Ceejbot

Another boring workout record.

Heavy weights day yesterday. The pattern was 4 sets of 10 reps, for each of the exercises. The weights chosen were at the hard end for everything, so that I was struggling through the last few. And to make things more interesting, my additional task was to complete 100 for-real full-body-length pushups in the hour, splitting them up any way I wanted.

lower chest press (Hammer machine), 90#
lat pulls (Hammer machine) inclined bench press, 65#
stiff-legged deadlifts, 95# (115# for the last set)
abductors/adductors on machines, 195-ish plate settings
bicep curls, 40#
skullcrushers for triceps, 40#

After the inclined bench press, my chest muscles were dead and I had absolutely nothing to put into the pushups. Fortunately I had only 20 left by that time, and the stiff-legged deadlifts gave me time to recover.

Guess how sore I am today. Just guess!

More squats.

Oh, god, more squats today. We returned to a Crossfit-like exercise that my trainer invented for me a long time ago, when I was still working up to the intensity level of Crossfit.

15 squats
10 leg lifts
5 pushups
10min, AMRAP

I did 7 rounds whenever it was I first did this, and 10 rounds today. If I’d had 10 more seconds, I’d have completed 11 rounds. That improvement is 100% cardio, I imagine.

The rest of the session was kettlebells and jump-rope, with a few wall-balls in there just to torture me. Swings + side-steps with a 16kg bell. Figure-eights with an 8kg bell. Cleans + presses with a 16kg bell, and you better believe those were push-presses, omg my shoulders.

I did Turkish get-ups with an 8kg bell, but not straight. My trainer had me pause in the bridge position and swing my leg back and forth 10 times before I completed the get-up. This is to improve my strength in that position and shake out any lurking weaknesses in my technique. Oof.

I link to that particular get-up video often because I think it’s the best I’ve seen on Youtube for explaining the Turkish get-up and how to practice it. There are some bad ones out there, showing versions of the exercise that are corrupted to the point of uselessness. The TGU is a truly excellent exercise.

Heavy upper body work

Friday was heavy leg day. The sled on the leg press thingie weighs 60#, I learned, which meant I was pressing 290# total. Sumo squats (which means very wide stance) holding a 75# weight were easy in comparison. Overhead squats were harder work. Calf stuff, abductors, adductors, other leg stuff, blah blah blah. I forget what I did. I don’t think I even hurt the next day despite the heavy weights.

I will not be so lucky after today’s workout. Today was an upper body day, and a nice traditional weight-lifting day.

inclined chest press, 2 x 20# dumbbells
single arm rows, 45#
skull crushers, 45#
shoulder press, 2 x 15# dumbbells
bicep curls, 2 x 15# dumbbells
narrow grip chest press, 25# barbell
cable face pulls, 30#
cable tricep extensions, 25#
narrow grip lat pull-downs, 45# (I think)

As usual, done in 3-exercise groups, 3 sets of each, then stretching before moving to the next 3 exercises. By the end of this I could barely lift my arms. Most of these exercises were to the point of failure at the end; that is, I needed my trainer to help me through the last few forced reps. My chest is going to be so sore tomorrow.

Crossfit Helen, take 2.

Helen
3 rounds for time
400m run
21 kettlebell swings @ 24kg
12 pull-ups

Last time I did this in 17:23. This time, slower, gah! 17:40. I was completely surprised, since I did a lot of running at 5.5mph, including most of the last round. I wonder if it was transit across the gym floor to the place where I did the jumping pullups. I felt strong. Oh well. (Note that the kettlebell swings in the video I linked to display some very bad form. You should not be using your arms and shoulders to lift the bell like that. Ugh.)

I will find consolation in reflecting on the heavy weightlifting I did in the rest of the session.

deadlifts @ 205#, new personal best
back squats @ 135#, new personal best
bench press @ 105#, repeat of existing personal best, 3 reps this time!

I also did lat pulldowns on a cable machine. Some day. Some day. A bodyweight pullup. I dream.

Crossfit Annie, take 2

Crossfit Annie is one of the simplest Crossfit workouts there is. To recap:

50/40/30/20/10 reps, done for time
double-under rope jumps
situps

My substitution was to do twice the number of regular rope jumps instead of double unders. (I still can’t do them reliably enough. Woes.) So in total, 300 rope jumps and 150 situps.

