6/6 Thursday.
After hell on wheels from Monday through the first part of Wednesday, my week got a lot lighter and I was able to decompress a bit. Thursday was a really chill work day for me. After work we went surfing. It didn’t go great - wife got a flesh wound and I didn’t have much luck - but it was still fun for me and felt great.
Was realizing just how nimble and capable I am, as I got thrown off the board by a wave, basically wrapped around underneath it and came back up on top in one movement - requires a lot of flexibility, mobility, agility, whatever you want to call it - sprightliness? And while I feel like I’ve “gotten old”, I’m able to move around in a lot of ways that a lot of people can’t at any age. Happy about that.
6/7/2024 As I’d planned last week, no gym trip today. Instead:
-1 mile run, first 2/3 are down a steep hill and last 1/3 is a bit uphill, to a nice park
-Obstacle course training at said park
-1 mile run, first 1/3 a bit downhill and last 2/3 a steep uphill grind, and yet finished around 10:45 for the mile! Very pleased with that. Never dropped from a run to a walk despite the incline, which is serious.
Obstacle course training consisted of 3 rounds of:
-Hanging knee raise station
-Balance beam
-Stepups, 10 per side
-Climb up and over a tower
-“pirate climb” up an inclined pole
-Monkey bars
-5 dips
-5 pullups
Happy with that.
OK I’ll elaborate on the women-blocking-dumbbells situation from earlier this week.
One woman who could eat any of us for breakfast, massive, solid muscle, prances around in heels at the gym - I don’t know what she’s training for or what her deal is. I assume she’s training for a bikini competition but maybe it’s the world series of stripping. Maybe there’s not much difference. IDK. Anyway very intimidating.
Another cute little hottie in up your butt shorts. And another young woman just working out in a bra top. And all 3 of them are right in front of the heavy DBs, blocking the way, doing SLDLs or something awkward - no way I was going to squeeze between a couple of them, “Excuse me miss, let me grab these super heavy DBs real quick” lol.
Still would have grabbed them. You will probably find if you are polite they are actually nice. There are some pretty scary men and women at my gym but it turns out they are all pretty nice of you are friendly and you don’t interrupt their set.
Oh Simo i know that. I was trying to be a bit funny.
It was ny own hangup that i didn’t feel comfortable going in their area. Not their fault or problem at all.
6/8 Saturday
A fun day, went to a nice calm beach and paddleboarded with sea turtles for a bit. There was no wind so the paddle wasn’t strenuous at all.
I also brought the sled and dragged the 3yo in it, for 10 laps - and they were long laps. But I didn’t have much energy so it was more a heavy walk than sprints, like it usually is.
6/9 Sunday, a nice quiet walk in the wee hours, then a family walk 1 mile down the hill to the park, where we did some obstacle course training, then a mile back up carrying the 3yo. The walk back up was quite a haul, felt good.
Yard work too.
In all a great weekend. Plenty of activity but there wasn’t any pressure, and I needed it.
20 minutes EMOM:
60lb Dumbbell
-8 Goblet Squats
-4 C&P each side
-8 Goblet Squats
-4 Power Snatch each side
Repeat, repeat, repeat for 20 total rounds.
That’s 80 goblet squats and 80 total floor-to-ceiling with the 60lb DB.
Farmer’s carry, 130lb Dumbbells in each hand - 260lb total - walked out and back, barely made it back but proud of it. I think being realistic I’d get a lot more out of carrying a lot less, for longer or more rounds. But it does feel badass.
Non-training-related funny story.
I was out running errands for work, and a couple guys were back at our new office painting. I got a hankering for an energy drink, so I bought 3 thinking I’d share.
I should have drank mine on the road because…
Get back to the office, hand out the drinks, and… they had roped in a 3rd guy to help with painting. I don’t know him from Adam but it’s just a dick move to hand energy drinks to 2/3 of the workforce. So I gave him mine.
Damnit I really wanted that Bang!
Sore thighs today. Odd. I wonder if the tons of uphill walking contributed to it, because the goblet squats were comparable to what I did last week (20% more weight and 20% less volume).
Yeah, I’d say the downhill is more the culprit. That tends to be more like an eccentric load on the quads. I know it blows mine up at least, whereas uphill tends to be almost all concentric.
Yeah I was talking to my wife while climbing the hill, I was carrying the 35lb toddler, and saying I feel it in my hams. I’m all ham, to be honest.
She on the other hand felt the uphill more in her quads! We are built differently and it’s fascinating - like, she feels pushups in her delts (and has amazing delts) whereas I don’t (and have tiny little delts).
I agree though the downhill hits the quads, uphill hits the hams (for me) and my soreness is ham or ham-adjacent. So probably the trip back up with the toddler (wife carried him downhill). Haha.
6/14 Friday (Edit: just fixed this, why did I write “Monday”?)
ran one mile down the hill to the obstacle course Park
5 obstacles *
ran the mile back up the hill to my home and timed it at my new PR 10:05
I don’t know the exact elevation gain for this run but it is significant making 10 minutes a really good time.
Obstacles:
This is hard to explain. I ran up to the monkey bars from the side, did something like a muscle up to get on top of them, swung my legs up and over, and climbed across and dropped down the other side.
That was one obstacle and I did it four times. Then I failed several attempts at the 5th until I took about a one minute break and managed it.
Very specific Spartan race training, that.
6/15-16 weekend update
A lot of yard work, a lot of really fun low-stress paddleboarding, then a family trip to the obstacle course where I did a lot of climb-related training, then a 2 hour surfing session on Sunday. (A guy from work who actually knows how to surf came out to help me learn.) Was a great experience, definitely a physical effort too but doesn’t feel so much like work when you’re having fun.
The EMOM was:
-80lb dumbbell
-Odd minutes, pick it up and do 4 goblet squats
-Even minutes, 4 Clean-and-press, doing two on each side.
After the first couple rounds I didn’t think I could do the C&P but actually I got better with time. By the end it was much more smooth, I’d regained the groove for doing them heavy like this.
6/19 Wednesday
Yesterday was a cognitively demanding and emotionally draining day for me. I woke up this morning just DRAGGING. I have a big work thing today and I want to be peppy for it, not wiped out. So I still did my “normal” routine but turned it back down to where I was a couple weeks ago, rather than continuing to add volume/load.
It still sucked - I felt like I had a 10-lb knot in my stomach the first half of the session - but I got it done and am better for it.
-10 minutes stairmaster, going 65 spm instead of 70
-20 minutes EMOM: 3 two-pump burpees and 3 pullups
-1 mile treadmill run (9:27).
Also managed a single set each of bis, tris, and delts just to feel better about myself lol.
