I really like Anthony. He’s the morning trainer at The Cave. I am getting to know the “gang” that comes in in the mornings – I don’t think they know my name particularly, but they know “who I am.”
Today in the warmup we had to do a hang from the rope for 30 seconds as part of a 3x thing – the idea being that you had to get your feet right. It’s pretty much like pole dancing – or what we did in the Marines. You have to ‘wrap” your one leg around, then put your other foot under that foot, so you are “standing on” your feet, crossed. (In other words, you are standing, if you wrapped the rope from your left hip inside your left knee and then under your left foot, with your left foot pointing right, and you jump up with your hands, and then put your right foot under your left, but with your right foot pointing left, so you are now standing with your left foot on your right foot, which locks the rope in between them.
There were other things in the warm-up too, but I forget what they were. I had looked online, and it seems like on Wednesdays are more “lifting” than “running” days – so I wore my new red Chuck Taylors’ ;-) Indeed – we had to do a 500m row for the warmup, but then just pullups, pushups, squats, etc.
I feel that my squat is getting better and better. Anthony told me to put my feet even more spread apart, and more with the toes pointed out. I seem more straight up than ever before, though I still have to hold onto the pole.
I am still doing the pushups on the parallel bar, though I saw a really cool thing today – one of the gals put a band around the pullup bar, then another band that she “figure-8’d” around her shoulders attached to that – and she did pushups using that to help her “up” (if that makes sense). It was genius. And you’re in the “real” pushup position doing it that way, versus “girls” or “on the knees” pushups which isn’t great for your knees and really isn’t the right position.
The workout today was:
21 Min AMRAP
12 DB Snatch each arm 50/35lb
12 Pull Up
21 Double Under
The dumbbell “snatch” is going from a deep squat with your arm straight down (should be on the floor between your feet, mine is not of course), then you stand up out of the squat “explosively” so that your hips are really the thing that “drive” your arm up over your head. So in other words, your arm is straight until your hips ‘pop’ and then you are bending it up and over your head.
I did it (ahem) with basically a hand weight – so it was maybe 1-2 lbs. (A soft weight.) My right shoulder is definitely sore, but not “hurt sore” more like “I could be hurt if you did this with any more weight at all” sore. Anthony ROCKS in keeping watch over that. I really like him a LOT. I think if I were to do personal training I’d want to do it with him. As H said last night, Bo is more the “stoic” type. H said he looked super bored by the whole thing. I said no, I thought that was just the whole “Marine-esque” look. I’m not sure if Bo was in the military, but he has “that look.”
I can’t do a double under, of course, so I had to do 105 single unders for the 21 double unders. Oy. I did the pull ups with 3 of the biggest plates stacked up under the tallest bar.
I wound up doing 5 rounds, and then how you count your “partial” round is you count the reps. So since I didn’t do the jump rope but I did the rest, I had 12 of the dumbbell snatches on each arm (total 24) plus the 12 pullups (sum total of 36). So the report for the board is 5 + 36. Learn something new every day!
H was super duper sore last night and today. He worked in the city today – I think he REALLY did it just to avoid the WOD :-)
I would like to go in tomorrow before we go to our anniversary/birthday thingie at the Mountain Home Inn, but there isn’t a Conditioning in the morning (except maybe at like 6:00 a.m. and I don’t even want to think about that). I want to work more with the whole “locking the feet on the rope” thing. I think that could be a VERY IMPORTANT POTENTIAL SKILL on TAR. That’s one of those things where you see it and think “Yeah, I can TOTALLY see having to do that.” Same basically with the pull-up – I can TOTALLY see how that “skill” could come in handy. That’s also why the Parkour stuff is attractive, because the idea of being able to jump “up and over” something (a la a fence) instead of “climbing” up and over it is very very attractive.
So that’s my writeup for today – as I mentioned, we’re going to be hiking mostly, so no Crossfit for Thursday and Friday – or the weekend. This is the 2nd to last “long run” on a Saturday – the marathon is coming up fast! I’m really not doing much of ANYTHING when it comes to training for that – but with a lot of the running we are doing for Crossfit, plus that training, etc. (and the fact I did 14 the other Saturday just to be sure I could – !) I still feel capable. Heck, I’m not going for speed. ;-)
Gotta get R back blogging and checking in!!!