Fitness Tuesday

Thursday

Our warmup was with partners.  One person rowed 200 m while the other was in a low squat and then we switched.  The next round was 200 m row/plank hold and then 200 m row/sit ups.

We did 4 sets of 8 cleans at a light weight working on technique.  A clean is taking the bar from the floor to your chin.

We worked on pistols, which are one legged squats.

image Sweatlikeapig.com

I don’t look like that doing it.  I certainly don’t smile like that.  We started with drills working on getting up with one leg.  I can do that but I don’t have the strength to lower myself down deep.  I was getting better though.

The workout was with kettlebells.  It was 3 rounds on each arm of:

• 5 high pulls – Kettlebell in one hand in front of you at thigh height and pull it up until your hand is at your cheek.
• 5 snatches – Take the kettlebell in one hand at your thigh and then push it overhead
• 5 presses – Kettlebell from shoulder to overhead
• 5 squats
• 5 swings – Kettlebell in one hand in front of you.  Keep your arm straight and swing it up to eye level.

I used a 25 lb kettlebell (the presses were too hard for me to do 35 lbs) and finished in 6:30.

Friday

I went swimming for the first time in forever.  Actually it was 2 weeks but it felt like forever.  I was the only person there so the lifeguard was staring at me to keep from falling asleep.  Felt slightly awkward after a while.  I started to feel like maybe I should fake drowning just to be polite and give her something to do.

I did a 250 m warm up of breaststroke and then alternated breast and back strokes for 500 m.  Usually I use backstroke as a rest stroke but instead I worked on really reaching back and rotating my torso to get more power.  That made it more of a workout.

Tuesday

We warmed up with stretches and 3 rounds of 10 squats, 10 pushups, and 10 situps.

We spent 10 minutes working on kipping.  The idea is that you get momentum to make yourself momentarily weightless to make pullups easier.  I can’t do it so again I don’t look anything like this picture.

I flail about like a sickly fish on the end of a line and think about how much my hands hurt.

The workout was 3 rounds of:

• 30 squat cleans – bar from floor to chin while squatting.  I did 55 lbs.
• 30 pull ups – I used 3(!) bands and sort of kind of did some pull ups.
• 30 double unders – Double unders are when you are jumping rope and you twirl the rope under you twice every time you jump.  I can only do this if I am very tired.  Don’t ask me why.  I did several double unders today.  We were supposed to do 60 regular jumps if we didn’t do double unders.

We had a 20 minute limit and I did 2 full rounds and about 20 more squat cleans.  My legs were shaking so much from the squats that when I had my foot in the bands for the pull ups I could see the bands vibrating.  That was a hard one!