Crossfit Barbara, take 3.
See my writeups of previous attempts for my usual mods to scale down the exercise to my level of wimpiness. This time, kneeling pushups, so the benchmark time to use was 19:22. Today’s time? 14:45. Oh yeah!
I love to think about the totals for Barbara:
60 body rows
90 pushups
120 situps
150 squats
Also today:
Lunges while holding 2 12kg bells in the rack position. Fast walking on a 16deg inclined treadmill, which let my heart rate recover after those lunges, which were nasty.
12kg Turkish get-ups, this time just straight get-ups with no breakdowns of the moves. And I did the best TGUs I’ve ever done. Oh yeah! They’ll get even better before I’m done.
Tabata intervals swinging a 16kg bell.
Plank variants, with my hands braced on a pair of really heavy bells so I could move my feet around.
Barbara, take 2
Crossfit Barbara, as specced:
20 pullups
30 pushups
40 situps
50 squats
rest 3 minutes
repeat all for 5 rounds
My mods: 3 rounds not 5, inclined rows instead of pullups. This time I did full-length on-my-toes pushups. My time: 20:40-something. This is 1:20 slower than last time, but last time I did kneeling pushups. I also note that I did not rest 3 minutes between rounds.
My pushups have no depth to speak of. Bleah. They remain a sore trial to me.
Barbara, take 1
Crossfit Barbara, as specced:
20 pullups
30 pushups
40 situps
50 squats
rest 3 minutes
repeat all for 5 rounds
My modifications to scale it all down: inclined rows instead of pullups, kneeling pushups, 3 rounds instead of 5. I completed 3 rounds in 19:22. I finished strong, banging out the last 50 squats without a break.
Man, oh man, my situps are much stronger than they were when I got started on this. The gating factor on the situps was cardio, of all things— I wasn’t breathing properly. I’m going to have to slow down and pay attention to breathing the next time I do them.
Then I did some exercises targeted at grip strength improvement, which I report here as promised. I did 3 sets of each of these exercises:
wrist curls, palm down, 15lb barbell
wrist curls, palm up, 20lb barbell
10 swings of a 16kg kettlebell, two-handed, holding the ends of a towel looped through the handle
10-second static hangs from a pullup bar
By the end of that, my grip was exhausted and the hangs were very difficult. And as always, my bodyweight complicates the problem. I was slipping off the bar at the end of the ten seconds each time.
