Today was quite an interesting workout. As you probably know I work out at Ultimate Fitness in midtown, Sacramento. That gym’s full name is Urijah Faber’s Ultimate Fitness, as in The California Kid, our own home grown MMA fighter champion type guy. As it so happened as I walked in today ready to be tortured by SFF, Mr. Faber himself was on one of the treadmills hauling ass. The Sac Fitness Fairy Rosanna commanded me to go run a mile on the mill and then do 30 on/30 off sprints “as fast as you can”. What the Fairy wants, the Fairy gets.
So I hop on the end mill and crank it up. Immediately I realize there’s something up with the mill. Above “4” it isn’t getting much faster. I crank it to 6. Then 7. Then, about 1/2 a mile in the sucker gives up the ghost and I unceremoniously trip over myself and catch the rails.
“Whoa, did that thing just give out” Mr. Faber says, still running at an ungodly fast pace a few mills down.
“Yeah. I think I killed it.” I say, and then realized I was saying it to the owner of the gym. ACK! Luckily Urijah is a good sport and laughed and I got on the mill next to his and finished my run, then started on the uphill sprints. 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off I went at a speed that made my hips feel like they were going to fall off. After a few repeats I look over at Uriah’s mill and realize his “normal” speed was the speed I was sprinting at. Because, well, he’s a beast. Keep in mind that he’d been going at this rate since well before I started my run, and finished about when I got done with sprints. I aspire to get to that level of fitness someday.
Once I finally finished my last repeat I stumbled over to SFF and saw she was assembling some weights for me. My eyebrow rose roof-ward as I saw the 20lb kettle and a couple 20lb dumbells. “Surely that’s too light” I thought to myself. She saw my odd stare and said “Don’t worry, if this is too heavy, we’ll switch to 15lb ones”.
It was then that I knew she had something in store for me that I would not like. There is nothing gentle or kind about SFF’s workouts. Ever. So I asked her, does this workout have a name? She smiled.
“Hell” she said.
Oh good.
As it turned out, “Hell” is a reverse progression with a repeater. The repeater in this case was kettle bell swings.
The way the workout went was like this:
First 50 kettle bell swings. Yeah, 50. SFF felt I was still carrying a bit too much of Thanksgiving around so she wanted this to have more of a cardio aspect than usual. The kettle bells were the repeater, and provided the number for the next exercise.
Next we did push-taps. Basically a push up but at the top you bring one hand up to the opposing shoulder. Each tap is one. 50 of those.
Then 45 bell swings.
Then 45 full sit ups.
Then 40 bell swings.
Then 40 “Arnolds” which is a military style dumbbell press where you begin at what would be the top of a double curl, with your wrists facing you. As you press up you twist the dumbbells.
At this point you go back to the beginning. So 35 bell swings, then 35 push-taps, then 30 bell swings and 30 situps, then 25 bell swings and 25 Arnolds. So on and so forth until you get down to 5.
At the beginning of this workout I LIKED bell swings. I thought they were pretty fun, and fairly easy. I usually did them with a 25 or 30lb kettle bell After several hundred of the damn things, I’m not nearly as fond of them as I was before.
On the other hand, it could have been worst. Much worse. Burpee worse.
In conclusion, a great workout. And sorry about the mill Urijah, and good luck in your fight!
