Week Sixteen - Breaking Through

What Now ? 

by Coach Anita

I spent a moment looking over all of the past editions of this blog. It helped remind me of how things felt when we first started it. We’d been off the water for a few weeks and it felt like it might be a few more. Only a few of the early season races had been cancelled, and we had our eyes on the latter half of the season. Sixteen weeks later, we all know that the future is far from clear. We’ve emerged from our confinements and are cautiously venturing out more. We’re wearing masks, carrying hand sanitizer, and know what six feet of distance looks like. We’ve started new routines, and are looking at old behaviors and wondering how to adapt them to new standards.

So where do we go from here? Is it important to be continuing to train for an activity we might not be doing for a while?

Only you can answer that question. Some people enjoy fitness work for how it makes them feel. Others use exercise to meet their performance goals (i.e. being strong in a dragon boat). And some see exercise as the means to a healthier life, enjoyment notwithstanding. I was a bit of a late bloomer when it came to exercise. I slowly started exercising in my late 30s. It wasn’t very organized and I started and stopped a lot. After starting a new job and gaining more than 20 pounds, I turned to exercise for weight loss. It was a slow process. I joined a gym so I had access to equipment but I didn’t understand how to structure a workout, why or what recovery was, or even that I needed to reduce calories in conjunction with the exercise if I wanted to fit into my pants again. Over the past 20 years I have learned a lot about diet and exercise, and paddling has helped me tune into the importance of strength and aerobic training. Strength and aerobic training enables us to do things more easily and more confidently - work in the garden, walk the dog, ride a bicycle, play with children, go hiking, and mundane tasks like carrying sacks from grocery shopping. While you may choose to not train for dragon boat paddling right now, participating in various forms of strength and aerobic training is good for your overall health. It doesn’t have to be as strenuous as you might to prepare to be in the boat. The more fun something is, the more it fits into your schedule, the more likely you will do it. And that’s the idea - do it. Do something, whether it’s paddling focused or not.

Do I want you to continue training and planning to paddle? You betcha. Because we’ve had a long time off the water and are looking at quite a while until we’re back, it’s appropriate to be varying the intensity of your workouts as well as the exercises. It’s also appropriate to have taken an off-period. Look at this period as time to play a little and start something new. If you’ve been getting out in a kayak, maybe it’s time to start thinking about doing workouts on the water. If you’ve been on your bike toodling around, maybe it’s time to start thinking about doing hill work or distance training. There’s so many activities you can choose from to keep things interesting. And just about anything you can do for light fun, you can also use to get a workout.

Need some ideas for how to make a workout doing a particular activity? Put your questions in the comments section.

New Race

At the midpoint of a race many callers will say “New Race”, start again fresh and go forward. I feel like we have just passed the 500 meter mark on a 2000. Still I think it is time to say “new race”.

I am excited to announce we will be stepping up the workout opportunities offered to Pinks. We will target Monday evenings for these workouts and they will be varied each week. How are we going to do that ? We will be letting Pinks share their workouts. Anyone who has a workout they would like to share is invited to coordinate a time and date to be a leader. Maybe you have something you do all the time that you can lead, or you have a YouTube favorite you would like to share. We are striving to match our Saturday format. One group with breakout rooms for the different workouts at the same time then back together for cool down and goodbyes. Lead one workout , lead many your choice. Anything goes - meditation to kick boxing.

Details:

• Workouts Schedules on TeamSnap for signups
• Monday Nights at 6:00 pm anticipated time commitment 40-45 minutes
• Group Warm Up - 25-30 minute workout - Group Cool Down
• Monday holidays will be off.
• Start date : Monday August 10th
• Email patricia@schafer.net to sign up to lead a workout(s)

This is in addition to the Wednesday workouts at 6:00 pm. Let’s stay connected as best we can while we can’t be on the water.  Look for more details coming your way via email.

… Pat

Week 16 Workout 

Coach Oden

Parting Thoughts

Read More

Week Sixteen - Breaking Through

What Now ? 

by Coach Anita

I spent a moment looking over all of the past editions of this blog. It helped remind me of how things felt when we first started it. We’d been off the water for a few weeks and it felt like it might be a few more. Only a few of the early season races had been cancelled, and we had our eyes on the latter half of the season. Sixteen weeks later, we all know that the future is far from clear. We’ve emerged from our confinements and are cautiously venturing out more. We’re wearing masks, carrying hand sanitizer, and know what six feet of distance looks like. We’ve started new routines, and are looking at old behaviors and wondering how to adapt them to new standards.

So where do we go from here? Is it important to be continuing to train for an activity we might not be doing for a while?

Only you can answer that question. Some people enjoy fitness work for how it makes them feel. Others use exercise to meet their performance goals (i.e. being strong in a dragon boat). And some see exercise as the means to a healthier life, enjoyment notwithstanding. I was a bit of a late bloomer when it came to exercise. I slowly started exercising in my late 30s. It wasn’t very organized and I started and stopped a lot. After starting a new job and gaining more than 20 pounds, I turned to exercise for weight loss. It was a slow process. I joined a gym so I had access to equipment but I didn’t understand how to structure a workout, why or what recovery was, or even that I needed to reduce calories in conjunction with the exercise if I wanted to fit into my pants again. Over the past 20 years I have learned a lot about diet and exercise, and paddling has helped me tune into the importance of strength and aerobic training. Strength and aerobic training enables us to do things more easily and more confidently - work in the garden, walk the dog, ride a bicycle, play with children, go hiking, and mundane tasks like carrying sacks from grocery shopping. While you may choose to not train for dragon boat paddling right now, participating in various forms of strength and aerobic training is good for your overall health. It doesn’t have to be as strenuous as you might to prepare to be in the boat. The more fun something is, the more it fits into your schedule, the more likely you will do it. And that’s the idea - do it. Do something, whether it’s paddling focused or not.

Do I want you to continue training and planning to paddle? You betcha. Because we’ve had a long time off the water and are looking at quite a while until we’re back, it’s appropriate to be varying the intensity of your workouts as well as the exercises. It’s also appropriate to have taken an off-period. Look at this period as time to play a little and start something new. If you’ve been getting out in a kayak, maybe it’s time to start thinking about doing workouts on the water. If you’ve been on your bike toodling around, maybe it’s time to start thinking about doing hill work or distance training. There’s so many activities you can choose from to keep things interesting. And just about anything you can do for light fun, you can also use to get a workout.

Need some ideas for how to make a workout doing a particular activity? Put your questions in the comments section.

New Race

At the midpoint of a race many callers will say “New Race”, start again fresh and go forward. I feel like we have just passed the 500 meter mark on a 2000. Still I think it is time to say “new race”.

I am excited to announce we will be stepping up the workout opportunities offered to Pinks. We will target Monday evenings for these workouts and they will be varied each week. How are we going to do that ? We will be letting Pinks share their workouts. Anyone who has a workout they would like to share is invited to coordinate a time and date to be a leader. Maybe you have something you do all the time that you can lead, or you have a YouTube favorite you would like to share. We are striving to match our Saturday format. One group with breakout rooms for the different workouts at the same time then back together for cool down and goodbyes. Lead one workout , lead many your choice. Anything goes - meditation to kick boxing.

Details:

• Workouts Schedules on TeamSnap for signups
• Monday Nights at 6:00 pm anticipated time commitment 40-45 minutes
• Group Warm Up - 25-30 minute workout - Group Cool Down
• Monday holidays will be off.
• Start date : Monday August 10th
• Email patricia@schafer.net to sign up to lead a workout(s)

This is in addition to the Wednesday workouts at 6:00 pm. Let’s stay connected as best we can while we can’t be on the water.  Look for more details coming your way via email.

… Pat

Week 16 Workout 

Coach Oden

Parting Thoughts

Read More