How to keep a life timetable

While keeping a detailed timetable of your life can prove tedious at times, it’s a worthwhile exercise to do for a couple of weeks just to see where the time opportunities are, where you’re taking longer than you should over something (and are therefore taking some bits of guilty “me-time”) and where you’re overdoing things and really ought to make more space.

The easiest way to do it is to build a basic excel spreadsheet on the computer that is nearest to you for the majority of the time.  For me this was my work computer.  To keep it accessible at the weekends, since my work USB stick wasn’t compatible with my home computer, I uploaded it as an attachment on a draft email in my online email account.  During a standard day I would keep it open all the time, adding to it whenever I changed what I was doing or when I ate something.

Choose your level of detail

You don’t have to get that detailed if you don’t want to.  Say you just want a flavour of how long you are spending between sleeping, commuting, working, doing workouts and actively relaxing (eg. watching TV) then just record those things and use “other” for anything else.

For my own experiment I wanted to get really granular.  Not only did I want to know if there was time I could reclaim to do other things, I also wanted to get a grip on how much relaxation I was getting and how much time was spent at work and commuting – time that I’ll reclaim next year.  I wanted to know why I couldn’t fit anything else into my life.  A quick tally in my head suggested there were more hours available during my weekdays than I actually had.  Where were they going?

To make sense of the data in this level of detail I added an extra column, categorising my detailed comments into broader categories that could be analysed.

Getting extra benefits

Since I was recording every moment of my day I also recorded in the comments what I was eating, recording the details of every naughty little nibble.  I was aware that with the other stresses in life I was being a bit more laid back about my food choices, despite still caring about what I was doing to my body but I wondered how often I was slipping up.

By highlighting cells in red if it included something I felt didn’t fit with my healthy diet concepts I was able to shock myself into realising I was slipping something through the net almost daily.  It was amazing how quickly this changed when the results were staring me in the face though.

The results

Here’s what an average weekday without a workout ended up looking like:

• 07.00 – Rolling (self-massage with the baseball)
• 07.15 – Shower (shower, weigh in, get dressed)
• 07.35 – Violin practice
• 08.10 – Pack for work including putting my bike in the car
• 08.15 – Drive to work (actually, Chris giving me a lift)
• 08.45 – Work
• 12.45 – Relax (if things aren’t too hectic at work I’ll take 30-45 minutes to sit in the canteen with work colleagues and drink a mug of tea while they eat lunch)
• 13.15 – Work
• 17.45 – Cycling (this includes about 15 minutes of packing up at work and changing into my cycle gear and then 5 minutes unpacking and racking my bike when I get home)
• 18.50 – Shower for 20 minutes, including changing and just recovering from the day OR Epsom Salt bath, which takes over half an hour by the time I’ve run the bath and got dressed at the end of it
• 19.10 or 19.30 – Something: this could be time spent doing some cleaning, dealing with house paperwork, doing blog research or something similar.  Sometimes I’ll cook the dinner instead of Chris in this window as well.
• 20.45 – Dinner (Chris and I make the effort to sit down together at this point and talk over dinner – it’s usually the first opportunity we’ve had since we went to work).  Yes, this is the only time I eat on a non-workout day unless I’ve given in to someone’s birthday cakes at work, which I always make sure is at least right at the end of the day just before I cycle home if I’m feeling weak-willed and know I’m going to give in to the cake/chocolate desire)
• 21.10 – Housework (washing up and cleaning the kitchen)
• 21.40 – Relax in bed.  I would put “sleep” here, but the reality is that Chris and I talk for at least 20 minutes after we get into bed and put the light out.
• 22.00 – Sleep

On the one day when I do a workout this changes to me driving myself to work and then from 17.45 it goes like this:

• 17.45 – Drive home
• 18.15 – Change and eat a tin of tuna mixed with mayonnaise and a spoon of sauerkraut
• 18.30 – Gym
• 20.30 – Shower
• 20.45 – Dinner and back to the routine above.

One day a week I’ll work in Birmingham – it looks like this:

• 06.30 – Rolling
• 06.45 – Shower
• 07.00 – Pack for work
• 07.10 – Drive to work (should take about 75 minutes but traffic at commuter times is dreadful)
• 08.45 – Work
• 17.00 – Drive home (leaving work early having worked through lunchtime but still hitting bad traffic)
• 18.15 – Shopping (there’s a supermarket near my motorway exit so I try to put my Birmingham day near the end of the week and shop on the way home, otherwise I’ll have to shop in my “something” window on another day).
• 19.15 – Finish driving home
• 19.45 – Unpack shopping
• 20.10 – Housework (washing up and things usually) and perhaps clearing emails and Google Reader
• 20.45 – Dinner with Chris and back to the usual post-dinner routine.

