Last night after work I grabbed my liter water bottle and headed into the sauna. Since the day was cold, the sauna felt extra hot. With midterms here, and also the unofficial start of spring break, the place was empty. I lay out flat on the boards, which are arranged in three tiers, and listened to the hum and clicks of the burner as my body heated up. The only lights in there are these dim, yellow, caged off plumber lamps. They’re probably specially constructed to function in very hot environments. The effect they have is that you feel like you’re very deep in the bowels of something. They look like the lamps miners might use. Or deep sea divers.

After 10 minutes your sweat starts to bead up and drip down your sides. Lying flat as I was, if you bring your knees up so your feet are flat on the boards, you can actually watch the individual droplets form, grow, and slide down your skin.

I stayed for 40 minutes. It’s a good time to stretch and heal up.

A couple of you asked about the leg routine. If you run and swim a lot your legs will not continue to grow past a certain point because it’ll be come inefficient. Your body is very good about regulating that kind of thing. The more endurance-oriented you train your body to be, the leaner and tighter you’ll become, which is what you want.  So don’t worry– you can keep your squatting going, stick with the 3 sets of 20, and keep getting stronger. If your legs are weak (like if you can’t do 20 reps with your body weight equivalent loaded on the bar) then for the first few weeks your legs will grow. But don’t get freaked out. For me, they’ve stopped about here:

Which is about right. If I stopped the running and swimming, they’d probably start swelling up more, but speed and endurance is what you want in the ring or the cage. You want your legs to be super strong, but not bulky, especially if you have to swing them up into someone’s head frequently. You want them to be very durable, springy, and powerful… able to take lots of abuse. You need that because everything you do in the ring starts with your legs, and your opponent will be trying to attack there as much as anywhere else. I’ll keep going with my routine and you do the same. I’ll put more pictures up as time passes.

Time to book it. Have a great weekend… and do that thing you keep putting off.