Training Week of 11-20: Travel and Thanksgiving Edition
11-20: Core de Force Sculpt. Sort of. The internet cut out near the end, so I improvised about 5min of working out and cut it a bit short (this one is also close to 40min, so I felt okay about that). Format is nine rounds, 3min rounds. Each round is three moves: 1min of a somewhat easier move (think that ginga hop lunge move they do, roundhouse kicks, a move where you lie on the floor, roll back with your legs in a triangle, and as you come up you pop up on one knee), 45sec of something harder (ground to fighter which is basically a burpee with push-up but without the jump, alligator push-ups where you are in a spider push-up position, do three push-ups and then jump to switch legs), and 35sec of something quite hard (monkey jumps which are sort of like gorilla walks, a move where you do a push-up and then raise opposite arm and leg while in plank). Actually, which move is which length is a bit arbitrary. I find firefly push-ups (crouch in a sort of child's pose position with your knees hovering above the ground, then push forward with one leg coming to your elbow and do a push-up sort of with that leg raised, go back to the start position all while staying low, alternating legs) than that monkey roll move. Oh, and half way through you repeat the rounds; I forget what you do for the final round and didn't make it to it.
11-21: Three Week Yoga Retreat: Progression Week Core. Who have I become? I used to loathe yoga. I'm going to credit Ted here; it's got to be Ted. Anyway, this felt great. Such a yummy set of shoulder, hamstring, and hip stretches. My poor body is so stiff from all this travel. No warriors or anything, and fairly light on the chaturunga, but lots of dolphin pose, splits in downward dog, and planks (side and regular). I think some of the secret for me is that yoga has to really hit a sweet spot of not feeling too easy or too difficult, since I do it in a recovery way. Too hard still doesn't feel like a good workout but makes it less enjoyable, too easy and it's just dull. Ted is always perfect, though.
11-22: Rest/long day of travel back from the Netherlands.
11-23: 21 Day Fix Extreme: Upper Fix Extreme. Three rounds, two times through each round, four moves each round focused on two muscle groups. First you hit back and chest with pushups, a lat pull-down with a band, chest flies, and bent over wide rows. Next is shoulders and abs with dolphin to plank, a sort of Russian twist with a leg lift, shoulder presses, and a lateral straight arm move with the band. You finish with bis and tris, doing tricep dips and kickbacks, and then hammer curls and concentration curls (in a low sumo squat, which is sad). Each move is a minute, and most switch after 30sec to lighter weights or a static hold. This is a pretty good one, and it felt good to finally be able to lift again.
11-24: Open gym. Was a bit of a struggle since we've been off aerial for so long, but we did manage to run a solid chunk of the series, do a bunch of the front-roll to hanging from feet move, some scorpion roll to shoulder stand, head hangs, mount drills, and I even psyched myself up enough for a stacked gazelle.
11-25: Abracadabra from Double Time and 20min of TRX moves. We recently acquired a home version of TRX, so we decided to play with it a bit. First we did a quick ab workout which is mostly a mix of crunches where you pass back and forth a med ball (sometimes more oblique focused, sometimes more straight forward), and then low plank, banana roll, and a sort of peddling move. It's pretty fun, albeit on the easier side. For the TRX part, we set a timer for 20min, and took turns doing some sort of non-TRX move (floor sprints, band roll-ups with a row, pretzel for glutes, crunches, med ball planks, etc.) while the other person did 15 or so reps with the TRX. We did rows, curls, tricep extensions, chest presses, chest flies to lateral raise overhead, and pistol squats.
11-25: Jericho's Half and Half Harder (BOD exclusive). This is approximately 20min of HIIT followed by approximately 20min of yoga; we both more felt like yoga but felt like we should do cardio/HIIT, so it seemed like a good compromise. The HIIT portion is three rounds, four moves each round. 45sec on, 15sec off, and then 1min between rounds. The moves are the same for each round: four jump lunges followed by eight high-knee jogs, four what Shaun T would call ski abs followed by eight mountain climbers/floor sprints, long jump/low shuffle back/burpee, and lateral bear crawls. Whew. The yoga piece started with a sort of unusual sun salutation sequence, followed by some time with Warrior 2/Reverse Warrior/Triangle/Reverse Triangle, and then a balance sequence where I can do the one where you stand on one leg while holding the other out to the side by grasping the toe, but then suck severely at crow. Depressingly enough, no shavasana at the end. All in all, definitely a solid workout and what we were looking for, but Jericho is no Ted.
