Add Some Variety

Have you ever noticed that when you try a new activity, you feel ten years older the next morning. You wake up and discover that you have muscles that you have not felt in….well maybe you just discovered to begin with. Variety helps build muscle. Are you always sore the day after your regular run or after your normal weight routine? Of course not. Your body has adapted to the stress you apply to it. That is your queue to make a change.



This past weekend, I had my first taste of the Nintendo Wii. As I was getting my butt kicked at boxing by my 5 year old niece, I realized that I was working up a sweat. The next morning, I was hurting bad. Now mind you, the Wii controls weigh next to nothing. The extreme movement that I put myself through was way out of the norm. You should also do that in your workouts.

Here are a few suggestions:
- Run hills instead of flat terrain.
- Run trails instead of roads.
- Vary you speed. You can use telephone poles, driveways or intersections to tell you when to change speed.
- Do a century workout. That is when you reduce your weights to one third of normal and do one set of one hundred reps.
- Cross train in the pool or on your bike.



Mix it up and keep it fun. You will enter a new level of health. Don’t believe me. Check out the blogs of some of our Olympians. They will tell of their tales on Pikes Peak, which is just a few miles from the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, and the workouts the mountain gives them.