Monday, October 26, 2009

Went running again this morning ....

I seem to be adjusting to the Frees very well. But the true test will be when I have my next pointe class. One of the reasons I've gotten out of the running habit is that running isn't great for dancers' feet. That's the conventional wisdom, anyway. But I think a lot of that is because traditional running shoes don't allow for a full range of motion in the foot --not if you've got flexible feet, at least. Even the Frees are not exactly like running barefoot ... but they're a lot better than the shoes I used to wear, which were like blocks of cement on my feet.

Anyway, we'll see.

My plan is to run Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, since I cycle on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I probably won't lift on Wednesdays and Thursdays because those days are dance-heavy, but everything else is negotiable. A Friday-Saturday-Monday-Tuesday lifting schedule would make some sense if I were doing an upper/lower split but that doesn't seem to be what I'm into at the moment so we'll see. One of the nice things about kettlebell training is that since you're not lifting to failure the usual rules about recovery don't necessarily apply. I mean, for some people I expect they do, but the need for recovery tends to be a very individual thing, and I personally have never noticed any ill effects from doing, say, kettlebell swings, 5 days in a row. I don't believe it's fundamentally any different than running 5 days in a row, which plenty of people do. Obviously in both cases you want to build up to that level of frequency and also be sure to vary your intensity ... but as long as you do that, cardio is cardio, right?