Old habits die hard

I just got back from a massage appointment, and it just got me thinking to most athletes, and even an age old adage.  "Old habits die hard" I never ever quite stretched enough, never really worked enough on my core, or functional strengthening to prevent injuries, and even though I've tried to make conscious efforts to change all of that.  Does it change anything if the things that I'm supposed to be doing are actually good for me?  Not really, it requires a buy in on your part to know that what you're doing will result in tangible benefits.  It's the same idea with a coach, putting your faith in them to do the right thing to maximize performance.  So what is the whole point of this post, well it's 1 part sharing where I've been, and 1 part possibly putting this out in the internet so I follow through with what I say I'm going to do.

I've talked a little bit about stretching in the past, and I really am not here to say that it helps prevent injury etc because that's highly debated.  What I do know for sure is that life is better with stretching (even ignoring the injury aspects of it).  You can be strong as an ox, but if you have a very finite range in which you can exert that power, than it's not particularly useful.  I never really thought about it, but thanks to Bill, something that's so obvious is now just a little bit more on mind.  The other thing is that if your muscles are in tip top shape, and constructed in the linear fashion that they're supposed to be, then you can clear whatever metabolic waste you have built up more efficiently.  If however you have a bunch of scar tissue, criss crossed linkages from over exertion/under recovery than your endurance is also compromised.  So that's kind of the short version of it

What am I doing, well I'm going to stretch after every workout (we'll see how this goes, I'm notorious for this in swimming because after you're done swimming you just want to get out and hit the showers).  I've used this excuse in the past, and really it shouldn't be one, spend like 5-10 minutes stretching, it'll do wonders.  I'll do core work at least once a week (this is also great for not falling off your bike once spring comes around).  Lastly this isn't so much related to stretching, but I'll try to put in some specific workouts every week:
2 swims
1 roller session
1 interval session
1 run
1 core workout
Lots of of stretching.

Now that it's out here on the interwebs, hopefully it'll keep me a little bit more accountable.

~Cheers