So there’s 30 – 90 minutes on my non-workout days to do the things I want to do, including keeping the house in a presentable state, keeping on top of the paperwork and my emails, reading for the blog and so on.  That’s why the blog writing moved to be a solely weekend activity a few months ago.

Oh, and this doesn’t count the fact that with a concert coming up I now spend all of Wednesday evening at a rehearsal too.

The results – making it meaningful

So this timetable is useful, but what does it really mean.  What was the majority of my week spent doing after I include the weekends as well?

The easiest way to look at it is in a pie chart of the whole week.  Here’s an average sort of week with totals in days, hours and minutes:

Chart of my week - 20-26 August 2011

A few notes on that particular week:

• I was doing our tax returns, so there’s more paperwork than normal and no “technical reading”.
• We went for a walk at the weekend, hence “walking”.
• The babysitting and Chris business bits are me doing various admin bits like flyers and profile updates online.
• “Training” is my gym sessions.
• I tend to anything that could be relaxing into “relaxing”.

I was pleased by the dedication to getting sufficient sleep each night and pleased with the consistency of my rolling.  I was disappointed by how little time I find to move about training, walking and cycling.  Despite that my housework is usually quite active and once I remove that work slice I can replace it with more activity and a bit more technical reading and blog work.

So I gained a lot of benefit from my life timetable.  It revealed when my windows of opportunity were, how much rubbish I was eating, what needed moving to the weekend (the blog) and what I wasn’t getting enough of (activity).

Hopefully my pointers are helpful for anyone thinking of keeping a diary like this.  Would you have the dedication to keep a life-timetable?  Have you already done so?  If you have, then what did it reveal for you?  I’d love to find out how other busy people fit everything into their lives.  This was done during quiet season at work so I’d love to know how people who are even busier or who have children to work around fit training into their lives.

Related posts:

1. Work-Life balance
2. Self massage for a busy life

Jake agrees that plenty of sleep is beneficial

• I’m going to kick off with a reminder from Cassandra Forsythe about why exercising more won’t necessarily help you sleep better.  Interestingly, Cassandra has focused on the fact that actually the exact amount of exercise doesn’t seem to be the affecting factor in itself, as revealed by a recent study, but rather our mindset and attitude towards our exercise (amongst other things).
• Chris on Zen to Fitness did a post recently to remind us all about those foods that can hinder a good night of sleep if you have them too late in the day.  It’s mostly the usual suspects, like caffeine, chocolate and cheese, but I was surprised to see valerian on the list as well.  Other than the valerian there wasn’t anything new to me on this list, but it’s always good to be reminded of those problem foods since some of them can easily slip back into the late afternoon or evening meals at times.
• I’ve mentioned in previous posts about sleep that one important factor is to make sure the room is completely dark to get a quality night of sleep.  Interestingly researchers at the University of Haifa have found a link between Light at night (LAN) and cancerous growths.  The study was done on mice with some mice being exposed to different amounts of light (“short days”, longer days with an interval of LAN and “long days”) with those getting the longest “day” showing the largest increase in cancerous growth with a link between the suppression of melatonin and the development of the tumour since those mice who were treated with melatonin managed to retain cancer growth rate that was more equivalent to the “short days” mice.  What does all this tell us?  I think that for starters if you live in a city with bright lights on all night, consider getting some blackout curtains.  Secondly, this is yet more evident that we should be making sure we get a decent length night of sleep.  It’s all well and good having a dark room but if you only spend five hours in it sleeping then you are still getting a short night.
• I’m going to return to Chris from Zen to Fitness.  Not only has he reminded us of the foods we should avoid to get a good night of sleep, but he has also helpfully summarised a few other things that should help get a good night’s sleep.  Again, I don’t think there is anything new in this post, but it’s always good to be given a bit of a “talking to” to remember the important things to ensure a good night of quality sleep in order to get all the mood, recovery and health benefits of a good sleep.
• I’ve known for some time that longer and better sleep helps me with fat loss.  It’s a tip I picked up from Dan John originally.  However there has suddenly been lots of news on the internet about a recent study which took this anecdotal evidence and hypothesis and carried out a fairly rigorous and controlled study to examine this very factor.  The results did provide some solid scientific evidence that good sleep really does help fat loss and it was picked up by both Chris at Conditioning Research and also by Stephan at Whole Health Source (who also goes into some detail analysing the study and has had to post a slight correction to part of his analysis).
• Following on from that last study here’s another, perhaps less rigorous, study which Chris at Conditioning Research found which concluded that “changes in BMI during puberty were inversely related to changes in sleep duration, independent of possible confounders”.
• If you weren’t already coming to the conclusion that getting to bed earlier is a really good thing then Precision Nutrition took the time to post up an article about sleep preventing muscle loss.  It’s looking at the results from a couple of studies and, in usual Precision Nutrition style, goes into plenty of detail.  The studies it is looking at are studies connecting sleep with metabolism changes as well as one linking it to fat loss.

