What made you the best you ever were?

I was contemplating a time when I was my leanest. It was a time when I was standing all day at my job, biking about three miles every day to and from work, taking karate and sparring twice every day I had off. I was also jumping rope at home during my down time in order to improve my conditioning. On top of all this I was going to night school.

I’m pretty sure my diet was crumby; both from a quantity and a quality perspective. Yes, a part of that time I was working at DQ, but lunch was a cheese burger and a root beer.

Today that would be a recipe for over training. Back then I was a little more resilient. I was also at 8.6% body fat. I’m not interested in getting that lean now, but I was thinking that looking back might show me what works for me…..aside from being young.

For instance, the sparring was very intense, but the jumping rope was steady state. I often jumped for over 40 minutes (hey it was the disco age – good jump rope music). Today there is a lot of debate that HIT is better than steady state, but experience shows me what was working for me…and as Swami will attest the best exercise is the one you will do. I think that jumping rope used to be effective for me because of an initial depletion of ATP stores and then the use of fat as a fuel source. That’s just my opinion, but whatever the reason it was working.

The next step is to focus on the now with the lessons of the past in mind.

But, what I really want to know is when were you at the top of your game? And why do you think it was working for you?