Defiance workout in honor of those lost and injured in Boston

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past day, you know about the horrible act of cowardice in Boston that took the lives of 3 people and injured 180 others. While the world recovers, a lot of people ask themselves what they can do.

I decided to dedicate my workout on Tuesday to the victims of that tragedy in defiance of the cowardly twats who perpetrated that act upon the innocent. What will that do? Nothing outside of myself, I did it simply to do it. I went out, I went about my routine as normal, because if we let the terrorists change our behavior, we are letting them win. As it happens, it also brought some clarity in my own mind about the scope and scale of what happened.

So I texted SFF and told her the general idea. 3 rounds for the 3 people lost, 180 reps per round for those injured. I broke it into 4 movements of 45 reps each.

Unfortunately SFF misunderstood me and though I would be doing 45 SECONDS of each movement, and picked exercises that were intense enough for that. Even after I explained that, no, it would be 45 REPS she decided, hey why not, let’s make a statement here.

So the workout was simple, but rough. I managed to actually run a mile on the mill for warmup and then jumped in.

The first movement was an elbow plank on an upside-down bosu with feet in the TRX straps, with a crunch bringing the knees to the chest. 5 of these are rough. 10 make you wanna throw up. I had 45 to do, and I did them.

The next movement was also on the upside down bosu, and was a pushup with a knee-up cross on the up motion. Again, 45 of them is ridiculous. But they got done.

We then moved to the floor, holding a 25lb plate above my face, feet straight up, and then pulsing/pushing the plate to the ceiling. This was actually somewhat doable at this rep count but definitely got harder the longer you took to do it. 45 of the suckers.

The final movement kept me right in the same position, plate at arms length over my face, but was a leg lift to candle, meaning I would come up on my shoulders and then lower the feet (legs straight) to 1 inch above the ground. 45 times.

Then I did them all again.

For the last round we switched it up, and instead did 45 seconds of each movement non-stop (or tried to go non-stop anyhow). This actually ended up being significantly tougher than chunking out the reps to 45. There was no rest and all the muscles were basically full of lactic acid by then. 3 minutes is all it was, but it was tougher than you might think.

In the middle of the second round it hit me that every rep was a person whose life was forever changed, who might have lost a leg or an arm or been otherwise forever maimed. It was a LOT of reps. 180 people is tough to really consider as words, but as I struggled to do just one more push-up and realized I wasn’t even half done counting, it brought some of the tragedy into clearer focus in my head.

If you are looking to help, the American Red Cross has been a major help in Boston. They are not currently seeking donations of either Blood or funds specifically for this tragedy, but they are always one of the first on scene of any disaster and you can help them by donating here. You can also donate to OneFundBoston and The Boston Children’s Hospital. Aside from those things, the best thing we can do is to keep the terrorists from changing the way we live our lives. If we live in fear, they win. Let’s not let them win.

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