That’s the lot!  Some of those were simple reminders of the all important points to ensure a good night of sleep while others may be new to people.  Whether there is new information for you here or you already knew all of this I hope it has been useful to you to put it all together in one place to help you get a really good night of sleep.

Sweet dreams!

Related posts:

1. Blog-watch: sleep
2. Lessons learned: sleep
3. Blog-watch: weight loss diets latest news

Try to find some time and a special place to release the stress

Since I last went through a stressful period at work I’ve collected together a few select articles about stress, in particular articles about how these impact on training and diet.  If you have a tendency to get stressed then take a moment to read through these articles and see if they ring as true for you as they did for me.

• I’m going to start with an oldie.  The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban is a fantastic site since it specialises in reproducing old magazine articles about lifting and can therefore give you a “new” perspective in the modern age.  Sometimes the old information is the most reliable since it was built up over long periods of time and is firmly grounded in experience.  I like the fact that the articles are so well-written as well.  Recently they reproduced “Training during periods of stress” by Tom E. Kakonis.  A few of the examples are a bit outdated, but the observations of the different ways people may go with their diet and training when under stress are spot on and may help you recognise the signs earlier.
• A few months ago the same site featured an article entitled “The Mental Approach”, originally written by John Grimek in 1961.  The article isn’t actually about stress but concentrates on how your mental state can affect your performance in the gym.  So why is it relevant to this blog-watch?  Simple because when you are really stressed you are rarely in the right mental zone to perform well and poor performance can make the stress worse.  A reminder that if you start on this downwards spiral then a rest week or two may be a good place to start.
• Next up is an article from Patrick Ward.  Patrick explores the idea that we actually have a finite resource at any one time for stress.  When we are mentally chilled we can place more physical stress on our body.  When we are going through mental or emotional upheaval we need to reduce the physical stress we place on our bodies.  I really liked this concept and it certainly rang true for me.
• If we’re going to deal with this stress issue then we ought to spend a bit of time thinking about what is causing it.  Take a moment and think about it.  What is really causing your stress?  You can’t solve the problem until you identify it and start addressing the root causes.  Here’s a piece from Dan Pallotta on the Harvard Business Review about how we can convince ourselves that work is causing the stress but that our mindset may actually be what is making work stressful.  Chris suggested that I put this quote from the article on my partition wall at work:

  “Worry isn’t work. Being stressed out isn’t work. Anxiety isn’t work. Entertaining a sense of impending doom isn’t work. Incessant internal verbal punishment isn’t work. Indulging the great unknown fear in your own mind isn’t work. Hating yourself isn’t work.”
  

• Once you’ve identified what is causing your stress you’ll need to work on getting control of those problematic factors.  In the meantime, here are 100 ways to help overcome stress.  Some are perhaps a little more helpful than others although you’re bound to find something on the list to help you.

I hope you found a few of these links as useful as I did.  Do you have any special tips on other ways you’ve found to deal with stress?

Related posts:

1. Blog-watch: stress
2. Blog-watch: impact of the contraceptive pill on performance
3. Blog-watch: weight loss mind-games

In February I wrote a post about why sleep is beneficial for us, the different types of sleep and the different ways in which they help us to recover, both physically and mentally.  Recently I had a rash of posts appear in my daily RSS feeds about sleep so I thought that, with the recent stress I’ve had a work which has detracted from my own sleep quality and recovery, it was time for an update and some more information about sleep.  And of course some gratuitous photos of the cat – asleep.

Cat-napping or something deeper?

• Mark Sisson kicked things off in my feed-reader with a series of posts.  The first was a post asking some general questions about sleep and contains an interesting tip on how to really lengthen the spine out to sleep.  However, the core focus of the post is bedding.  Do we need all these soft accoutrements to get some good sleep?  I know that after a week of sleeping outdoors with only a thin roll-mat I start to get sore on the last few days (unless we’ve found soft forest floors and mossy spots to pitch each night).  Mark seems to conclude that the bedding is, while not primal, not a bad thing either.  He observes that his dog by preference will choose to lie down on something soft but will also be quite happy on a hardwood floor.  I’ve similarly noticed that our neighbours cat will happily sleep on the gravel along the outside of our house (turning round when he wants to change side so that he can continue to have his back lying along the wall) but if there is an opportunity of a soft chair in the house it will get preference.  If there’s the chance of a warm lap then even the soft furnishings get given short shrift.  He revisited the issue of bedding a couple of posts later.
  

