This is week 2 of my fall challenge to incorporate 1 health habit that I'm currently neglecting into my life. Last week had it's stumbles, but worked out in the end, so I'm hoping this week will be similar (well, to be honest, less stumbles along the way would be lovely).
This week, I'm going to focus on stretching after my workouts. I'm still on my running streak, so this is something I should be doing all the time to reduce my chance of injury and allow me to keep running. I find my biggest challenge with fitting in stretching is that after a run there are many things I want to do all at once (eg. eat, drink, shower) and stretching always manages to take a back seat. Like most good habits, I need to make it clear to myself that it is a priority before I'm in the position to choose between stretching and anything else, because anything else has consistently won in the past and there's no reason that will change without a conscious effort.
I know right away that one of my challenges with stretching is that I lack a sense of structure when I'm doing it. Unless I have an injury that reminds me to work on a certain muscle group, I tend to be pretty half-hearted with it and give up midway through. To help with this obstacle, I'm going to use a yoga video for runners to guide me through it. This also gives an added bonus challenge of me trying to survive the relaxation at the end without letting my mind wander too much. On Friday, I'll report on how the week went, both the good and the bad.
This week, I'm going to focus on stretching after my workouts. I'm still on my running streak, so this is something I should be doing all the time to reduce my chance of injury and allow me to keep running. I find my biggest challenge with fitting in stretching is that after a run there are many things I want to do all at once (eg. eat, drink, shower) and stretching always manages to take a back seat. Like most good habits, I need to make it clear to myself that it is a priority before I'm in the position to choose between stretching and anything else, because anything else has consistently won in the past and there's no reason that will change without a conscious effort.
I know right away that one of my challenges with stretching is that I lack a sense of structure when I'm doing it. Unless I have an injury that reminds me to work on a certain muscle group, I tend to be pretty half-hearted with it and give up midway through. To help with this obstacle, I'm going to use a yoga video for runners to guide me through it. This also gives an added bonus challenge of me trying to survive the relaxation at the end without letting my mind wander too much. On Friday, I'll report on how the week went, both the good and the bad.