I've decided, enough is enough. No more sitting around on my arse in the evenings! Ok, I've had a long summer season with long days and lots of diving and hefting gear around, which means I've got a bit of muscle but I'm far from being aerobically fit. I used to jog a lot before I ripped my knee cartilage and one or two attempts to begin jogging again left me with knee pain. Probably because I tried to do too much too fast with the obvious results. This experience and the fact that at heart I'm a lazy git has made me shy away from reattempting the whole jogging thing.
But, no more! I togged out on Monday this week and decided to do a 2-5-2-5 session, which is a 2 minute brisk walk as a warm up, followed by 5 minutes of a soft slow jog, then 2 minutes to get the breath back, then jog for 5 minutes, and so on. As well as pacing myself on the jog, I had to resist the impulse to do more than the initial five reps of each exercise even though I was bloody knackered by the fifth rep. I'll continue with this for a while until it becomes easy and then lengthen the jogging intervals. I played with a soft rolling gait where I land heel first and roll along the sole like in Fiore footwook, rather than coming down hard on the heel. In between I also tried lightly jogging on the balls of my feet. This is much "springier" and utilises the ankle and toe joints. Nice to feel the difference but perhaps not the most efficient for jogging. I could be wrong but I feel iot's more efficient to move mass as smoothly forward as possible and not waste energy boucing it up and down. Looking forward to donning my running shoes again when I get home tonight!
After I got back from the jog, I did a session with one of my 3kg steel clubs. This was a good way to stretch a bit and warm down slowly. It also helped to work my upper body a bit. I rounded off the session with some chi kung, which is always nice to practice outdoors.
I tried doing some Balearic style slinging yesterday and it was a lot of fun and I was surprised how much power is generated with the final snap and release. This is basically the same as a simple underhand cast but the sling rotates in a plane at about 45 degrees to the line of the shoulders and more behind you. The release is also more sidearm than underhand. I have to work quite a bit with this style because the angle of the plane of rotation seems to be critical to where the projectile goes with a sidearm release.
Check out this chap who uses natural plant fibre to make his own slings. He's pretty handy with it too!
Hmm, think I'll have to get me own video camera out and film some footage of my own!
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