  Jake's preference is for something soft - even the post pile on the kitchen table is better than the floor

• Mark quickly followed this up with another article looking specifically into the issue of sleep posture.  I know that when I’m relaxed I can sleep quite happily on my back.  As my stress levels increase I naturally move onto my side (either side) and, at the height of misery and exhaustion, I find I can only get to sleep on my stomach, clutching a stuffed seal that my Mum made when she was pregnant with me (because I would just irritate Chris if I clutched him that hard).  As a baby I was put to sleep on my stomach which I think is probably why this is the position I return to when I’m feeling most exposed in life.  The only problem is that sleeping on my side makes the underneath shoulder ache and sleeping on my front gives me neck-ache.  Mark’s article is mostly focussed around a study by Michael Tetley and it is well worth revisiting the original article rather than just relying on Mark’s article.  I must say that I am seriously tempted to try out a few of those postures next week while I’m wild-camping my way across Yorkshire in order to avoid the customary stiffness and sore shoulders that tends to accompany the last few nights.
  

  The more appendages you have, the harder it gets to find a sleep posture that works - or so it seems...

• The NephroPal blog had a great post about the impact of our artificial light on both us and other wildlife (can I call humans ‘wildlife’?).  It covers the impact of the artificial light on humans and how it affects our own sleep patterns – something that I touched on in my summer sleep cycles post.  More interestingly though, it also covers how other wildlife, like migratory animals are being badly affected by our artificial lights.
  

  Even the cat objects when there's too much light

• Some recent research found that 30 minutes of daily meditation in the form of meditative yoga helped insomniacs to sleep more soundly.  Perhaps meditation is what the cat does when he gets into his Zen-like state of purring and then slowly settles into the position known as “ultimate relaxation”!
  

  The tail flick adds a good rhythmical aspect to meditation and the back paw is a good head rest

   

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z052IfwV_X8

• Seth Roberts wrote up some fascinating stuff about historical sleep patterns – apparently some people were trying to persuade us all that it is natural to sleep in two batches with a period of quiet wakefulness in the middle, based on historical information about Western European humans.  Seth reckons this is more to do with the poor diets of people in the last few hundred years than a sign of our true ancestral heritage (eg. looking back to our Paleolithic ancestors) since he’s found that he sleeps better than ever since he increased his animal fat intake.  My take-home point?  If you’re sleeping poorly, in addition to the usual “get some non-screen relaxation in before bedtime and get rid of the lights and noises in your sleeping room” also try eating more fatty meats.
  

  Sometimes it can be difficult to get comfortable of course

• And finally…  I have found an article that beautifully brings everything together.  Written by Professor Jim Horne who runs the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, just around the corner from here.  Professor Horne starts out by explaining why a walk is so much better at giving you a good night of sleep, rather than a tough workout.  It’s partly to do with the mixed and varied messages that your brain in getting at the end of the day, rather than the physical side of things, and ties in with the idea that sleep is as much about mental recovery as it is about physical recovery.  He also gives a bit of science behind why I seem to pass out within seconds of lying down if I’ve had a long hot bath as the last thing I did in the evening before crawling into bed.  Overall this article is short but fascinating and if you only read one of the articles that I’ve linked to on this post, I would make it this one.

My two favourite creatures catching a sneeky moment of shut-eye together

On that sleepy final note, I’m going to put the cat out, who is lying on the sofa next to me doing a very good version of ultimate relaxation, and have a clearly-well-justified hot bath with the last hour of the day before I crawl into bed.  At least I don’t have a tail to keep me awake…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXRY01K658

Sweet dreams!

Related posts:

1. Blog-watch: latest sleep round-up
2. Lessons learned: sleep
3. Lessons learned: summer sleep cycles

What were we doing?

We were cycle touring round the far North East of Scotland. 

When I say far North East I really do mean far North East.  We drove for nine hours to reach Inverness, which is halfway up the Highlands (and on a scale of driving in England, a nine hour journey is covering serious ground).  We then carried on North for another hour until we reached the small town of Dornoch.  By the end of the week we had put over 1,000 miles on the car just getting to Dornoch and back.

