As I struggled to carry the dog kennel up the forty stairs to our house last Saturday night I realized just how weak my upper body really is. Damn weak. For some, this would be a cue to hit the gym to improve their running speed while others would take the hint to get their beach bod ready. Not me. Nope. Instead, the incident got me thinking that I’m not prepared for a summer’s worth of trail falls. It’s just a matter of course that I’ll catch a toe on a rock or root and eat dirt – hard – a couple dozen times between April and November. Sometimes, I’ll luck out, tuck a shoulder, roll, and pop right back up. The rest of the time I’m accelerating face first toward the unforgiving earth at 9.8 m/s2. Sadly, my upper body, in its current form, is going to do little to slow the inevitable face plants. That’s why I jumped right into a daily pushup regimen. I’m not looking to get big or even particularly strong. I just want a little more say in whether my teeth meet terra firma this summer. That’s it from me… I’ve got to go do another set of 15 pushups. Yup, that’s all.
Call for Comments
Anyone else have odd motivators for supplemental training or something that they consider supplemental training that’s a bit out of the box? Who out there works on hamstring flexibility in order to clear blow downs over the trail? Who walks up ten flights of stairs to the office twice a day to get ready for that mountain race? Let us know!
