Brains and Brawn… Thanksgiving workout
Published 12:35 am Saturday, November 27, 2021
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Photo Contributed EHS teacher and weighlifter Chad Salyer.
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BY CHAD SALYER
Our Thanksgiving traditions might be a little different between families, but one thing that almost all of us do is enjoy a huge meal together.
If you are like me, you make multiple stops and have multiple huge meals over the course of several days. In this case, it is more like Thanksgiving week than Thanksgiving day.
So, if you are a person who is conscious about your weight, this week could be a huge setback, and you could find yourself gaining several unwanted pounds.
One way to offset all those calories is to have a week’s worth of epic Thanksgiving workouts to match those epic meals.
In most cases, you will have a little extra free time over the holiday, and what better way to use that than to supersize your workouts?
If your primary workout strategy is weightlifting, like myself, you can increase the sets. For example. I might normally do five sets of five on a primary movement (bench, squat, deadlift) and four-five assistance exercises for three to five sets of 10-20 reps during this part of my workout cycle.
For Thanksgiving week, where dieting isn’t an option, I could change that to attempt 10 sets of five and double the assistance work with all the same weight. It helps me to imagine that beautiful spread on the table as you bang out those grueling extra reps.
This supplemental work completed several times over the Thanksgiving week can almost cancel out the extra calories of the great meals you will be having.
If you prefer aerobics, running, walking, using a rowing machine, or any other workout strategy, you can do a similarly epic workout. You could just take what you normally do and basically double it.
If you normally walk the neighborhood once at lunchtime, do it twice. Do you normally work on the rowing machine for 20 minutes? Go for 40 minutes this week. Do you normally do three aerobics classes a week? Try to do six this week, and so on.
If you can do it, why wouldn’t you just do those epic workouts all the time? You might ask. Well, for the same reason you wouldn’t want to eat like it is Thanksgiving every day.
Too much of even a good thing can be harmful. Turkey, dressing, sides, and several desserts every day would lead to… Well, let’s just say your pants wouldn’t fit very well.
Similarly, epic workouts of the type I’m describing would inevitably cause problems like injury, fatigue, etc if done over the long term.
It would be as unsustainable as the epic daily meals situation. As an event only for special occasions though, a bombastic workout and a massive meal can make the Thanksgiving holiday even more enjoyable without the guilt of knowing you are doing harm to your waistline.
So, when you sit down for your Thanksgiving meal and Aunt Sally insists you have a third helping of her dessert, you can eat it with no guilt.
You can stuff yourself knowing that you earned it with a series of massive workouts, and on Thanksgiving night, you can sleep the sleep of the righteous.
Well, unless you have indigestion!
