Patience: Not My Strong Suit

After a much needed rest day on Sunday, I was torn about whether I should go to the gym on Monday.  Late Saturday and most of Sunday, I was having some terrible headaches (Developing migraines?  Getting older is awesome!) along with some wooziness.  There was no chance of going to the gym.  But on Monday, those ailments were gone, leaving me only with my still sore calves.  Usually that would not be enough to hold me back from going to work out, but I decided to employ something I rarely do: patience.

The idea of taking consecutive days off drives me nuts.  Whether it's at the gym or in my day-to-day life, I am always striving to get better.  A day that passes by without me working to get better feels like a wasted one.  And I generally have a decent pain threshold.  I was always the "playing through injuries" type as a kid.  There have been plenty of times that I've come to the gym still sore and pushed myself through a workout.  Is that the right thing to do?  I'm not really sure.  All I know is that the alternative isn't very palatable to me.

So why the change of heart on Monday?  Especially when the workout included one of my favorite gym movements (thrusters)?  Because sometimes you need to get your butt kicked to realize you did something stupid.  Doing Badger on Saturday with full weight on the bar was stupid, just as doing Isabel RX last month was stupid.  I should have either a) skipped Badger since I was still sore from the pistol workout or b) done it with less weight on the bar.  Maybe I got caught up in the hero part of the WOD.  Or more likely, my neverending talent to be stubborn came shining through.  Either way, I made a mistake.

As someone who is constantly making mistakes, I am experienced enough to know that striving to get better includes not only going to the gym and pushing myself through a 20 minute workout, it also includes learning from the dumb things that I do.  If my sore calves were limiting me from doing light squat cleans on Saturday, then it would be really idiotic of me to go in Monday night and attempt heavy thrusters.  So even though it pained me to not go (especially when I see pics of other folks at the gym doing the workout!), I stayed home and rested an extra day.

The good news: my calves are feeling considerably better and I should be good to go for the Tuesday night rope climb and rowing extravaganza.