"I did it! Look look, I'm balancing! Whup, never mind."

[flexagon]

Gymnastics was great last night. I brought a... friend? A weak social connection?... well, I brought a person, and she and I worked on handstands the whole time after class broke out into individual work. I taught her how to roll out of one, and for the first time ever, I straddled up a few times without rocking back strongly first to build some momentum. I also worked with Noah again on cartwheeling out of a handstand -- it's getting a little more intuitive. I still don't know how long it will take until I can do that from a real, accidental overbalance, but soon I'll probably start trying.

What Noah has to say about handstands is this: Think about how a little kid learns to walk. You have to learn handstands like that. Try them every day, preferably more than once per day, and it doesn't matter if you have to walk around a bit, or break form, or fall. It doesn't matter what you do. That's how the body learns, just slowly building up intuition and zeroing in on those balance points. I don't agree that the best way to learn is to do a bunch of perfect handstands with a spot -- it's better to have to fight for it and learn how to get there.

I feel pretty damn tired today. It bugs me that I'm doing more and more things that would really seem to warrant a day off afterward, but I am. Maybe I should drop to working out 5x/week. Or maybe it could be argued that skating at lunch on Tuesday really wasn't so kosher since that was supposed to be my day off. How do you all decide when to rest?

Comments

[bluechromis.livejournal.com]

I feel pretty damn tired today. It bugs me that I'm doing more and more things that would really seem to warrant a day off afterward

They won't necessarily always require a day off, you might find in a few months that you're good to go. I wouldn't personally consider skating a "workout" so I'd do it on a rest day. Guess it depends on what you're doing though. At this point I rest when I feel like my body needs it. I can tell if I am just not performing, in which case I try to listen, since I've found with the hypothyroidism stuff (ie. not healing quickly) that if I don't listen I just get myself deeping into trouble. I used to be able to just do what I wanted without big consequences, but not so much anymore. Also, using the hr monitor is helpful because if my hr is sky high and I know that I'm objectively not doing a hard workout, then I must have something else going on and need a rest.

[flexagon]

Ah, deeping into trouble. Yes. nevers, who now is just Megan since she's not doing LJ right now, also forwarded me this a few days ago:

http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0685.htm

Which has a quiz:

Simply rate each statement on a 1-5 scale as follows: 1 = strongly disagree; 2 = disagree; 3 = neutral; 4 = agree; 5 = strongly agree.

(1) I slept really well last night.
(2) I am looking forward to today's workout.
(3) I am optimistic about my future performance(s).
(4) I feel vigorous and energetic.
(5) My appetite is great.
(6) I have very little muscle soreness.

Evaluate yourself in this way each morning when you are ready to start your day. If your total score is 20 or above, your overall state of recovery is pretty good and you have probably recovered enough to carry out a high-quality workout on that day.