Very cold, but dry. We did not many exercises with feet on ground for that reason. The trainings tend to be shorter, but more intensive at this time of the year.
Warmup
- Turn wrists, turn elbows, turn shoulders, use full range of motion
- Go on all fours, put little weight on the hands, push body up with the wrists. Stretch lower arms in several directions. Carefully feel into your wrists, what feels good and what not.
- Swing whole body, feel the blood pouring into your fingertips.
- Swing even more until knees touch the ground.
- Make circles with knees (around hips).
- Make circles with feet (around knees).
- Turn your ankles.
Exercises
- Monkey walk mixed with 360° jumps.
- Do a few pushups, immediately start sprinting. First 20m are flat, then the hill starts. Sprint as long as you can keep the technique.
- Rope traversing. There is a rope hanging between two trees. Move along it in different ways.
- Follow me run. I run a lane through the forest and over fallen trees and benches, jump over rocks. You follow me, in your own technique.
- Hill runs again. Don’t do 100%, a little slower, so that you can keep the quality over 5-10 runs. Try to get into a rhythm of exhaustion/relaxation.
Tools used
It was a quite simple training we did yesterday. But we already used many tools to enjoy training:
- “As long as you can keep the technique”. This is important. The goal is not to go until you die or can’t stand the pain anymore, but to go until you can’ hold the technique anymore. If done right, you focus completely on the technique, bringing you into observing your body more than the question how far it still is. You go as long as you can go high quality.
The important part here is that you build a habit of high quality movement. No way to “just do what you have to do”. It forces a level of commitment, and this actually makes things more joyful. - Continuous attention. While doing the “intuitive run” we have to observe the environment at any moment, reacting quickly to obstacles. This keeps us in the right mode.
- Keep mindfulness: This is a hard one! When you are forced to do something where you can’t stop or do breaks. Your only chance here is to stay in the mode of mindfulness as good as possible. You may have noticed that while it gets difficult quickly, there comes a “second breath” after a while. When you can reach a “stable state” at a higher level of effort. And use your hard breath or the alternation of contraction and relaxation as anchor. Don’t be disappointed if it didn’t work yesterday, it requires practice and depends on daily condition. It is really important here (and an important habit to build) to stay your friend. Meaning use all your conscious attention to care for you, to encourage you, to support you. Sounds weird?
- Quick change: From the push ups to the sprints there is no break. You are well into sprinting before realizing what happens ;).
- Use short relaxation as reward. After the hill runs, we stood or sat for a few moments. Hear the heart beat, hear the sound of breath. Enjoy coming back into the comfort zone. Don’t skip this! We are in training and not on the run!
Train Joy 