Thursday

Figured I might as well give my legs and arms a break this week, so I decided to do screwy stuff today.

Got to the gym around the normal time, something like 1:45ish.

Usual 5:00 warm up on the rower with 10/10 resistance, then 10:00 of stretching and foam rolling.

First:

5 Rounds:

Bike hard for 5:00, with difficult resistance

20 Box Jumps

Going straight from biking, which is 100% legs, to box jumps, was tough.  Especially a bunch of box jumps.  Did all 5 sets of box jumps unbroken though.  Happy about that.

Second:

Bunch of ab stuff.  Crunches, leg levers, more crunches, more leg levers, scissors, and side bends.

Third:

Got on the rower and did 2,000m for time.  Ugh.  This was the longest I've ever rowed nonstop.  I didn't know something could be boring and agonizing at the same time.  It was terrible.  Tried to keep at or under 2:00/500m.  It just dragged on for so long haha.  Finished in 7:50.

Friday

Holy crap my legs are sore.  Like, having trouble standing, sitting, moving anywhere.  Quads, hamstrings, and glutes feel like someone took a baseball bat to them.

Got to the gym at the usual time and met up with Padawan Josh.

5:00 rowing warm up on 10/10 resistance, followed by 10:00 of stretching and foam rolling.  The foam rolling helped for a little bit, but legs still hurt a ton.

First:
SealFit 130516
2 Rounds, for time:
30-20-10 reps:
8ct Body Builders
4ct Flutter kicks
2ct Mountain Climbers

First time for this wod.  For this workout, you start with 30 reps of each exercise, then 20 reps of each, then 10 reps of each.  And then you repeat that for a 2nd round.  It totals 120 reps of each, although doing 4ct for flutter kicks means that you're actually doing 240 reps.  Some random dude started talking to Josh before we started and then asked to do the workout with us.  He made it through the first round before he quit.  Josh and I pushed through with me finishing a few minutes before him in 18:56.

Second:
Abs with Josh.  Did a set of anchored sit ups to failure immediately followed by a set of mountain climbers to failure.  Then scissors, leg levers, and reverse crunches.

Went to grab a quick drink from my protein shake and saw a former coworker and friend of mine in the locker room.  Hadn't seen him in a long time.  He's a former college football player who got into powerlifting before going into law enforcement.  He mentioned that he had an injury with his sciatic nerve that has kept him from doing heavy lifts lately.  10 minutes later I see him repping 495lbs on flat bench press.  Yikes.

Third:
Wanted to do some flat DB bench press.  Started with 75lbs, then 85, 95, then dropped back down to 75.  Felt decent but even with the brace my left elbow started to hurt a little towards the end.

Fourth:
Hobbled upstairs as my legs were still hurting.  Got on the stationary bike for 20min, increasing the resistance every 5min.  Had to use both hands on the railing to walk down the stairs afterwards.

Thursday

Hamstrings were both a bit sore.  Not sure if it was from my ruck march yesterday or from the back extensions from Tuesday.  Elbow felt improved.  Left shin was still bothering me.

Got to the gym around 2.

5:00 rowing warm up on 10/10 resistance followed by 10:00 of stretching and foam rolling.

First:
SealFit 130702
For time:
500 Squats
*Every minute on the minute, perform 5 burpees

First time trying this one and I knew it would be rough.  That many squats in one workout is awful.  Started off with 40 in the first minute, then 5 burpees, then 20ish, another 5 burpees, then 15, another 5 burpees, then pretty much bounced back and forth between 15 and 10 for the rest.  It was miserable and took forever.  5 burpees was taking me 15-20 seconds, so I'd have 45-50 seconds to do as many squats as I could before my legs gave out and I'd have to do more burpees.  Not enjoyable.  Finished in 28:46 and promptly fell over.  Legs are going to hurt for several days, guaranteed.

Second:
Took a drink from my protein shake and then painfully climbed the stairs to the cardio deck and got on a stationary bike for 5:00.  Thought maybe doing something like that would help flush my legs.  Almost fell down the stairs afterwards.