My time on my first attempt was 14:53. This time I did it in 12:51. Two minutes faster, woot! And really, it was all about cardio fitness, because my muscles did not fail until the very last round of situps.

The rest of the hour was spent doing two reps of a 9-exercise circuit. Each exercise is repeated continously for 1 minute.

single leg hamstring curls, 30 secs per leg
kneeling pushups, hands on dumbbells for instability and depth
ab crunches on a balance ball
bicep curls, 20# bar (or something really light like that)
single leg box squats, 30 secs per leg
Smith machine body row
stiff-legged deadlifts with 2 30# dumbbells
Arnold shoulder press, 10# per hand
extended plank, sort of, with arms stretched overhead gripping the bar used for the rows

My abs were toast, and those crunches were hard. Welcome back to work after a week off, oh muscles of mine.

Wall balls are hell.

One 14# leather ball, not very bouncy. One 20# leather ball as target for butt in squats. Now squat, thrust upward, and throw the 14# ball against a wall. Catch it as you come down to a squat again. Make sure your butt touches the second ball. It should look a lot like this. 15 of those slaughtered me today. Oh, I am such a wuss.

Okay, the wall balls came at the very end of a fairly intense workout hour. Today’s theme was a strength exercise paired with a high-heart-rate cardio exercise. The pairs:

20x pushups
2min treadmill on steep incline

20x overhead squats (45#)
1min jump-rope

20x lat pull-downs (70# and 80#, but 80# was too hard for 20 reps)
2min rowing at a 2:20/500m pace

Three sets of each pair. Nice, classic exercises.

Death by kettlebell.

Today’s exercises were a variety pack. Kettlebells, TRX for the trendy (yet difficult) stuff. My quadriceps were on fire when I arrived at the gym, thanks to Wednesday’s Crossfit Fran. TRX squats did not help matters. Neither did this kettlebell exercise:

2 snatches
on 2nd snatch, lower bell to rack position
squat
10 reps each arm, repeat for 3 sets.

I did it with a 12kg bell. Feel free to use a heavier bell if you’re beastlier than I am. My shoulder muscles failed on the last few reps of this. Really an awesome, well-rounded exercise. Cardio, abs, legs, shoulders all get engaged.

Also fun today: 40 second planks with a 25# plate resting on my back. Because regular planks are no longer hard enough, or something like that. 3 repetitions of that, alternating with 2 minutes on a treadmill at the steepest setting, and I was definitely wiped.

I’m also working on improving my pushup form by doing deep chest presses on the TRX. Some day I’ll do a good pushup…

Boxing.

Wednesday’s workout was nearly all boxing. I was in a bad mood because my former employer had laid off more of my former colleagues, so hitting something was a nice distraction. I stood on a high stool while Trainer Jeff lifted the sandbag up to me. Hooks in place, big hook into the eyelet on the support beam. Then he wrapped up my hands. That was interesting, and I can’t imagine boxing without wrapped hands ever again. Except that it’s a big time commitment; you can’t just leap into a bit of boxing-for-fitness if you stop to wrap.

So there I was, hands wrapped, gloves on, staring at 150 pounds of sand in a body-sized cylinder. It’s amazing how different it feels to punch that instead of punching at the gloved hands of my trainer. When I punch at him, I aim for his hands, which are away from his body. When I punch at the bag, I need to aim directly into it, at a point a few inches inside the bag. Aim anywhere else and I could hurt myself. But I can’t hurt anybody else. I’m punching at a thing, not a person, and wow, this frees me to punch. I was finally doing what I was supposed to do and getting my whole body into it. Hips, shoulder, legs. Fist into bag.

When I got the rhythm right, the bag didn’t swing much at all. I found it disconcerting when it did, because that’s a pretty big pendulum with a lot of inertia. Left right, left right, try to keep my feet in the right places, try to keep my hands in front of my face. Man, there’s a lot to learn for boxing. I know nothing!

There’s a huge power difference between left and right punches. Even when I set up a left with a right, the left foot is forward and it changes things. Fascinating. Also, I completely don’t get how to do uppercuts yet, not really.

