Improvers

I missed the improvers paddle session that was organised by the club for last Sunday afternoon. So it’s going to be next Sunday before I get back into a kayak. In the meanwhile I’ve started work on trying to improve the sit-up-and-beg posture.

The main problems are weight, too much of it, and strength, too little. Specifically the weight build up lately has been around the midriff, and it’s getting in the way especially when sitting in that peculiar L-shaped position in a kayak. Strength is lacking in the back and stomach muscles. The idea is to replace the fat with muscle and to that end, some physical exertion is called for. A slow start up on stretching exercises last week, has been followed by adding on pull-ups for stomach and back muscles, and press-ups for shoulder and arms. I’m up to ten of each per session at the moment.

The next step will be to introduce a bit of staying power. To that end I went for my first jog in several years today to try to regain some sort of general fitness. It wasn’t easy. Five minutes walk for a warm up, then around the local common paths for twenty-five minutes, alternating walking with jogging. Although it was pretty dire for a while it didn’t seem too bad afterwards.

Weight hovers around 14.5 stone at the moment. I really need to loose at least a half stone by next Sunday, then I can see if I’m working along the right track to making any difference to performance in the boat. Ultimately, I need to be down to 13 stone. Hopefully the jogging will help with that if I can keep it going. If I can get up to a steady five or six miles it may well produce results.

Oh… and I might have accidentally signed up to next years London Marathon.

K-8 J-1