Recovery

Right now I'm looking to work out 5 times a week, on a 3 on, 1 off, 2 on, 1 off schedule. That means today's a rest day, and per usual on rest days, I'm torturing myself by looking at the posted workout at Crossfit Boston: a 1-20 dumbbell thruster breathing ladder.

'Damn, that looks great,' I'm thinking, 'maybe I should try to do that one in the shed.' I've got a dumbbell, I know how to do breathing ladders (1 rep of the exercise, 1 breath, 2 reps, 2 breaths, and so on up to 20), and it looks painful. But deviating from my plan for the week's workouts would introduce the element of instability, and that's such a slippery slope: work out today...maybe tomorrow I wake up not feeling so hot after the 4th consecutive WOD and I skip class, and that means I've got to rethink my plan to hit 5 WODs/this wk and set myself up on proper rest for the same routine next week.

Nah...later for that. 5 one-hour classes/WODs a week with 2 needed recovery days (I'm not sleeping super with a newborn and still hashing out my diet) is a smart, doable--and most importantly--repeatable routine for me right now.

But what I can do to scratch that itch is make sure I use today as an active rest day to hit one of the six areas I'm looking to build: hamstring flexibility (depth & upright torso in squats), pushups, core strength & stability, muscle ups (combo ring pullup and dip), verticality & extension on olympic lifts, and handstands. In fact, if I'm smart about it, I can hit two in one day: working my hammy flexibility means stretching them out, and that means getting them warm beforehand--the perfect job for a series of PVC pipe cleans to work on extension and verticality. Just like that, a workable plan for two areas of skill work, some active rest (great for recovery), and I've scratched that WODdy itch I was talking about.