Balance training

I had to abandon the New Rules of Lifting for Abs when my back got all screwy, so I haven't done any strength training for a month.

My chiropractor mentioned that I should be working on my balance. I remembered this book I picked up eons ago when I had a Barnes and Noble gift card to burn up, Balance Training by Karon Karter.

There hasn't been a lot of time up until this week -- the stretches the chiropractor gave me take a good hour each night, in addition to my running and cycling schedules (and that silly little thing called a day job!) But I'm furloughed this week so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Like the New Rules, Balance Training has a series of workouts that are meant to be done in a progression.

I tried the first stage, which is all body weight stuff done on the ground. It was way too easy. I had some time, so I did Phase 2, which is done on the foam roller. That felt relatively easy as well, but now I'm definitely feeling it a bit!

I think I may improvise and go back to Phase 1, and do it on the balance board instead of on the ground. If that works out I'll do that for four weeks, and then either find a way to modify the foam roller phase or just skip it altogether and move onto the stability ball phase, which looks tough!!

Since this is all lower body stuff, I'l going to find a 15-30 minute arm workout to do in addition.

Feeling pretty strong!!

Thursday update

I've been a bad blogger this week. It goes hand in hand with hitting a small bump in the road with my training, but now I'm back on track! I even cleaned my kitchen. A few random ramblings:

I've decided to go back to the beginner's marathon schedule, at least for a few weeks, in an effort to not kill myself. Maybe I'll add speed work back in later, but right now my main focus needs to be mileage building and hill training.

Traffic has been down on the blog lately, but today I hit 1,000 hits for the month. As usual thanks for reading! Music Monday and weekly goal updates will resume next week.

Lurking around Columbus for work today, and when I come back it'll be time for treadmill hill repeats, cycling and the NROLFA. Long day! Is it the weekend yet?

New Rules of Lifting for Abs: Phase 1 complete

I had stopped strength training for awhile and found that my back was hurting on long runs, so I picked up the book The New Rules of Lifting for Abs.

I just completed phase 1 of the 6-month program, and man, it's brutal, but so effective. I've moved up substantially on all of the exercises, and I feel stronger.

Each of the workouts was completed 8 times over about six weeks.

Here's where I started and where I ended on each: