Strength Work in Cool Impossible

Hello All,

I have been working my way through the Cool Impossible program. Up to Phase 2 Week 3. Amazing program. In addition I do the leg and core workouts 2 to 3 times a week.

I have had some shin pain/irritation creep up on me so have had a few days off from running, putting on Voltaren Gel (inflammation gel) and refocused/doubling down on strength work especially calf work. I will limit running this week and see how I go. Frustrating but part of the journey. Is this an advised approach to recover?

This got me thinking, am I as far along with the strength program as I should be? I obviously have some calf weakness.

Has any one completed all exercises?

For comparison my 1mile test time 6:31 and 20min test 167 and 4.2km.

Currently I am at:

1min 30sec of single pole balance

25 reps for both slant board and disc movement sequence

25 x 3 fitball lunge (slant board) > moving on the disc shortly.

4 x 3 run squat with rotations

5 x 3 One leg pistol squat > looking to increase this.

Note on form: I have a good cadence of 180 per min and have been working to improve other aspects of form.

Ben

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Permalink Reply by David Gross on June 24, 2019 at 11:50am

I have been experiencing very tight calf muscles in my left leg since Feb/Mar of this year plus recently a pulled hamstring in my right leg, so am limiting my running. But I have started the slant board basic 6 exercises (2 poles, 1 minute) three times per week for the past 2 weeks and so far it seems to be helping reduce the calf pain. You sound like you are doing very well to me but I am far behind you yet.

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Permalink Reply by Ben Lynch on June 24, 2019 at 7:37pm

Thanks for the reply David.

I too am very familiar with tight calf muscles. I used to get these alot. I ended up going to a running physio for advice.

I used to do alot of stretching to try and resolve tight calfs. The physio told me tightness is your bodies way of shutting down the muscle due to lack of strength or stability. I ended up stopping all stretching and using the time for strength work. Eric's exercise from the book and calf raises. I have seen much better results with strength work than I ever got with stretching.

My physio's comments further emphasized and backed up the advice and program in Eric's book. Once I started the strength work in the book + additional calf raises my problem went away.

I do think given my latest problems I still have a way to go but I am getting there.

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Permalink Reply by David Gross on June 25, 2019 at 7:01am

Hello Ben,

Thank you for relating your experience. That is great to know and am glad to hear that the foot strength work and calf raises will help as it seems to be already! I do about 30-40 seconds of calf raises for each leg after every run and after the strength work.