Third:
Abs.  Felt nice to lay on the ground, but ab stuff was difficult to get through.  Did flutter kicks, scissors, side bends, and leg levers.

Fourth:
Crossfit 130731
Shoulder Press
5 sets of 5 reps

First time for this workout.  I start off low on these workouts and build up, so I end up doing more than 5 sets usually.  Started with 35lbs DBs, then 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, and then tried 65.  Got one rep and failed.  So my "score" for this workout looks like this:  45,50,55,60,65 (1F).  Next time I do this workout, I'll know to start at least at 45, maybe 50, and go up from there.

Fifth:
Slowly climbed back upstairs and got back on the stationary bike for 20min.  Legs didn't really mind the pedaling, but my booty did not enjoy sitting on that hard bike seat.

Tuesday

Finished up my "returning from a long trip" chores in the morning and tried to come up with a quick workout schedule for the week that would take it easy on my hurt left shin and left elbow.

As I getting my schedule worked out, I realized I should look up my elbow injury and see if there is any rehab for it.  Hard to pinpoint whether its "tennis elbow" versus "golf elbow" but its definitely one of those.  I found some stretches for tennis elbow and did those.  Then noticed that there were athletic braces for tennis elbow, but they just looked like elastic straps that went around the forearm, just below the elbow.  I have a tough elastic wrist brace so I tried wearing it for the day's workouts to see how it went.

Got to the gym at the usual 2ish.  Surprisingly saw Padawan Jodie.  Haven't seen him all summer since he was taking summer classes and working for his dad.  Chatted for a bit.  He's getting back in the gym but having to take it easy due to a pretty rough wrist injury.

5:00 rowing warm up, but with the resistance on 10/10.  10:00 of stretching afterwards.

First:
Crossfit 081012
7 Rounds, for time:
21 x 75lbs Shoulder Press
21 Back Extensions

First time for this wod.  Figured it would be a rough one, and it was.  The back extensions were easy, I did all of those unbroken.  Not so much on the shoulder press.  I can shoulder press 75lbs easy, but doing it 147 times is not easy.  First set unbroken, everything after that was in groups of 4-6.  Finished in 28:31.

Second:
Well, I wanted to do abs, then a SealFit wod, and then biking, but my friend Brian texted me asking if I wanted to go see a super matinee movie that afternoon.  Unfortunately it was in roughly 50min.  Quickly ran upstairs and pedaled hard on a stationary bike for about 8min, then got my stuff from the locker and headed home.

Elbow felt good today.  Hard to tell if it was the stretches or the brace but either way, no pain afterwards.  When I got back into my car to drive home, I immediately took the strap off and put an ice pack directly on the elbow.  No problems the rest of the day so I'm going to keep doing the stretches, using the brace, and icing it after workouts and see what happens.

Tuesday

Left shin is still sore.  And pretty much every muscle below my waist is sore from the workouts yesterday.

Went to the gym at the usual time.  Padawan Josh got there at the same time so he did all of the day's workouts with me.

5:00 rowing warm up and 10:00 stretching.

First:

SealFit 120821

For completion, max effort:

Tabata Mountain Climbers

Rest 1min

Tabata Dips

Rest 1min

Tabata Sit ups

Rest 1min

Tabata Burpees

This wod is "for completion," meaning there isn't a score or anything to record, you just put in max effort and finish.  Tabata is a form of high intensity interval training (HIIT) where you perform the same exercise for 8 rounds of 20sec of work followed by 10sec of recovery.  It sounds easy, and for the first couple rounds, it is.  Not so much after that.  The recovery time is really only good enough for a couple quick breathes before having to start the next round of work.  Good workout though.  Going straight from mountain climbers to dips was rough.  I think I averaged around 20 x 2 count mountain climbers per set, maybe 10 dips per set, 20 sit ups per set, and 6 burpees per set.