After leaving the car at Dornoch we spent 5 days doing a clockwise loop up the centre of the Highlands, along the north coast to John O’Groats and then back down the East coast to Dornoch.

Was it really a holiday?

I use the term “holiday” with caution.  It was a rest from work and it was certainly mentally relaxing.  From a physical perspective though, it was really tough in places.  While it was a break from the usual powerlifting and strongman workouts but it was in no way an opportunity for our muscles to atrophy.  However, a change is as good as a rest when it comes to muscles and, while I wouldn’t necessarily put this in the category of “active rest”, my upper body certainly had a break!

The weather was mostly unwelcoming (as befits an outdoor holiday in the UK planned 12 months in advance) with one blue sky day and the rest a mix of frequent hailstorms, rain and headwinds.  The headwinds in particular left us working even harder than usual and I’m sure I’ll do a blog post in the next few weeks about the subsequent muscle gain and side effects from all of that.

However, despite the unwelcoming weather, Scotland was looking beautiful as it always does at this time of year.  Plenty of yellow gorse, lush green grass and dark green pine forests contrasting with looming grey rocks, dustings of snow on the tops of the higher hills and mountains and, when it wasn’t raining and hailing at us, deep clear blue skies.

What did we eat?

We had a few minor food issues, in particular on the first couple of days. 

By starting on a Sunday we struggled to find an open shop, though we caught a village shop just as it was closing at midday and managed to find couple of tins of tuna.  After that we didn’t see any significant civilisation from when we finished going west to Lairg and turned north to go up the country until we reached the north coast at Bettyhill in the middle of Monday afternoon.

Fortunately we had anticipated this and had a base quantity of food with us in the form of nuts and dark chocolate.  Interestingly we found that, while creating a slight calorie deficit for the first day, this was sufficient food (along with a bit of body fat) to keep us going until we could raid the village store at Bettyhill. 

I love being adapted to run off fat for fuel – those of you who follow me on Twitter will have found that out halfway through last week when I was singing its praises.  I’ll do a post tomorrow that goes into a bit more detail about the benefits of fat adaption on this holiday.

Picture time

To save you all from anymore holiday stories I’ll satisfy myself with a montage of some of the better shots from the holiday (taken in between hailstorms).

Flowering gorse

The blue sky belies the fact that it was blowing hard

The perfect bivvy spot for night one

"Hairy" dunes

See those clouds? They just dumped a load of hail onto us.

Related posts:

1. Powerlifting progress 2010: week eleven (holiday and active rest)
2. Powerlifting progress 2010: week forty-five (fat loss: week seven) – holiday
3. Powerlifting progress 2011: week nineteen

Getting it right doesn't mean I'm not exhausted at the end of the last exercise (glute bridges)

What lessons did I take away last time?

It was a short but valuable list of lessons that I took away from my previous attempts to increase work capacity through increased workout density.

1. Don’t try to increase workout density the week my period starts.
2. Don’t try to put the workout density right up to maximum amount I’m aiming for in the first workout.

Timing workout changes with my period

Thanks to the contraceptive pill, I know exactly which week will be the one where my period will affect my strength and ability in the gym.  I’ve found that my strongest week is generally the week leading up to the start of my period, the weakest week is the week when my period happens.

The first thing I did when I realised that I was going to have to change my workouts was look at the calendar and check where I was in my cycle.  Well, I didn’t because I knew off the top of my head where I was, but I did think about it.  If my period had been about to start I would have taken a rest week before starting the new program.  In fact, I had been tempted to take a rest week before I started anyway, but when I realised that I was in that precursory week – my extra-strong week – I went straight into changing the program.

I went for it and it paid off.  I’ve seen improvements throughout the week and I’ve survived without tears and mental weakness (though there’s been plenty of lying on the floor between exercises, bemoaning my foolishness).

Gradually building up the workouts

I realised that, with my strong week, I could take a slightly light-touch to this.

For the very first workout (actually my fourth workout in the previous week) I did some lightweight squats at the start but not the full heavy weight squats that should have featured as exercise one.  This was partly due to the poor form that I still had when I started but was also a conscious decision that I would need to drop one of the 3 main exercises for the first workout.  The poor form just decided for me which exercise would be dropped.

The second workout (ignoring the strongman workout which was the true first workout of the week) was during the weekend, so I could take my time over it. 

This was the workout where I felt physically sick from the lactate in my muscles, so I could going and walk in brisk circles (until I got dizzy) on the patio between exercises to try to get rid of some of the lactate.  Despite this, I dropped the reps on my pull ups (the third main exercise) from the previous workout and only did just over half of them.  Normally this would have upset me, but having learned my lesson from last time, I was content to take this as part of the building blocks for my new workout.

