What a day today was, seriously. Here in Sacramento the skies were clear and blue and it was warm and lovely. So, obviously, I spent all day indoors. Genius.
On the bright side, I spend some of that indoor time with the awesome SFF who ran me through the first of many “holy crap, summer is coming and you’re still kinda fat!” sessions (my words, not hers lol). I’m excited to say, I killed it and asked for more, and will have a “homework” session to post about on Thursday.
We kicked it off as usual with a nice run on the mill. I’ve been studying some videos by the very awesome Eric Orton (featured in Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run) to help with my stride. I’ve had issues properly allowing my heels to rise up, and a single video from Eric’s site completely altered my running style for the better (SFF said “You look so much smoother when you bring your knees up like that”). It still feels weird and odd, but good… in a weird an odd way. Except on the treadmill where it, for some reason, just plain does not work for me. I have no idea why that would be. I can run in my living room barefoot, on cement with my 4mm drop shoes or my Merrells, but I can’t for the life of me run with that style on the mill. So I just ran the way I’ve always run, for one mile.
So for the beach body project, SFF decided to mix in some higher weight strength work with cardio. For the first time in memory, she actually suggested I immediately start out chunking the first exercise in groups of 5 reps, to maintain proper form. It was super effective! It allowed me not only to have proper form for all 5 reps, but to push hard through them. But I’m getting ahead of myself…
The first movement was a combo move, a deadlift to an upright row with a barbell. I believe I was at 75lbs. The idea was to deadlift with proper form and then when upright, row the bar up to shoulder height. This was definitely an exercise where being tired would rob you of benefit, as completing the motion all the way to the top activated a ton of muscles in the delts, shoulders and triceps. 20 reps, in groups of 5.
The next motion was a 1 footed pushup, which is exactly like it sounds, a pushup with one foot up off the ground. You then switch feet and do another. 10 on each side for a total of 20.
We then did an inverted row by hanging off the barbell as it hung on the rack, basically like a horizontal pull-up. This was another one I chunked out in sets of 5 reps each to make sure I got the bar all the way to my chest each time. 20 total here.
The final strength exercise was a squat, with the bar across my shoulders. We did all 20 straight as my form was solid all the way through.
That was almost the end of round 1, but since we’d only hit the strength part, it was now time for cardio. Get your hands to the mat for 50 mountain climbers, and step on it. Boom, done.
We then went through 3 more rounds, the first 15 reps, then 10 and finally 5 of the same exercises, with 50 mountain climbers between each one. I ended up doing 20 push-ups on 2 of the rounds because the Panther can’t count. Ah well, bonus!
Done! Wait.. no, there’s time left! Gelato?
Not so much…
We want to make sure that if I manage to trim my body fat down to a level where the abs show, that there’s abs to show! So we did one of the exercises in the gym that still sketches me out. It is one where having a trainer there really helps, I would never do this by myself and neither should you!
Basically what you do is lay down on a weight bench and press up a weighted barbell (mine was still at 75lbs). Then you lift your feet up towards the ceiling, basically going up to as close to a candle position as you can, then lower carefully down, making sure to breath (I kept forgetting). The sketchyness, as you might imagine, comes from attempting to balance on the bench while in motion while holding 75lbs above your neck. Yipes. But boy, it is a hell of an amazing core workout. Just to make sure we got all the frosting out of the bowl, once I did 20 leg lifts, I hit 10 standard, normal run of the mill bench presses. That’s round one. We then did a round of 15, 10 and finally 5, with 10 bench presses between each round, done fast and hard to get the heart going a bit.
I normally hate to toot my own horn but I have to say that I felt like I killed it today. Usually when I finish a workout I am dripping sweat, can barely move and feel tired and ready for a nap. Today I was dripping with sweat and felt sore but super energized. I wanted to go run! I wanted to do kettle swings. I did none of those because I knew if I did that I’d probably hurt myself. Over training is a bad thing. So instead I went home and ate some good protein and fruits and veggies to get the muscles fixed back up. I’ll be back Thursday with a “homework” workout from SFF!
