An Adventure That Never Gets Old

 It's important to keep learning and finding what works best for us. Improvement should be always be a long term thing because once we stop improving, it could become boring and there isn't much Self-Discovery left. I love my workouts of Isometrics, Step Ups, Cable work and messing with either the Sandbells or the Hammers but the one thing that always brings me back and with incredible levels of enthusiasm is the Animal Workouts.

It's an adventure that never gets old and helps me find more things to discover. The random workout game I do with the 20 Sided Dice not only keeps me from doing the same order over and over again, it gives me opportunities to discover whether I'd be working hard early or later on. Anything can pop up on that thing, one day you're doing mainly lower body exercises, others the upper body or on many occasions, do a bit of both and do different variations of the exercises to make things easier or harder. It lights me up.

Animal Movements are not just for warm ups in martial arts or to sprint on the football field with, the movements in and of themselves are pretty simple and people think simple and easy are the same thing, they're not. They can be tough as hell especially if you play the dice game and you choose to do double reps or a set of yards per animal. One day, me and the wife took our niece out to a park to get us some fresh air and to knock out some excess energy the kid had. I took the dice game to a different level and we played tag. I would roll and whatever animal came up, either me or her would try to tag the other while being that animal. The objectivity is to give enough space for the person to get a bit of a head start and the person tagging has to keep moving until they tag the other. It took about 5-6 rolls until she was down for the count. Afterwards, she caught her breath and went on the swings or watch the dogs roam around. 

It doesn't take very long for those workouts to kick your ass. If you can last even 10 minutes, that's more than most can handle. The movements work so many muscles it's not even funny. Try playing tag and you have to do the Frog Jump, that round may only last less than 30 seconds because you would have to break to catch your breath and if the person trying to get away from the tagger is gassed, you have a greater advantage of winning. How about doing a race or doubling the reps per animal, it can get brutal fast. That's the beauty of it though, you don't need long workouts to make something work.

Training should have an adventurous element to it because if it becomes boring and you don't have that excitement, you won't last too long being consistent with it. It can be hard for sure but once you get the idea of turning it into play, the hard part is taken more as a challenge with a smile. It takes you back to your childhood where being carefree and full of imagination was at the peak of our minds. It puts you in a calmer state after a workout or should I say Playout, it develops coordination and balance, let's not forget incredible strength and conditioning. It also creates stronger brain functions because for one, you need to be quick and because of the coordination, you have to constantly stay balanced and perform with greater cognition. 

It does take time learning them and if you had previous injuries like many of us, you might have to coordinate differently and work an animal move best suited for you. When I do a Frog Jump, most of the time I only jump less than a few inches off the ground whether in stationary or moving forward and backwards, it works for me. Because of my leg injuries, trying to jump like Michael Jordan or a high jumper would be not good for someone like me so I have to do things accordingly. I definitely don't do explosive movements involving the upper body like jumping using the arms because it's not good for my shoulders, wrists and elbows so I came up with movements for the upper body that better suits my way of moving.  

Be adventurous, take a chance and find what works best for you. Unleash your spirit animal and move the way we should be moving.