The third workout took a different format to workouts two and four, being the deadlift workout.  It was unpleasant but for the first time I did every exercise that was planned.  Finally I felt like I was getting there.

Finally, workout four was the test.  It was the same format as workout two but this time I did all the exercises.  I also increased the weight and quality of performance on the previous workout.

Success comes to those who learn from past failures

I was pleased to see that by taking on board earlier lessons and applying those I’ve got to the end of the week and I’m where I hoped to be.  I’m a great one for setting out the lessons that I learn from things I do but I’ve not previously had the belief that I would take those lessons away and apply them the next time I’m faced with a similar situation.  This week was evidence that I can do that and that it pays off.

I hope this also inspires some of you to ensure you learn lessons from things that go wrong in order to learn from them.  This can be done through training logs and personal journals.

It also reminds me of one of the first things Chris ever taught me when he first took me to a gym – you should always keep a written record of your training.  Not just to see your progress and give yourself a confidence boost in the bad weeks but to learn what does and doesn’t work for you.

Related posts:

1. Increasing work capacity
2. Lessons learned this week: the menstrual cycle and making workouts more challenging
3. Lessons learned: exercise and the menstrual cycle

The usual activity levels

In a standard week I usually do a bike ride on Saturday and Sunday mornings and a weights session that lasts about an hour and a half on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.  As the weather starts to warm up and the evenings get longer I’ll start slotting in a bike ride mid-week as well.

Slotting into this quite nicely is the start of my period. 

It usually begins halfway through Sunday by which time I’ve done my bike ride and I just have to crank out a weights session.  Every so often I get a bit of exhaustion with the first 5 or 6 hours of my period starting and have to take it lightly in the gym for my Sunday weights (or I take it hard and get frustrated by getting no improvement on the previous workout).  I then get a full day and a half of rest before I have to do anything active and my energy levels are usually well-recovered by then.

So by having a regular period, thanks to the contraceptive pill, and arranging my workouts and activities as optimally as possible, I get minimal impact from my menstrual cycle on my workouts.

Changing the activity profile

This weekend has been a four-day weekend for the Easter holidays. 

Making the most of the holiday we took off to the Lake District to do two days of hard walking.  We drove up on Thursday night and slept out before setting off.  There then followed some hard walking up and down some steep hillsides and slogging through some serious snow and bogs.  We clocked up nearly 8 hours of walking on the first day, slept out again, and then did another 6 hours on the second day before lunch and an afternoon drive home.

Imagine my horror on Sunday morning when I woke feeling like a train wreck. 

It was much worse than the usual exhaustion of a couple of days of hard walking.  Usually after a couple of hard days I am still capable of doing a weights session and mentally I am usually in a strong place.  Unfortunately I’d forgotten that, with my period due to start later that day, the combination of the period and the hard walking would affect me. 

As it was, they left me as an emotional and physical wreck.

Climbing a few hills and trotting a few bogs wouldn't usually turn me into an emotional wreck

Emotional lows

I was on the verge of tears for most of the day.  Each time I tried to have a conversation with Chris I broke down again.  The bizarre thing was that inside my mind I was still rational.  I’d think one thing, try to say it, and burst into tears instead.  It was almost like being a prisoner inside my own body.

I found that all I was physically capable of doing was sitting in an armchair groaning quietly to myself (in that way Harry does when he’s feeling sorry for himself in “When Harry Met Sally”), watching numerous films and pouring fluids and foods in.

I have a theory that the problem arises from the physical recovery that I would usually get during my sleep which would help me get over a hard walk like this.  The night before I start my period I tend to find that I sleep less well.  Unfortunately, sleep is crucial to physical and emotional recovery.

Watch the monthly clock

This was a potent reminder to me that I should always keep an eye on my menstrual cycle and how it works in with the other things I’m doing with my life. 

I wouldn’t have minded Sunday’s enforced day of rest so much if I had been prepared for it, but imagine if I had needed to do my training for some reason on the Sunday.  Perhaps if I had a competition that morning.  Of course, if I had a competition I would never had done such a hard two days of walking on the previous two days, but would I have remembered to take it especially easy on the previous days to allow for the slight physical and, more importantly, emotional exhaustion that might accompany my period?  Probably not.

Lesson learned (again).  I’ll try to remember it this time.

