Big Sled Day

I started the day with my cardio - Spud Style. I set up the prowler with 10 lbs. on each arm and a sled with 35 lbs. I did a lap with the prowler (1/3 a mile), 3 laps with the sled, 1 lap with the prowler, 3 laps with the sled and 1 final lap with the prowler. Around 3 miles total in 1 hour 10 minutes.

For strength training Marc had us do 2 minute sets of these exercises:
RDL w/ 95 lbs.
Squats w/ 95 lbs.
Grappler - bar weight
Suspended rows
Reverse Hypers
Ham/Glute Raises
Leg Raises
Wobble Board Squats
Pushups
Incline situps

Funny story. I have 3 wild cats that live behind the gym. They have been spade/neutered and have their shots and the live in our equiment shed and I feed them. Everyone likes them because they like to hang out with you when you are out exercising but because they are wild they are not interested in being petted. Anyway, this morning with every lap I did I would come around and our big boy cat Ozzie was standing with his head under the corner of the shed and his butt sticking out up in the air. Every lap was the same. Finally I came around and he had moved to hide behind our big chain and as I was resting I watched the largest Possum I have ever seen waddle out from under the shed and the food bowl and make his way - slowly - up the hill into the state park behind the gym. The cat was not interested in getting in that big boy's way. He was HUGE. I figured I was feeding the assembled multitudes but now I know for sure.

Training and Over Tired

Yesterday was a long day for me and I wasn't sure how KB class was going to go. I had planned to do our long, boring, non-thinking workout so that we could just do a lot of work and get it over with. Then I got this insane idea that we would do that work out but with a crazy rep range. Here is what we did:

Alternating Cleans, Clean and Press and Snatches. What I mean is that you do one clean on your right arm, switch hands using a H2H swing and then do a clean on your left. Continue in this fashion back and forth. You can do alot more at a time because neither arm is working continuously.

The ridiculous rep range was:

Set one - 20 reps per arm on each exercise

Set tw0 - 30 reps per arm on each exercise

Set three - 50 reps per arm on each exercise (we ran out of time and stamina. I only got 2 of the exercises done this go round and others got 35 reps of each exercise)

Try it out. I used a 16 for the cleans and a 12 for the rest. Our big guy used a 20 kg for most of the class. I can tell you that the rain set in and we were nice and hot, muggy and sweaty by the time it was all over.

I wish...

I was better at this blogging thing. Time just gets away from me and all of a sudden it is 2 months later and I haven't written one thing.

Things for the Triathlon are going well. I have amended my time to 1 hour and 30 minutes although that will be stretching it for me - I am super slow on the bike. Here is what I have done for the last week.

Tuesday, May 18th
Am swim. Instead of the warm-up I went ahead and did a timed 500 yards. It took about 13 minutes and I did 2/3 of the way freestyle. Not bad. Then I did another 750 yards and called it a morning.

PM Kettlebells. We did upwards of 420 snatches in an hour. It was hard.

Wednesday, May 19th
AM strength Training w/ Marc. We did a circuit that included banded pushups, banded triceps, and heavy KB rows.

Afternoon Ride. We rode our 10 mile loop in 56 minutes.

Thursday, May 20th
AM Cardio. I did my 2 mile sprint in 19 minutes, working a little bit on level 7.0

PM Kettlebells. We did 2 big circuits: #1 - Judo Chops and Deadlifts, 5 reps for 10 rounds. I used a 16 Kg for the Judo's and an 88 lb. for the DL's. #2 - C&P and Stiff Leg DL's, same set/rep scheme. I used the 16 Kg and the 88 Kg. Oh yeah and for the warm-up I did 50 swings w/ the 106 lb and 50 with a 16 Kg.

Friday, May 21st
AM Cardio. 2 Mile sprint in 18:45 - I ran in 2 minute intervals on 6.0, 6.5, 7.0, 6.5, 6.0 then back up and down.

AM Strength Training. We punked out this morning and did 30 minutes of easy band squats and then 30 minutes of stretching

Saturday, May 22nd
AM Kettlebells. We did the double front raise, snatch, snatch press combo for 5 sets of 6 reps each, Bottoms up presses for 4 sets of 5 and some more presses to equal an hour.

Afternoon Bike Ride. My quads were so tired but I pushed hard to try to get my time down. we did the 10 mile loop in 54 minutes this time.

Sunday, May 23rd
I thought I needed some run time outside on the pavement. I ended up running just under 3 miles in about 30 minutes and finishing off with about 2.4 miles extra in walking. I will do this again next week to see if my time or distance improves.

Monday, May 24th
I just did strength training this morning. We did squats w/ 95 lbs. for a set of 25, 50 and 100. Then we did bench press with the mini bands doubled for 10 sets of 5 reps - fast.

I am SORE

Wow! 3 full days of working out and I am so sore.

