Benefits of missing workouts?

It must seem like I sort of dropped off the fitness radar map. Wow, over 2 weeks without posting! And in a sense, I did drop off the fitness radar map--or maybe I just flew under the radar for a time.

Here's the deal. I had to make a trip out east on short notice and, almost immediately on arriving back home, we were slated to take a short vacation out of town.

I knew we'd have to take a bit of a break from our fitness pursuits, but our plan was to minimize the time off. As anyone who's read a few of my blog entires will know, I don't hesitate to take breaks now and then--I think a healthy fitness regime needs to include breaks. Perhaps I differ from fitbomb--who seems quite manic about maintaining his fitness pursuits--in my philosophy on fitness.

But the break I had planned actually got extended by quite a lot. Had everything gone to plan, we'd have done our alternate modified P90X late last week and would have been back at cycling again today. But things didn't go according to plan.

The main hindrance was a canceled flight that was supposed to get me back home in time to start the planned vacation. Instead of getting in on that flight, I ended up having to take another that got me in almost 24 hours late. Thus, we started and ended the planned vacation late. Needless to say, fitness plans needed to change as well.

So, it's now 2 weeks since we did any strength training. Moreover, it will be almost 2 weeks, once we get back to cycling, since I've been on the bike.

I could say that's not good, but that doesn't really capture what I want to convey with this entry. What I want to convey is that we miss doing our fitness pursuits. Because of the increased break, we have a longing to get back to it. And I think that's healthy.

This highlights an important aspect of my own fitness philosophy, namely, that it's good to "hold back" sometimes. There should be times when you feel that longing to get back to fitness pursuits--sort of like the opposite of feeling that it's drudgery, which is a danger, I think, if your training schedule lacks flexibility.

Now, there is, of course, a danger to taking breaks from fitness pursuits. Breaks that are to long can lead to inertia: it can be difficult to restart your regimen after a too-lengthy break. But what is too long a break, and what is an appropriate interval to set aside fitness?

I assume this will vary from person to person. To summarize briefly, I think one must tread a fine line between being regimented and allowing slack in the routine. I am still in the experimental stages of developing my fitness routine, but so far the approach I've taken of allowing some slack has worked pretty well: we've sustained this for a little over two years now, and we show no signs yet of burn-out.

We hope to keep it up. So, the fourth session of our alternate modified P90X will come today, and we'll be back on the bike over the weekend. Officially I'm back on the radar screen.