Teaching an old dog new tricks?!

Pain is a pretty good motivator for changing behaviour. If you don't do X, Y or Z then stuff hurts - if you do them then stuff doesn't hurt or at least nowhere near as bad.

I've managed pretty well over the years with zero warm up, zero stretching and sporadic attempts at taking fish oil, glucosamine and hydrating. Generally pretty mobile, good results and decent recovery - only really hurting when I do something silly. Recently however my mobility and recovery are suffering and day to day stuff hurts. Also, my dietary discipline has been pretty weak so weight, body comp and energy aren't what they should be.

So I figured now is a pretty good time to see how much better things can get by practicing what I preach.

For the last 4 days I have got my water intake up to nearly 2 litres a day (up from coffee) whilst getting between 9 - 12 fish oil caps and 4 glucosamine tablets a day. For the last week I have been getting about 15 mins a day of joint mobility and or flexibility training. Pretty modest beginnings but already I am feeling better for it.

I'm not going to weigh and measure my food - instead I will be following my own Zone made easy plan that worked very well a few years ago ( clicky ). I started too relax the already relaxed parameters of this plan after a few months and never really reigned them back in. I'm genuinely interested to see how this works in combination with the CFSB training protocol I am following at the moment.

My training regimen over the next month or two will continue with the CFSB template with a few changes to help achieve my goals. The main change will be that the loads for ME squats will be hauled back and I will look over some vid of my form to correct a few flaws that I think have crept in recently. TBH I am not too concerned about this. For me even though I am one of the least prolific squatters about, leg strength has rarely held me back in Crossfit. Instead it is my capacity for moderate to high reps of moderate weight squats/ cleans/ thrusters. So the high rep stuff is more useful to me personally. I'll be dialing this back too but more as a reset and will increment it up as long as it does not contribute to continued knee pain.

Worth saying that I don't think it was squatting per se that hurt my knees. Rather, sloppy squat technique in the midst of an over agressive return to an intense strength program. This in turn was aggravated by my woefully inadequate recovery regime.

So less and lighter squats but I will continue to push the deadlift and press as hard as I am able. I have no doubt that strength developed with these two drills will help my capacity. from a metcon perspective I will program 2 short heavy metcons a week (one probably including squatting of some kind) and the remainder will be lighter, breathier affairs. Expect to see more rowing, more standard CF benchmarks and more bodyweight work.

Personally the CF warm up is just not for me. That said, I will probably row a couple of mid paced intervals before kicking anything off and spend 5 - 10 minutes drilling main features of the impending WOD. We've just bought a new GHD so I can realistically see a few rounds of sit ups and back extensions each night and will try to sneak in some other gymnastic drills in between.

Apart from performance and freer movement body comp improvements are a goal so I will be posting pix every couple of weeks to track my progress. First couple will go up tonight - you've been warned ...