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| Erik and Hyacinth contemplate the 9kg medicine ball |
Erik Lee of Team Shape-U is my current font of all wisdom. I am becoming convinced that his pleasantly eccentric training regime is having beneficial effects on my running.
Today, the playground was set out with the battle rope, medicine balls, the balancing/ spongy ring ting, side-to-side hurdles and pole and an exercise called 'blades'. There was a great deal of squatting, tempered by vigorous lifts and upper back exercises to get the shoulder blades forced back. Erik often talks about 'beating yourself up, in a nice way', by which he means you have to get to a place of exhaustion within the minute, then recover a little, before coming back to the exercise as strong a before. So you hurt, then rest, recoup and explode into it all again. You're nice to yourself but also a little nasty.
The flip side of this is 'glamorous' exercise (interestingly I see this demonstrated daily in the park by quite glamorous looking people). Glamorous exercise is that which doesn't make you sweat, puff or reach a peak of near exhaustion. Glamorous exercisers keep on going with their not very committed movements, be it endless ploddy jogging for miles and miles, or crunches x150 recurring. Such exercises only help keep you steady, fitness wise, but not strong and fleet, Erik says.
This evening at running club we did 6x600m in the park. It was a slightly easy session as we have a 5k Assembly Race on Thursday. However the intervals had to be run fast. I ran as fast as I could, with Erik's comments about glamorous exercise ringing in my ears. Puce, sweating, hair afrizz and mascara streaming, I did not look or feel glamorous. I felt quite powerful, though.
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