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned this week: the menstrual cycle and making workouts more challenging
2. Impact of menstrual cycle on exercise: recent observations
3. Blog-watch: interaction of diet and exercise with the menstrual cycle – part one

Thanks to my job, the language of management consultants has become second nature to me.  Some phrases, like ‘straw man’ and ‘thought shower’ leave me cold and I avoid them whenever possible.  However, I like the concept of ‘thinking outside the box’ and I think that it’s something that applies to all areas of life, including diet and exercise.

For example, this weekend I finally got back onto my bike.  For the first time in three years I had left the bicycle hibernating in the shed throughout the winter so I could concentrate on lifting weights.  I hadn’t been out for a ride since mid-December. 

Usually I have a big cycling training goal for the summer which needs me to keep cycling through the winter, but this year I haven’t defined a specific goal.  I know that I want to improve my hill climbs during 2010 but otherwise I’d just like to enjoy myself when I’m out with my bike.

So it was with some trepidation on Saturday morning that applied buttocks to saddle and set out on an early morning ride in a fasted state to tackle one of the hilliest local circuits.

At the peak of cycle fitness last summer, touring in France (and sporting an unattractive wheat-gut from a week of living off fresh French bread)

Survival of the fittest

I fully expected to burn out and crawl home at a slow pace, humbled by the experience and swearing to ride through the winter next year like every other cyclist.

I’d picked one of the hilliest circuits because I wanted to shock my body into submission and show it that I meant business this year.  I expected to just about make it round the first half with the bigger climbs and then spin home at a crawl, struggling on the last few short hills.

But there was no burn out.  No sobbing.  No crying with the pain.

Instead there was speed, strength and determination.  I pushed it hard up all except the very steepest climb.  I raced Chris up the two slow but long climbs and even came in at a record speed up one of the climbs.  I was even sprinting up those last few short hills.

Training outside the box

This was a perfect example of what I like to call “training outside the box”.  Training something completely different to get the benefits where you want them.  The only difference was that I hadn’t thought I was training outside the box this winter, so I hadn’t expected to see the benefits.

In one of my recent powerlifting posts I explained that last year I left my bench press completely untrained for six months.  This was an example of actively training outside the box.  By working on exercises that continued to strengthen the right muscles during the six months off I came back to my bench press fresh and with a 10kg increase.  In the process I hadn’t got tired of doing bench press and there were no overuse injuries from doing the same exercise all the time. 

There were just the gains.

Making the most of the winter

I have spent this winter in the gym building glute strength, improving my hip mobility so that I am better able to engage my glutes when I need them, and increasing my work capacity. 

What I hadn’t thought about was that all these elements are crucial for hill cycling as well as deadlifting and squatting.  In fact, this weekend is the first time I’ve truly felt my glutes engage for a hill climb.

The benefits of taking a break

One of the biggest benefits from taking a break from cycling, or any specific exercise, in addition to avoiding overuse injuries, is the freshness you bring with you when you return to the exercise.

It was pure joy to be racing through the country lanes again with the tarmac whisking under the wheels and the wind in my hair.  I felt free as a bird.  In comparison, when I have spent the whole winter cycling, I loose my enjoyment and don’t start to find it again until the weather is warm enough to be cycling in summer gear with warm sun on my face.

Applying the theory

Next time you’re getting tired or bored of an exercise, or you don’t feel you’re seeing the improvement you want, try doing something else.  Work out the weaknesses and find other exercises you can do which will continue to work on those weaknesses.  Most importantly, completely leave out the exercise that is causing the problem.

Give it a month or two and then come back to it.  You may just be pleasantly surprised.

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned: keeping training records
2. Lessons learned: the benefits of variety
3. Lessons learned this week: stress and lifting

I won’t fill a post with ramblings about the six days we spent walking out on the hills of the Lake District, the surprisingly good weather and the great scenery.  I’ll even save you from reading too much about the few nights spent sleeping under the stars with our tarpaulin for cover and the luxury of taking the tarpaulin off on the morning we had pitched in a forest to lie in our sleeping bags looking up at the tree tops and listening to the morning birdsong before striking camp for the day.

Instead, I’ve decided to share a few of the better shots (the weather was good, but it wasn’t great for photos).

I hope you enjoy them! 

Related posts:

1. Powerlifting progress 2010: week nineteen holiday
2. Powerlifting progress 2010: week forty-five (fat loss: week seven) – holiday
3. Powerlifting progress 2011: week twelve (holiday)

Sleep is a hugely underestimated element of athletic performance.  Dan John swears by it for performance and fat loss.  Robb Wolf is an advocate of sleep and makes the important point that sleep is vital for human survival.  Chris Shugart has even carried out a sleep experiment on himself.

