A Dish Best Served Cold

5 min warm up
Stretch
4x 400 meters @ 120 sec. pace
4x 200 meters @ 40 sec. pace
2 mile light jog
4x 60 sec. planks
2x 25 neg. crunches
5 min cool down
Stretch

Rest between sprints should be 2 min. or less. If that is not possible, do your best and it will get better next time.

It has been my experience as a personal trainer that many people initially begin taking their fitness seriously as some form of revenge. What I mean is that for the average person knowing that working out will improve your health and quality of life isn't enough. Looking better to make an ex jealous after a break up or losing twenty pounds after being passed over for a promotion is almost always more than enough motivation though. Almost without fail my clients come to me in the middle of some serious life changes, many times having to overcome a rather blatant slap in the face causing them to look at their physical appearance in a search for reason. For the most part, I get it. A little black dress that fits like a glove can be a well placed knife in the back of a former lover, provided the wearer of said dress knows how to own it. On a personal level, I must admit that I still have a few grudges as well. One of these long seated sources of my vengeance was the presidential fitness test that we all completed in school. For me this was more like a day of humiliation than anything else. Push-ups weren't so bad but climbing a rope to the ceiling of the gym or completing a pull-up was a different story. To this day I incorporate pull-ups into almost everyone of my back workouts just to prove a point to god only knows who, but upon completing them I feel better. In the movie "Almost Heroes", one of the characters loses his leg when he is attacked by a bear and instantly exclaims "we should send out a hunting party and kill it". Mathew Perry's character, not wanting to fight a bear, suggests that the ravages of old age are far worse than anything that a hunting party can inflict. "Revenge is sweet sir" is the wounded mans reply and he is correct. Sometimes revenge is sweet. It is also problematic. The problem lies in the fact that after tons of effort we are seldom truly satisfied destroying someone else's day in order to feel better ourselves. This can be equated to the idea of killing a ghost. It's tough to do when it's already dead.When it comes to fitness and executing revenge, most of my clients find themselves struggling even more than before they began because they began with someone else's reasons and not their own. I recommend taking the offenses that you have been wronged with and using them to your advantage, but for your own benefit rather than someone else's pain. It has been my experience that this will ensure lasting success and a more steady stream of motivation as well without the nagging guilt or hate that comes with revenge. If you still want revenge after this, all I can say is that it is a dish best served cold!

Enjoy

J