Going for the flow

I've come under the sway of coach Scott Sonnon. I discovered him through another guru, Steven Barnes, who I got the pleasure of seeing at Balticon a couple of years ago. I've been a reader of Barnes' blog for about 3 years now, and I credit him with my conversion from Libertarian to Liberal - but that's a whole 'nother blog post.

I still haven't completely grappled with what Coach Sonnon is teaching, but he posted something to his blog a while back that really clicked with me. It was a 4x7 exercise protocol, where you cycle between 4 intensity levels of exercise and work out every day. It's not as difficult as it sounds, because 2 of the days are "active rest" days.

The cycle goes like this: day 1 is moderate intensity; day 2 is high intensity; day 3 is no intensity; and day 4 is low intensity. This 4-day cycle is repeated 7 times, then there is a 4-day rest period, then the cycle starts over.

I've been dabbling in this now for about a month, never quite making it to exercising every day. Day 1 has been weight-lifting, day 2 has been a 2-mile walk, day 3 has been Sonnon's Intu-Flow, and day 4 has been yoga. Intu-Flow is this amazing process (I can't really call it a workout at the level I'm doing it) which helps your body regain its range of motion. It feels like giving yourself a whole-body massage. Even at the sporadic level I'm doing it, my aches and pains have reduced considerably.

Even though I truly have been dabbling, I've made some amazing progress, considering I've never been in any kind of shape but bad my whole life. I can now walk a mile without giving it a second thought - that's the distance from my front door at work to the train at Union Station. Hubby & I have been doing that on nice days.

Coach Sonnon predicts in his blog post that the most likely days to be neglected are the no- and low-intensity days, and I was surprised to find he was right.

So, what's the point of this post? I'm committing here to a full 32-day cycle, starting tomorrow, exercising everyday, including my recovery days. My plan is this: day 1 - Flowfit; day 2 - 2-mile walk or 1-mile walk DVD; day 3 - Intu-Flow; day 3 - yoga.

I'll be posting the daily results in my Twitter feed (off to the right there), so as not to clutter things up here.

Wish me luck!!

(ETA: link to Flowfit page - sorry it's to a page that tries to sell the product, but I couldn't find another good explanation of it ...)