Two days later my shoulder muscles are still sore from this. I find that fascinating as well. It’s aerobically intense, and I knew that from before, but I guess I hadn’t ever really put muscle into it before. And I was not conscious of having done so at the time.

Ouch.

Today was all with the core exercises and the planks on posture balls and the intensive short-duration cardio misery, blah blah blah. What I want to know is this: Why do wall sits hurt so much? And today’s wall sits involved going deeper and deeper as time went on, until I lost it and slid all the way to the floor.

But on the plus side, it’s for real and staying there: I’ve lost 10% of my body weight, without even for a second attempting calorie restriction. Woot for muscles!

Grunt!

Chest muscle extravaganza day! Bench press! Dumbbell chest flies! Pushups against a bar! I definitely pressed 105# several times, then failed to press 115#. So for 115# and 125# we did eccentric work, which is to say, Trainer Jeff lifted and I lowered very very slowly. We also really worked on good bench press form, with my shoulders doing the right things and my entire body solidified. All of this is in service of some day doing a proper, excellent, perfect pushup.

I could press the bare 45# bar all day, I think.

Then, tons of leg stuff. Leg press with 90# plus whatever the press sledge itself weighs. Lunges. And squats. I stood on wooden blocks and did sumo (aka wide stance) squats with 85#, 95#, and 110# dumbbells. The heaviest was work just to hold onto, though of course I was turning the dumbbell on end and holding one of the weight clusters.

Also, hip abduction and adduction, and I can never remember which is which because I always do them in pairs anyway.

The usual workout.

Upper body today, with the usual intense cardio breaking up the muscle exercises. No gimmicks. 3 rounds of each of these groupings:

15x chest fly, cable machine
15x kneeling pushups on BOSU balance thingie, as deep as possible
1 min jumprope

15x 35# overhead cable tricep extension
15x 25# cable bicep curl
3x 100m rowing sprints, 30 sec rest between

12x each arm 15# dumbbell bicep curl
15x dips on the side of a bench
1 min side toe-tapping on the BOSU balance thingie, bouncy side up

I was pleased to notice no trouble from my formerly-broken toes on any of this. The rope-jumping was just fine.

Today's workout thrashed me.

The pattern was two weight exercises followed by a cardio interval, repeated for three sets. Then two different weight exercises and another cardio burst, also for three sets. The weight exercises mostly followed the pattern of 30 reps each, stripping off some weight at 10 and 20.

leg press - 270#, 220#, 170#
bench step-ups, 15 each leg, a 15# barbell in each hand
750m row

Smith machine squats - bar + 30#, 20#, 10#
hamstring curls - 100#, 90#, 80#
stair climb, 1:30

I think the Smith machine bar is about 25# to move by itself.

That was it. Simple and to the point. Only the hamstring exercise was limited by muscle strength for me. When I had to stop, it was to suck in more oxygen. Yow, rowing really gets to me; 2250m is probably the most I’ve rowed in any one workout.

Deadlifts!

My previous personal best deadlift was 135#, which I completely exploded today. Started at 90# to rehearse the form, then advanced to 5 reps each at 135#, 155#, and 175#. Yay! I could probably go heavier. I need to use the opposing-hands grip to handle the higher weights, but it didn’t limit me.

Also today was a day for boxing. Slowly my form and power improves for all the varieties of punch, as I learn to get my lower body better engaged. I also noticed that my cardio fitness has improved a lot since the last time we boxed— I could do much more for longer. Cardio always feels like it’s the slowest to respond for me, and the limiting factor I struggle with all the time. But I guess it improves while I’m not looking.

My toes are mended enough now that I’m wearing the Five Fingers once more to work out, which makes me happy. I feel much more secure and solid when I wear them, way more like I know where my feet are and what they’re doing.

Twenty-ones.

21 reps of a single exercise, split up into 3 sets of 7.

For the first set, do the exercise with half the full range of motion. For instance, with pushups, only go halfway down to the floor.
For the second set, do the other half of the range of motion. That is, do the pushup from the floor to halfway up.
And for the third set, do 7 with the full range of motion.

Exercises I did this with:
pushups
overhead squats
rows
single-leg lunges
bench presses

Interspersed with very intense cardio sprints that maxed my heart rate but good.