Sunday, July 31, 2011

Shaking things up...

A couple of weeks ago I saw this really interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about a man who uses a 20 sided Dungeons and Dragons die to decide what his workout for the day will be.  He rolls twice and gets to do two types of exercise.  He does this so as not to become bored with his workouts. (You really should go read the whole thing.  I can't do this article justice!)

Amazing I thought.  Having the choice of twenty different forms of exercise you would literally shake things up everyday!

Then I got to thinking more about it.  While it would work really well for some people, I don't think it would work all that well for me.  I love to run too much.  I think I would quickly become resentful of the dice that told me to do boxing or kettlebells on days I just want to get out and run.  I don't have a thing against boxing, kettlebells, or any other form of non-running exercise, but I think until I don't have kids and a job get more time in my life to do more of what I want, I should focus the time I have by doing things I really like. 

I do try to do a couple of cross training things so I can make sure I don't injure myself.  And one of these days I will take a BodyWorks class without being insanely sore for two days afterwards.  At least this week I kept quiet and didn't whine to my family about it!  A step in the right direction - right?

What do you think?  Are you ready to go out and buy your own D&D die to shake up your workouts or are you a person that does best on focusing on one thing at a time?

BTW... there was no running for me this weekend.  Those family & work gigs of mine both needed my attention... for a yard sale (Son FINALLY cleaned out his room), a job event (schools were giving away free backpacks & I had to be on hand to check kids in), and grocery store and Office Max trips (we desperately needed something besides bread and peanut butter to eat and filler paper was 10¢ each - I couldn't resist!).  I'm jonsin' to get out there in the morning and run!  I need someone to build an extra hour into MY day... that no one else knows about.

3 comments:

  1. I don't think I have enough workouts in my basket of tricks to have that many options. But, it might be a fun way to decide between cross-training workouts. I'm laughing about your Body Works comment - I go to a weekly class called Body Blast - I can't walk for days after it. I had gotten better, but then missed a few weeks - back to square 1.

    Have a good week.

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  2. I could see doing a 6 sided die for strength training and/or cross-training workouts, but I wouldn't be willing to replace my run (I accidentally typed fun, so I guess we know where I stand on running).

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  3. I love the idea of doing a dice to determine what you are going to do but I also like knowing at the start of the week what I am doing! Run days are run days so I wouldn't even look at the dice but maybe for a few days that I do strength and XT. Who knows!

    Courtney
    www.asocalledrunner.com

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