Some Motivation Required

In my last post, I mentioned ice massage, but didn’t really go into a lot of details about it.  Ice massage was first suggested to me by my mom, who’s a wicked awesome runner in her own class and a teacher of Chi Running.  She gives wicked awesome advice, as she was running marathons before I could walk, and still runs trail ultramarathons in her late 50’s.  So we’d all do well to listen up.

All you need for ice massage is a pack of 3oz paper cups and some space in your freezer.

Fill a few of these bad boys up with water and line them up on a shelf in your freezer for future use:

Later on, go out running, or whatever you do that ends up in sore muscles in need of some icing and some work afterward.  After your post workout stretch (don’t static stretch cold, bad times), pull one of these out freezer, peeling back most of the paper:

There will be some paper left stuck to the ice cube, providing an anchor for a handle so that you don’t freeze your fingertips.  Elevate foot and work the edge of that ice into tight/inflamed muscles and tendons.  Keep a towel handy if you want to keep your couch dry.

Do this a few times over 10-15 minute sessions, letting the skin return to room temperature before repeating.  This is good for post workout therapy, but don’t do it on chronic injuries before a workout.  During a workout, you want good blood flow and warm muscles, workout out cold/constricted muscles can lead to nasty things like tears.

Also don’t forget to listen to your body and if you see signs of frostbite, take the ice OFF.

Goals.  I touched on this in a recent piece, but it’s really such a central piece to how my life changed that it really merits more attention and its own dedicated post.

Everyone (hopefully) has some sort of set of goals.  This is vital, you have to have long term goals.  The first place I see a lot of people get hung up is the inability to break these down into smaller goals.

It’s not enough to live in the hopes that you’ll eventually get there.  You have to live your life for short term and long term goals.

The short term goals are just a breakdown of the long term goals.  Weight loss/fitness becomes pretty easy and straightforward if you treat it like a math problem and realize you’re just going to have to commit to it over time. Learning what you’re burning in calories per day, and then upping that through exercise while controlling what you’re taking in to equal burning more than you’re taking in?  You’ll lose weight.  Determine where your current fitness limits are and then gradually setting out and following a plan to keep pushing those limits further and further?  You’ll gain fitness.

It’s obviously a little more nuanced than that, but ultimately, that’s exactly what it breaks down to.

If you don’t have the long term goal, your short term goals, like “complete this workout”, “run these distances” or “eat x number of calories” aren’t really going to have any sort of real structure and you’ll likely end up aimless and losing any drive to make more of them.

If you don’t have short term goals that add up to your long term goal, well… Have you ever tried to drink five gallons of water at once?  I don’t recommend it.  Space it out over the week.  The alternative is a recipe for water intoxication and assuming you survive, probably being unable to look at a glass of water without getting ill.

Finally, get used to the fact that you’ll never have a final goal.  At first, it seems a little futile, but in the long run it’s both necessary and healthy.  Doesn’t make actually getting to that goal you thought was damn near impossible any less satisfying.  But I guarantee that after you get in the habit of taking out your short term goals and then nail a few long terms, you’ll find out that those monumental long terms weren’t actually that unfathomable.  Just pretty big.

Example being that a year ago, I honestly gave my trainer an uncomprehending look when she suggested that I’d run more than two and a half minutes at a time.  Five months later, by late August, I was managing to run the better part of two miles at a time, and I gave my girlfriend of the time an incredulous look when she suggested that I’d be a marathon runner.  By Thanksgiving, I’d run my second 5K race and while still incredulous, I agreed to run the Seattle Marathon the next year with my friend.

Now I’m training at half marathon distances weekly three full months before I actually have to run my first half marathon race at Seattle Rock and Roll.  I’m just now learning to become less and less incredulous of my limits, and now am growing aspirations in much loftier goals and crazy dreams and have pretty much resolved to keep pursuing them until one of them manages to take me down fighting and kill me.

And that’s the final lesson of Goal Setting.  The only people I’ve ever met that figured out how to live for the joy goals and the thrill of the chase that stopped are dead or fixing to die.

I don’t plan on dying for a good long while and you shouldn’t either.  There’s too much awesome stuff to do that’s a lot closer in my grasp than I thought.