Fatigue

Some days are just not great days.

Ever had that happen?

Today was one of those days for me. I had scheduled a Jump Element for today but when I got up and going this morning, my body had other ideas.

I noticed my legs felt heavy, slow, tired and a bit achy.

Hmmm…

This is usually a sign of fatigue. Not muscle fatigue but soft tissues – fascia, bone, ligaments. Deeper tissues that have a different language than muscle. And often times, it’s a combination of two things for me; not sleeping well and too much static loading of my spine.

I played my horn in rehearsal Thursday night (standing for 2.5 hours more or less in one place), had a show Friday night (standing in one place for about 75 minutes and sat for an hour in a spine unfriendly wooden chair) and another show Saturday night where I played two songs but then sat on another spine unfriendly wooden chair for quite a while.

When you add the training I did during the week, the total load starts getting fairly high.

One of the frustrating things about it though, oddly, is I usually feel fine. No warning signs. And I did feel fine during the shows and the sitting. Felt fine the next day too. The problem almost always shows up anywhere from 24 to 48 hours later and almost always during the night.

And it showed up last night.

So, I slept poorly because of spine pain and then felt “off” most of the day.

I’ve learned, and it took me a while to get this, to respect the fatigue and to not fight it. I used to have a “the hell with it” attitude and would force myself to train or do whatever I thought I should do because I felt like I was losing, somehow, if I didn’t.

Of course, that never worked. I usually got worse. And then I did lose things- time being one of them.

Instead, I recalibrate and adjust. Today instead of tom jump training, I walked with our dog Kobe (and that’s always a fun thing to do) and did about a 30 minute “shoot around” down at the park. The shoot around is a nice way to get a little bit of a lot of things: some walking, slow runs, a few hops, some use of my arms, some start and stops. Nothing is repeated over and over and I can adjust the pace. Plus, being outdoors, shooting baskets feels good; boosts my mood.

When I finished, I felt tired but not worn out and glad I had pushed the training to another day.

The take away for you is that it’s okay if you have to slow down sometimes. It happens. Life happens. Sometimes slowing down is the only way to speed up.

I’m planning on a better tomorrow.

Cheers –
DK