Three, Two, One....

Typical strength day for me:

I'm sitting, minding my own business, when I remember.  Today is my day for strength training.  Not an off day, where I usually run to work cardio, but a strength training day.

Now, some days I'm thrilled to be able to start exercising.

Other days I am not, and I wish to simply sit and relax with an improving book and cup of tea.  Or coffee.  Whoever told you being a shinobi was easy was dreadfully wrong.

But, exercise I must, and so I order my body off the couch and begin.

A hundred crunches and fifty pushups later, I start my stretching, which is something to be done every day.  Ten minutes of various forms of stretching, and I do some work with weights.

After that, comes the typically more fun part of exercising.  Katas (or "forms"), punch, and kick review.  Now, I know six katas, perhaps not many in view of some of the martial artists, but after practicing each of them twice, I am usually sweating.  Then there are the kicks and punches, which I perform while dwelling on their Japanese names.

"Mikazuki, Mawashi, Yoko, Mae, Ura, Tobi Mai, Ushira Ura.....  Shuto, shotai, haiito, teitui, hiji, hiza, uraken, seiken....."

Probably my favorite kick is the Tobi Ushira Mikazuki--The jumping spinning crescent kick.  No, it isn't exactly the most practical, but it is a lot of fun to do.

By the end of my strength training, I am feeling ready to stop, but quite glad that I didn't allow myself to shirk.

And I won't have to have anything more to do with strength training until the day after tomorrow, and hopefully by then I will be feeling more motivated towards exercise, so I will not be tempted to skip training "Just for one day".

Because how many know that if "just one day" is skipped, there will be many more "just one day"'s to follow?

In the shadow of the Greatest Shinobi

~MDS