Rest Day

Sore today. My entire posterior chain is tight from yesterday. Took it easy and spent the day with a friend of mine here and his family. Every Sunday he plays field hockey for the local club team. The game was very competitive and played at a high level. It was interesting to see how they organize their sports here. Clubs range all ages, with 2 year groupings for everyone 18 and under, then skill level teams above that (1st, 2nd, 3rd team, etc) that you get placed on due to your relative ability. This essentially takes the place of high school and college sports in the States, but the scale is much smaller. It works the same for soccer, but the lower clubs serve as feeder systems for the pro teams, sometimes signing kids by age 16. It was a nice Sunday, but I still miss football.

Beyond my initiation to Dutch sporting culture, today represented the first day of my rest week. What this means for me, is that I won't be doing any highly intensive training for the next 5-6 days. I will still do very light exercise to maintain circulation to the muscles/tendons/etc that need the rest and repair, just nothing extravagant. Typically, this means no more than 3 sets per movement, 50% weight or less. Beyond that, it will mostly be stretching, self-myofacial massage (if I can find a foam roll), and yoga. Just enough to keep things moving.

Nutritionally, I will try to eat cleaner than ever, and more than ever. As my body recovers, I want to give it all the help I can and if I overdo the calories a tad, that's okay so long as they're good calories. This is not the week to start slamming chocolate bars and milkshakes.

Finally, this should be a good time for me to evaluate what I've done for the past 6 weeks and see where improvement has been made, where it hasn't, and how best to push forward. Also, I expect to come up with plenty of new, creative workouts for the archives. That way, I won't have to come up with a whole week's worth of WODs every single Sunday.

Looking forward to going to Berlin, Prague, and Ansbach next weekend... should be a great time.

From Sicily