Carl Lanore recently did a Super Human Radio show on sleep (#432) in which he interviewed Dr. Mark Rosekind, whose website includes plenty of resources to learn more, and Paul Becker, inventor of the Earth Pulse machine, which uses pulses of an electromagnetic field to improve the quality of sleep. 

This post is a summary of some of the key things I learned through listening to Dr. Rosekind and doing some extra reading.

Jake agrees that plenty of sleep is beneficial

Sleep cycles – the basics

There are two types of sleep in the sleep cycle.

• Rapid Eye Movement (REM) –the period when you dream.
• Non-REM (NREM) sleep – divided into four stages, the first two are lighter sleep, the third and fourth are deeper sleep.

Typically we have between three and five sleep cycles in a single night.  But what is a sleep cycle?

1. Start at stage one of NREM, the lightest sleep stage.
2. Move through the stages until sleeping in the deepest stage (four).  As our bodies recover we go less deeply into NREM sleep stages on each cycle.
3. Move back through the stages to stage one (light) sleep.
4. There follows a period of REM sleep before the next cycle of NREM sleep begins.

A good summary of the sleep cycles with an accompanying graph can be found on the Helpguide website.

Benefits of different types of sleep

REM sleep allows our bodies to process thoughts and emotions, retain memories and relieve stress so it is essential to help our minds recover from the day before.  Studies have shown that REM sleep boosts our mood during the day.

Deeper non-REM stages represent the recovery phase for your body when it can mend and heal itself.  These are the stages that are critical for athletic recovery.

What happens if we don’t get enough sleep?

Sleep deprivation occurs if you consistently fail to get sufficient sleep for your body on a daily basis.  Sufficient sleep varies from person to person, but is usually in the range of seven to nine hours.  If you get sufficient sleep then you should be able to get through the day without using aids like an alarm clock or caffeine and you should feel alert all day.

Studies of sleep deprivation have shown that insufficient sleep can reduce performance by 20-50%.  Areas of particular concern to athletes are reductions in:

• reaction times;
• decision making abilities;
• memory and learning; and
• communication skills – particularly important for team sports.

A study carried out on business travellers showed that individuals who were sleep deprived believed that their performance was still optimal (scoring themselves with top marks on a rating scale).  Objective measurement showed that their performance was reduced by 20% on average.  The lesson?  Sleep deprivation affects our judgement as well as our performance.

What other problems might I have if I don’t get enough sleep?

A recent study posted on Conditioning Research concluded that patients suffering from insomnia had reduced orbitalfrontal grey matter (OGM).  Whether the volume of OGM would increase if they resolved the insomnia is unclear.

In a short interview, Neuroscene also discusses the consequences of disrupting our body clocks and circadian rhythms with Dr. Ilia Karatsoreos who talks about current research he is carrying out on sleep cycles.

What can prevent us from sleeping?

Noted inhibitors of quality sleep include:

• consumption of caffeine near bedtime;
• smoking or using other stimulants near bedtime;
• doing exercise not long before going to bed (elevated heart and respiratory rates can prevent you getting to sleep); and crucially
• not allowing yourself enough hours to sleep.

This last one is particularly interesting, since it is probably crucial to today’s society.

Most of us have to get up by a certain time, either to get to work or to do various chores.  Logically we should work backwards from this to ensure that we go to bed early enough the night before, but often we get side-tracked by TV show or the computer and don’t get to bed until it is too late to get a full night of sleep.

How to improve sleep

There are plenty of websites providing advice on ways to improve your sleep.  A few recent ones are:

• Bodybuilding.com – top ten tips to help you sleep better;
• The Happiness Project – fourteen tips for getting more sleep;
• Dr John Briffa – Natural strategies for individuals who have difficulty falling asleep at night and getting up in the morning

The key points can be summed up as:

• develop some pre-bedtime habits to cue your body that it is time to sleep;
• avoid exercise and TV before going to bed (allow about an hour if possible);
• learn a physical relaxation skill (eg. stretching) that can be a pre-bedtime cue and can also be used if you wake up during the night;
• avoid alcohol and caffeine before going to bed;
• sleep in a completely dark room (bin the LED clock);
• avoid having items in the room that may make noises (eg. mobile phones);
• sleep in a cool room,
• allow yourself time for a full night of sleep.

This has really hit home to me that we should all be caring about the amount and quality of the sleep that we get.  Do you manage to get enough sleep to maximise your recovery?

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned: summer sleep cycles
2. Blog-watch: latest sleep round-up
3. Impact of artificial light on sleep