-so-true. The mind, the brain, also needs a chance to heal itself as competitive mental preparation is stressful and intense; in the weeks and days leading up to competition an athlete thinks of little else and this mental single-pointed-ness takes a terrific psychological toll. The final factor and the most overlooked reason that top athletes take several weeks off after a major competition is to allow the body to de-tune and become unaccustomed to the training effort and effect.
Elite competitors want the body to get out of shape so that when they begin anew a less intense training program, one far shorter in duration and frequency, will have an effect. In the olden days we used to refer to this as softening up for gains and it is a deliberate strategy. Once you are peaked out, physically, often the best thing you can do is totally cease and desist any and all training for a proscribed period of time. Again, this is all predicated on the foregone conclusion that you are peaked-out, burned-out or over-trained. Have you gone in a particular training direction as far as you can go and have gains ceased? Obviously if you are lollygagging along and use softening up for gains as an excuse to layoff, you are a fool fooling yourself.
Now lets loop back around to our original premise: if you are coming up on a family vacation, an extended business trip or a period where for whatever reason physical training will be difficult or impossible, why not use the time leading up to the trip or vacation to redouble your training effort then layoff completely while away? One strategy I like and use often is to really push hard and heavy in the month leading up to a 7-14 day family vacation then forget all about training while gone. This has a liberating effect on my body and my mind and frees me up totally while at some remote location. Now I can enjoy friends and family and being an active type of guy, I always seem to end up walking my legs off while on vacation anyway, seeing, doing and enjoying. I eat more, worry less and forget about barbells, dumbbells, progress and my quest. Oddly, towards the end of any vacation, my thoughts invariably turn towards training since I really enjoy it but by not allowing myself to train (other than any vacation-related, spin-off cardio activities that might occur) I build up a real desire to get back into training. By the time I get back to the real world Im positively itching to commence serious training once again. And now I am rested and ready and psychologically I am fired up. I always make fantastic gains in that post-vacation period.
So when I get these questions relating to how best to train while on vacation, the first thought that comes to mind is, if you have been hitting it hard and intense, why not blow it off altogether? Lazy heretic or smart choice? It all depends on how you spend that last month leading up to vacation.
Tags:Popularity: 1% [?]
Related Posts:
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
