Garbage yardage?

After Leo turned six weeks old and I got into the pool for my first postnatal swim, I floundered.  It felt so good to be back in the water again after close to four months off.  It felt so awful to have lost so much ground, to know I'd have to work hard to "get back to where I was."  Those first few times I couldn't bear to think about any sort of a workout plan.  I got into the water, I crossed and re-crossed the pool, and when my time was up I climbed out. 

There's a term I have encountered in reading about swim training:  "garbage yardage."   The derision is aimed at, well, aimlessness.  It is pleasant to get in the pool and swim at a comfortable pace for forty minutes or an hour, not trying to go particularly fast, not working hard, just racking up the yards.  Undoubtedly it is better than not swimming at all, good for my heart and for my muscles and for my mentality.  It's not a waste of time. 

But it won't make me faster.

And it's kind of boring, too.

I felt more grounded as soon as I had a goal.  My longish-term goal is now to swim a mile in fifty minutes.  My shortish-term goal, since I'm stuck with shorter workouts for the time being, is to swim a half-mile in twenty-five minutes.  So I'm working on speed, not sprint speed but steady pace.  I have a stopwatch.  I have a plan:  so many intervals, so many seconds per interval, this much of a warmup, this much of a cool-down.  Each time I cross the pool I have some mini-goal in mind, mostly a part of the form:  This lap I will concentrate on controlling the roll of my body.  Next lap I will slice my hands into the water at the right angle every time.  The lap after that, I will be sure to kick forcefully all the way across the pool. 

This is not garbage yardage.  This yardage has a point.

Every physical activity has its form of garbage yardage.  I don't mean that aimless yardage is truly "garbage," as if it doesn't help at all.  It's relaxing, and it's better than sitting on the couch.  Relatively speaking, though, improvement requires a challenge.  How much it takes to challenge you depends on what you're used to.  Strolling around the neighborhood is fun and good for you, but is not a challenge... unless you are so unused to walking that it leaves you breathless.  For me, now, running 30 minutes at four miles an hour would be garbage yardage.  Fine for a day when I feel sore or headachy.   Much better than nothing.  But if my workouts were all like that I wouldn't improve.

The size of the challenge does not matter.  It can be quite tiny.  Just a little bit longer.   Just a little bit faster.  Just a little bit harder.  It can be the tiniest measurable increment:  I'm going to run at five-point-nine instead of five-point-eight.  I'm going to add that teeny little free weight, the one that looks like a CD, on to the stack of weights I lifted last week.  I'm going to finish one more lap.

So if the tiniest self-challenge counts, then even your very first day of deliberate body motion, no matter what it is, is worth something.  Get out and move.  Challenge yourself (1) to begin and (2)  to make a challenge for next time. So there will be a next time.

That is how it starts.

Comments

[Bethany]

Great advice. Are you SURE you don't want to write a book?

[Celeste]

Another really interesting post! The equivalent of garbage yardage in running parlance is "junk miles," and there's a lot of debate over how helpful they are to an overall training schedule. For people who are running 5+ days a week, junk miles can allow one to log a workout without over-stressing the body. As a busy mom, though, I can only get in three (maybe four) good runs a week; with so few days of running, I get my recovery time on my off days, so junk miles aren't useful to me. When I do have the chance to work out, I need to make my training really count, so like you, I try to push it as much as I am able, little by little. I have found those "tiny self-challenges" to be really effective at motivating me to improve. I love seeing results!

I do think that there is a difference between someone who runs just to maintain a moderate level of fitness and someone who genuinely wants to be an "athlete" in their chosen sport. (I remember your post about becoming an athlete a long while back--it inspired me to claim that title for myself, and I have never looked back!) The runner-for-fitness can just log junk miles all the time and still reach her goal of staying "in shape." For the athlete, though, junk miles won't cut it.

Love hearing your thoughts on fitness, Erin! Keep them coming.

(And just a note of interest: I recently read the book "Run Less, Run Faster," which outlines the FIRST program: three hard runs a week, two cross-training days, no junk miles. The authors make the same point you're making here and provide the science to back it up. A good read!)

[Barbara C.]

This kind of reminds me of "Flow" theory. The theory is that if you can take a mundane tasks and turn them into a game or challenge then you're more likely to experience moments of "flow" (aka the high of being "in the zone") and have overall happiness and satisfaction with your life.