January 2007 Archives

Last night we did a workout that I thought was going to take all night. The first ingredient was a single-kettlebell complex: one-arm swing, clean, front squat, repeat. Change hands as often as you want. 10 reps of the single-kettlebell complex 10 squat-jumps (unweighted) 10 rounds for time. Any time we do ten rounds of any workout, it's daunting, but ten rounds of something strenuous with weight? Yikes. Oh, and this was after a few rounds of a good-mornings/back squats barbell complex at about 30 and 40 kilos. I used a 16-kilo kettlebell and it took me 21:15. I was happy with sticking to the 16 when I could have switched down to the 12-kilo weight. But boy, was I tired. I'm just now starting to get sore. Sore in the hamstrings from the good-mornings, sore in the quads from the squat-jumps, sore in the upper back from the one-arm kettlebell swings, etc. I don't mind. I love being able to do it.

Last night the gym was freezing cold, but Dave wanted to do a gymnastics workout. We did some upside-down drills and parallel bar swings for a while, and tried some pommel-horse stuff, and finally he took pity on us and gave us a workout that we could do fast enough to warm up. 20 dumbbell thrusters (I used 20 pounds each hand) 20 V-ups Four rounds for time. I was somehow ready for this one--feel like I'm on an upswing this week in terms of energy and strength--and finished in six minutes. My first two rounds I did everything straight through with no breaks, and the last two rounds I took one fast break on the thrusters. The last two rounds of V-ups were fairly disorganized but managed to wear me out.

Tabata workouts involve exercises you can do fast, and what you do is work 20 seconds, rest 10 seconds, eight times, then switch to the next exercise and do the same. Record your low score for each exercise. That way you are wickedly forced to confront your collapse instead of crowing about your high score or your high totals. I can't resist recording all of my scores. My rationale is that I'll be able to refer back and try for one more rep next time we do Tabata squats. I'll be able to see that because I hit 17 or 16 in half of the rounds, I should be able to have 16 as my low score next time instead of 15. Burpees were sort of an unusual choice for a Tabata workout because they're not that fast of a drill. I'm glad I maintained the 6 reps I started out with throughout. On the kettlebell swings, I used 16 kilos. I concentrated on actively pulling it down from the top position instead of just letting it fall. That extra work and speed, combined with the things we'd already done, really knocked me out and my low score of 10 degenerated a lot from my high score of 14.

12/29/06 Time: 10:53 My runs were a little faster than normal because I was trying to keep up with Erika. This wasn't my fastest time but was the same as one of my earlier attempts.