Second:

Shoulders.  Started off with military press, which I could feel was more difficult than usual due to shoulder fatigue from mountain climbers, dips, and burpees.  Then did a recovery set of balance drills.  Then moved to shoulder shrugs.  Then moved to an open barbell and did a Crossfit strength wod, 090818.  7 rounds of 1 rep for shoulder push press.  Push press is kind of like military press, except you use your legs to help kip the weight up.  I started off with 95lbs total, then 105, 115, 125, 135, 145 and finally 155.  Couldn't get 155 up though.  Did another round of balance drills, then did the shoulder range of motion workout.

Third:
Another biking workout from Runner's World.  This was 3 rounds of biking 10min at a comfortably hard resistance with a 10min rest in between.  During the 10min of biking, every 2min get off the seat and pedal hard for 10sec.  Decent biking workout.  Got me breathing a little hard.  Legs were toasted, holy cow.  In the 10min rest in between rounds, I went downstairs and did a max rep set of pull ups followed by a max rep set of push ups.  Due to having to wait on the bar, by the time I finished the push ups, I only had a couple minutes remaining.  In the 30min total of biking, I did 8.41mi.

Monday

Hands are good.  Left shin is not so good.  Decided I'm going to stay away from running for a bit to let it heal up.  Hopefully its just shin splints.  Those usually take a couple weeks to heal.  I'll try to plan my workouts for this week and the following week (when I'll be visiting my fam in Virginia) to stay away from running.

Went to the gym at the usual time.  Seemed a little busier than usual which was weird.  High schools and colleges start this week so I would have thought there would be less people.

Usual 5:00 rowing warm up and 10:00 stretching.

First:
CF 090909
4 Rounds, for time:
100ft Walking Lunge steps carrying 2 x 30lbs DBs
30 x 24in Box Jumps
20 Pull ups with 1x30lbs DB

This was a tough leg workout.  100ft is about 30m, and I've found that one walking lunge step for me equals 1m.  So I just did 15 walking lunges down, turned around, 15 walking lunges back.  Following that up with 30 box jumps was very tough.  The first few would feel like I weighed 300lbs, just no pop or burst to the jump.  After that the legs would loosen up a bit.  The rest would be tough but I wouldn't feel like I was going to face plant after not getting high enough.  I did the first set of pull ups unbroken.  The rest after that I would do 7-10, then cut the remaining in half.  This was a bit of a grip strength workout as well, from holding the two 30lbs DBs during the walking lunges to holding onto the bar during weighted pull ups.  First time for this wod, finished in 28:27.

Second:
Abs!  Or "core" as all the cool kids call it these days.  Just did a mix of random stuff.  Mountain climbers, flutter kicks, scissors, leg levers, reverse crunches, unanchored sit ups, flutter kicks and scissors with a 45lbs plate on my chest, and then finished with a max rep set of anchored sit ups in 2:00.  Even after all the previous core stuff I still managed 108 which is 26 more than the max for my age group on the Army PFT.

Third:
Wanted to do some incline DB bench press work.  Haven't done incline bench press in a loooong time, probably 7-8 months at least.  Didn't know how it would go so I started off low and went up.  Started with 50lbs DBs, and did 12 but could have done more.  Then upped it to 60 and did 12 again, then 70 for 10, then 80 for 6, and finally 90 for 5.  I tried 100s and couldn't get them off my chest haha.  Ah well.  This was much better than what I used to do back when I only did regular weightlifting.  I think I maxed out at 70-80lbs for only 3-5 reps.  So I guess the HIIT crap I've been doing works?

Fourth:
Bike.  Bleh.  Wish I could run but I need to lay off it for a little while so my shin can heal.  Got onto one of the stationary bikes and did a workout I found in a video for "runners looking for indoor cross training workouts."  Started off with 4 x 1min intervals with a low resistance but keeping a very high RPM.  After each would be a 2:00 recovery at an easy pace.  That was followed up by a 5:00 recovery spin.  Then I did 10 intervals of 30sec at a very high resistance for max effort, with 30sec recovery at an easy resistance.  Legs were pretty burnt up at the end of all this.  Totaled about 6.58 miles.