I am back lifting

I am back lifting. I love it.

Previously, I would do two one and a quarter hour afternoon sessions every week. With the baby (when he and mommy are awake, I need to be available) and summer (our home based gym gets a lot of hot afternoon sun in the summer) I needed to find a new rhythm to make this a reality.

So now I get up at the coolest point of the day, 0630 and do a half hour of lifting: Squats and deadlifts or chin-ups one day. Bench press and strict press the next. Repeat. I try to get four sessions in per week.

It’s been going good. I’ve been able to add 20kg to my squats in the last two weeks.

But I want to tie this into the concept of sabbath from yesterday.

I don’t exercise, I train. I’ll go on a walk with my family or a friend because I enjoy the company, not because I need the exercise. A fundamental part of training with weights is recovery. Exercise won’t make you stronger, recovering from exercise makes you stronger.

Recovery encompasses a lot of things, but a minuscule part of major importance is just how long I wait between work sets. When I squat I do five different warmup weights before doing three sets of five repetitions of the maximum weight I can lift. Resting for three minutes instead of four between sets is often the reason I couldn’t finish my work out.

It’s hard to justify not resting that extra minute. Yet I try to. The minutes compound, I don’t rest just once in the workout, it’s six or seven times. Yet not taking the time to recover properly means repeating the whole workout again next time.

Rest is work. Rest is progress.