Coming Back

Taking time off from training happens to everyone. Life happens. Injuries, family, work, sickness, travel, burnout, etc...all make us occasionally have to take some time off from training. Even if it's just a couple of weeks, it's hard to come back. When you're training regularly, you don't always notice your improvement. You don't notice how your body has become conditioned to training; to the increased pressure on your body, the pain, the strain and the cardio to go multiple rounds or many minutes. When do you notice how far you have progressed? When you try to come back from time off!!! That's when! That's when you are reminded of the first time you trained...you feel the pain of sitting down on the couch and when you try to get up, your body doesn't want to cooperate. You wince at the tired exhaustion your muscles are feeling. You feel the pain in so many parts of your body that you never felt while you were training earlier. You didn't feel it while you were having fun on the mat! But now you are suffering the consequences. It's like what happens when you forget your anniversary. Your body is the neglected, spiteful and resentful partner that must punish you for your mis-deed! You must now suffer for your neglect. It reminds us where we once were...of happier times...when we didn't feel this way. Sometimes it makes me feel old but then I try to reassure myself that it's a normal response by the body for the stress that it was just put through. But the body remembers...the body forgives...the body very quickly acclimates to the (re)new(ed) stresses that you are putting it through. After a few classes, you're back picking up where you left off...your mind and your body in tune once again...a well oiled machine cruising down the road of training.