My holidays began with a lesson in adapting. For years, we had an artificial tree. But a few years ago, we decided to get a real tree and headed to our local tennis club where Habitat for Humanity sells Christmas trees. The trees are usually pretty nice, it's close to home and we often run into other neighbourhood families. But this year, I really wanted to get a tree from a tree farm. The kids are getting older, and soon enough, they won't be at all interested in a tree farm. A hockey game scheduled directly before our trip to the tree farm changed it all. After a hit from behind (in non-contact house league hockey, no less), we took a trip to CHEO instead of the tree farm and came home with this:
A broken arm - both bones and what was referred to by the doctors as a "very bad fracture". And thus began our period of adaptation.
So, a few days later, housebound with a sad and sore boy, I hauled our less than real tree upstairs and began to set it up. In the end, we found ourselves with a very open schedule and had a lovely time decorating the tree, all together.
Fast forward a few weeks. The arm is healing pretty well, the cast has been changed to a smaller, lighter, fibreglass one and we've been given the ok for him to start back with exercise. He can't play anything contact, so instead, he's skating on a big treadmill of synthetic ice. Pretty cool.
Sometimes life throws you a curve and you need to make a change. But you adapt.
Exercise is the same. In order to improve, you need to continually challenge and change what you're doing. If you do the same exercises with the same muscles over and over again, your muscles will adapt and you will reach a point where you're no longer feeling the benefits of your exercise session. So, change it up every few weeks and do something different. If you're out running or biking, try going at a different pace, adding intervals, hills or distance. If you're doing weight bearing exercises, try increasing your weight, reps or sets. Keep fooling your muscles so that they need to keep adapting and you'll continue feeling the benefits.
Who knows? You might just love the changes you make.
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