Roly poly and return of the snatch

So Tuesday has arrived and unfortunately I am still recovering from my race on Sunday. Which meant that my stalwart trainer The Sac Fitness Fairy took it easy on me.

Yeah right.

I mentioned my quads and hip flexors were shot from heartbreak hill (they are). So of course, every single exercise involved those. SUPER!

Obviously we started, as always, with the mile warmup on the treadmill and 10 minutes of 45 on15 rest intervals.

Then the fun began. SFF calls these “progressives”. Essentially you do 20 reps of an exercise. Then you go 20 of that same exercise, plus 20 of the next. And so on, adding an additional exercise each time.

The first exercise was called something like “The Prisoner Get-up” or something. I was in shock and not paying attention after watching SFF show me how it was done. You begin laid out on your back, arms up, legs straight. You do a situp and tuck your feet under your butt (I have to cross them) and then stand up. Once up, uncross your feet if they are crossed and do a tuck jump. Then lower back down to your back. That’s a rep. 20 of those.  Oh, and then 20 more.

Now that your legs are blown to kingdom come, lets work them a bit more and add arms. We next did a 20 rep per side single arm snatch, which included a little bit of a squat.  So I guess technically this was a 40 rep series but SFF wants more definition in my shoulders so we wrecked them a bit more than normal. Whatever you say captain!

So now we rinse/repeat the get-up, and throw another 20/20 per side snatch series and then moved on to split burpies. Unfortunately I had a nasty painful blister on my right toe, so we made a bargain. I did one set one-legged (NOT EASY) and all the rest would be up n down pushups (where you drop to your forearms between each pushup). But the first set was one legged burpies. I highly recommend these if you enjoy pain and discomfort.

Once again with the get-ups, then the snatches (giggity) then the up n down pushups and our final exercise, which was a side plank knee up. 20 per side. Essentially you get in a straight arm side plank and pull your free knee up to your chest while driving the other arm down. “But… how do you balance an already difficult to balance move while essentially kneeing yourself in the chin?” You don’t. You fall down and look like an idiot, like I did about 10 times doing this one. The trick is two-fold. First off, abs abs abs. Strong, tight abs and obliques make you a plank, easier to balance. Try balancing a rubber chicken some time. The other trick is to keep a bit of tension on the grounded foot, almost leaning slightly forward. This helps you recover your balance by having something to push off of.

An excellent workout even if I was toasted from the Down & Dirty. And speaking of the D&D, thank you Scott for your kind reply and answer about the burger debacle on Sunday. He acknowledged the horrible nature of them and explained what had happened and vowed that he would not allow anything other than the highest quality next year. Lessons were learned. I will take his word on it and see how they do a year from last Sunday. The overall quality of every other facet of the event was so high that I will trust Scott to get it right next year. And if not, INTO THE MUD PIT WITH YOU SIR! 🙂

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