Yesterday I didn't do any cardio but Marc put the whammy on us with the Tri-Repta workout.
15 minutes of Lunges
15 minutes climbing the stairs 2 at a time (I did 23 flights)
15 minutes of high step ups (I did about 25 a leg)
After that I was toast.

I ate so much yesterday and still was very light headed in the evening. And then we had a tragedy as a new wild kitty I was rehabilitating went outside for the first time and ended up next door where my neighbors dogs killed her. I was so upset that I went to bed super early.

Today in KB class we do strength/cardio. Unfortunately, a cold front has come through so we will not be going outside. Instead I think we will do a ladder of heavy swings w/ light judo chops swing high pulls, TGU's, deck squats and abs interspered between. I know that I need a restorative workout so hopefully I will get it.

Swimming

I started swimming this morning and surprisingly I didn't stink to badly. The hardest part was giving up sleeping until 8 am and hurling myself out of bed at 5 am to be there on time. I have never been taught to freestyle and have always gotten sort of panicky at the breathing. I am a much better breast stroker, but the woman in charge got me going on freestyle. Here is what I did today. 1 length is 25 meters

4 lengths breast stroke to warm up

a couple of lengths as I worked on breathing and my freestyle.

10 lengths freestyle w/ flippers (very fun)
10 lengths breast stroke
16 lengths kicking (with flippers and a kick board)
10 lengths freestyle w/out flippers.

I was pooped so I went home.

Tonight is the cardio KB class and I think we are going to go outside and run because it is going to be super warm today. Class will look something like this:

sets of 100 of 2H swings, 1H swings, h2h swings, snatches, cleans and clean & Press with a 1/3 mile run lap in between.

we shall see if I can keep up.

I really suck at this....

I just can't seem to find a way to do this religiously. Maybe now that I have a goal I will remember.

I officially signed up for a triathlon. It is a sprint: 500 meter swim, 10 mile bike and 3 mile run. I start the swimming in the morning.

I have done this for 2 reasons, one is just the why not? factor but the other is because at our gym we have this persona that because we traing heavy that we are not in good cardio shape. It doesn't matter what we do, if it is not an easily quantifiable measurment people don't believe it. I have run 5 miles in the gym and had a guy do 20 minutes on the elliptical and claim that because I do serious strength training he is in better cardio shape than me. SO, I hope to show those people that what I do gets you in great shape period.

Oh yeah, one more reason is to show people that the way we train gets you ready for almost anything. I am only slightly tweaking my week's workouts to include the swimming (one day a week) but the rest will stay the same. I am not getting a "triathlon coach", I am not cutting out my weight training or KB's and I want to show that I can do it with my style.

So, this morning for cardio I ran. The goal on Monday's is between 4 and 5 miles. Today I tried something different and it sucked the life out of me. I only ran 3.75 miles and then walked the rest to make 4 miles. Here is what I did: 5.0/5 minutes, 6.0/5 minutes, 5.1/5minutes, 5.9/5minutes. And so on and so forth. Unfortunately I got to 5.4 and thought I was going to faint so I stopped and walked. I will try it again next week until I can do the whole thing ending on 5.5 for 5 minutes.

Strength training:
Heavy DB chest press. worked up to 2 sets of 5 w/ 45 lb. DB then did 2 sets of 20 with 25 lb.
Alternated between reverse barbell rows w/ 90 lbs. and tricep p-downs w/ a purple band.
Super low, almost to the floor squats (I did 20, 30, and then at number 22 in the last set of 40 I thought I was going to throw up so I stopped to eat something)

That was it for today.

Couple of Days

Tuesday Night kettlebells:

We ended up doing a workout that is pretty simple just a lot of work. Basically you are just doing cleans, clean and press and snatches. But, you do alternating arms. So one rep right and alternating swing to switch hands then one rep left and back to the right arm. We ended up doing 15 an arm of each exercise, 20 and arm and 50 an arm. That totals 1040 reps or something but the bulk of them are swings. Jeanie was the only one who got all 1040 reps the rest of us got just at 1000. There were 6 of us: me, jeanie, pammie, tammie, robin and teowanna.

Wednesay Morning Cardio:

I did spinning with Larry and Martha which is always fun. I don't do quite the level of exertion that they do because of KB's the night before but I still sweat like a pig. The banter back and forth between the two of them is a scream and Martha picks excellent music.

Wednesday Strength Training:
Rosemary joined us which was fun. We did buffalo bar squats off a box. we hadn't done squat in a while and I hate them but did ok. I think we worked up to like 200 lbs. for 3 off a box, not bad.

then we did deadlift/squat/good morning things with our new Monster Multi Strap, don't know how much weight but it wasn't that heavy.

We finished with something that I don't remember. Oh well, Tonight is Kettlebells again but I don't know what we are going to do.