Timing of BWM and Intervals

[Jenergy]

I find that after doing intervals or BWM I'm so heated up that it takes about 10-15 minutes for the sweating to stop. I don't mind this, but it means it's pointless to take a quick shower & head to work. So I put in a longer stretch session, or do some time on the foam roller, or linger over my protein shake.

But in Phase 4 I found that I was really pushing the limit of getting to the gym when it opens and making it to work on time. I'm about to start Phase 5, and I'm pretty sure there's no way I'm going to have time to complete all the weight work PLUS the intervals and/or BWM each day. So I figure I have a couple of options:

1) Do weights Sun/W/F, and intervals or BWM M/Th/Sat (this would be my first choice, but I'm concerned it wouldn't give me enough recovery time)
2) Do weights in the morning, and intervals or BWM when I get home that evening
3) Only do 2 or 3 sets of each exercise, rather than 3 or 4
4) Cut down the rest time between exercises (this seems really counterproductive, but I'm putting it in for the sake of completeness), basically it would mean redoing Phase 3, rather than doing Phase 5
5) Work out after work (really not feasible with my schedule - I do a lot of community theater & have rehearsals 3-5 nights a week)

In each case, I do some stretching at home, then I bike to the gym (about 1.5 miles), do a pretty short warm up at the gym, do NROL, followed by about 5 minutes of stretching, a quick shower & biking to work (about 4 miles). I usually stretch a couple of times during the day, too.

Any suggestions? Would my preferred option be problematic for recovery? On the plus side, I feel like I would push myself harder on the weights if I didn't need to leave myself enough resources to do the intervals or BWM.

[Aoife]

Plenty of people have just done the matrix later in the day, because of time constraints. Your best choice would prolly be #2, just split them up on the same day and let yourself recover the other days.

[carolynq]

I usually do your preferred option. I don't have nearly enough time to do the long sets at the gym, so I split it up and do the intervals or BWM at home on the following days. For the BWM, the morning after I usually do a short jog then finish with the BWM. For the intervals I do the 15 minutes, then cool down for 5 minutes, then do a steady jog for the remaining 10 minutes of my "30 minutes" of exercise.

I don't know if I got as much out of the program as I would have otherwise, but I was very happy with my results. I felt I pushed myself harder with the weights in the gym and the time it took me to do the BWM dropped drastically (and continued to fall) once I switched it to the following morning.

It would probably be best to fit it in on the same day, but I liked putting it the day after.

Good luck - and great with the biking! I'm hoping that once I don't have to worry about daycare drop-off/pick-ups I'll be able to start biking to work as well. (This, however, is MANY, MANY years in the future.)