Friday, May 18, 2007

Mistake of Enthusiasm

My Tiny90 partner, Sara, is in her last week of her Self (non) Challenge; because I re-did that week a month ago, I technically have one more week.

However, I made one serious error, a very common one. As you can tell from these posts, I'm an enthusiastic supporter of P90X. It's well-planned, well-executed, fun and produces visible results. So I got all excited about my progress, how it felt, how fit and strong I was becoming and how I was progressing. A few weeks ago I went to my favorite place in San Francisco, SportsBasement (we heathens who sweat call it Church) and bought heavier bands for the last weeks of the program. It's time, I thought, I can take this on! I'm doing so well! URRRRRG. I quickly had a flare-up of bursitis in both shoulders and could barely push myself up out of bed in the morning.

Such a rookie mistake, but an easy one to make. Enthusiasm, while good for the long haul, is dangerous in the short-term. It's easy to trick yourself into pushing harder than you should - a classic lesson I learned in marathon training was "Don't let the excitement of the event push your pace." Different scenario, same mistake. I decided not to "make up" the lost time, which has ended up being two weeks. Instead I'll take the end of my program at the same time as Sara and start over...doing P90X Doubles.

Hey, it was a rookie mistake, but I haven't lost the enthusiasm. Lesson learned; no backing down. I still have a finish line ahead of me, 90 days from...uh, whenever Sara says :-).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

These are great points, Tamsen. I recently over-did it on barbell deadlifts, and lost 10 days due to lower back strain. It's really hard to come back when you lose your momentum like that.

Here's a question for either (or both) of you: what do you know about basal metabolic rate (BMR)? Is there any value in using this number to adjust your intake?

Tamsen said...

i'm one of those geeks who has all my calculations (BMR, RMR, BMI, V02 and Heart rate zones) in a notebook. i'm no expert, but what i know about my BMR is that i want it as high as possible. right now it's hovering around 1450.

running and P90X require about 800 more calories. the only part of my BMR that i consider in my intake is to make sure i'm eating enough - the classic mistake for active/athletic women is to undereat, and doing that tends to lower your BMR. i'm prone to that error, especially on recovery days. well, recovery days in which i don't crave pie.

if want to geek out, here are some places to calculate your stats:

http://www.topendsports.com/testing/calcs.htm

http://www.marathonguide.com/fitnesscalcs/

maybe sara has some additional input...