Treating Your Body Nicely

During my grueling workout last Sunday, my trainer was excited to see how high my heart rate would jump. I mean I was jumping over a tire that came just below my knee and doing burpees, plus 3 minutes on the assault bike with sprints. The highest it got was 165.

Back in the Orange Theory days, she was getting my heart rate to jump to 180+ and I was going to those hour long classes 3-4x a week. 

I started thinking about when the last time my heart rate got up to 180 and I couldn't pinpoint it. So I decided to go for a run to see if that would make it spike. Spoiler alert: It didn't. I only had time to go for a 2-mile run and I kept up a pretty decent pace but the highest I hit was 161.

During that run, I didn't really start to lose my breath but my legs, my legs wanted to die. I realized (with some needling from Mary Beth) that my stamina is probably right where it needs to be and could be going for a lot longer if it wasn't for how tired my legs were. It's my body that is giving out simply because I am not caring for it nicely.

I need more stretching and more foam rolling in my life so that my body can catch up to my cardio strength. It's just so hard! Saturdays have become my "rest day" and I think I need to find a way to make it a rest/stretch day. It could be I need to add back in at least one yoga day into my routine, but I also really truly need to foam roll and I need someone to motivate me to do it. 

Does anyone have any tips/tricks to making foam rolling effective when you do it on your own?

Any guided stretching exercises that aren’t yoga feel so boring and slow and when I do yoga I don’t always feel like I’m hitting the areas that need it the most. Can I hire someone simply to help me foam roll? Or can someone design a foam rolling workout that will help me do it correctly?