[quote]big nurse wrote:
Dont half get some odd looks walking back up through the estate though–one time heard a little girl say "mummy whats that man doing with that wood’–no reply from mummy !!
[/quote]
She could have said you’re getting wood…
Do you do anything with the wood or is it just for exercise?
[quote]cavalier wrote:
Do you do anything with the wood or is it just for exercise?[/quote]
I cut and split it, some i then store in the gaps in our party partition garden wall to dry out–these will get used during the year for camps with my marine cadets. If i get the chance this year i will do some work on an outdoor cooking area.
The rest of it i will give to my friends who have a woodburner.
Todays workout got a bit delayed.
Nice long lie in after last nights training with the cadets and the inevitable wind-down. Then its the first night in the same bed (and same time ) as girlfriend ,so late start, cup of tea, looked outside (grey and damp) back to bed for a couple of hours…
GReat workout…
[quote]big nurse wrote:
[quote]cavalier wrote:
Do you do anything with the wood or is it just for exercise?[/quote]
I cut and split it, some i then store in the gaps in our party partition garden wall to dry out–these will get used during the year for camps with my marine cadets. If i get the chance this year i will do some work on an outdoor cooking area.
The rest of it i will give to my friends who have a woodburner.
[/quote]
Why don’t you get yourself a woodburner?. There’s nothing quite like a ‘free’ wood fire on a winter’s evening.
[quote]FarmerBrett wrote:
[quote]big nurse wrote:
[quote]cavalier wrote:
Do you do anything with the wood or is it just for exercise?[/quote]
I cut and split it, some i then store in the gaps in our party partition garden wall to dry out–these will get used during the year for camps with my marine cadets. If i get the chance this year i will do some work on an outdoor cooking area.
The rest of it i will give to my friends who have a woodburner.
[/quote]
Why don’t you get yourself a woodburner?. There’s nothing quite like a ‘free’ wood fire on a winter’s evening.[/quote]
We have thought about it, main problem is that the house is a very small terraced house and there is only 1 place where a woodburner even might be able to go–chimney/flue would also be a big problem if we had to run it up through the first floor.
I would very much like to have one but we need expert advice on this one.
It does seem a shame to have a free fuel source and not use it.
Today i managed to get some new ‘numbers’ as a friend of girlfriend turned up with her scales that can estimate body fat.
I was having a real struggle to make sense of the numbers i was getting from skinfold measurements which suggested that i was somewhere below 13% which i just didn’t believe.
Todays reading this morning after a rink and breakfast says body fat is 19.6 % and metabolic age ? is 38, visceral fat was 9%.
That i suspect is much nearer the mark which affirms my current thinking which is to concentrate on getting rid of fat while hanging on to what muscle i have–while my (gym) weights are still easing up nearly every week i don’t think that losing muscle is an obvious problem yet.
Could be wrong !!
Good, solid (for me) sessions today.
Am Run 3-4 miles ,woodland route @ moderate steady pace.
Pm , didn’t think i was going to go the gym but turned out that i had time before going on-shift.
So: Lower body split, just 3 exercises.
Squat-done as pyramid starting very light but mainly trying for depth with a maximum load of 70kg but increasing the overall workload.
Deadlift, again done as pyramid 5x5 sets based around 95kg central set.
Incline leg press increasing to a new working weight of 140kg which felt damn heavy but ok.
Then finished with 2 sets of :
Rower 500m sprint
Kettlebell (16kg) swings x 20
Clean and press with 20kg vipr x15
Kettlebell squat 20kg x 10
Then press-up sets 3 X 10.
And off to work !!.
Nice thing in gym today was working out next to a much bigger/stronger guy doing really solid sets on deadlift and squats, between us we all but ran out of weight when he was squatting and i was leg pressing !!.
Good looking workouts. Nice mix of weights and conditioning. I agree with Brett about how nice a wood fire is on a cold day.
[quote]ecogenx wrote:
Good looking workouts. Nice mix of weights and conditioning. I agree with Brett about how nice a wood fire is on a cold day.[/quote]
Good and sore now !!!.
Tonights workout so far–about 20 rounds of CPR…
Kind of late(ish) to the party but nice work. That’s a lot of conditioning with the kb. Congrats on the new weight on bench. It’s kind of fun when you get it by accident.
[quote]ouroboro_s wrote:
Kind of late(ish) to the party but nice work. That’s a lot of conditioning with the kb. Congrats on the new weight on bench. It’s kind of fun when you get it by accident.[/quote]
Thanks–but maybe spoke too soon with self congratulations, today i had the most appalling workout, no strength and no energy at all.
Result was nowhere evan near my usual working load.
Don’t really know what was wrong this morning except that my head was all over the place, rushed to dentist first thing and thought i was going to be late as i got stuck behind a low loader trying to get a big motor yacht through town–and then found that i was nearly an hour early–then had a rough time at the dentist (nice bloke but i just hate dentistry).
Got to the gym and found i had forgotten my trainers but felt cold/sweaty and out of sorts–drooling didn’t exactly help as well from the numb mouth.
Going home and getting under the duvet for a few hours instead and maybe head out with the ruck later.
Well that was a shocker of a day in the gym, spent the rest of the day (cold wet british summer day) on the couch drinking tea, trying to keep warm and doing lots of thinking.
Todays gym failure wasn’t the first and it’s looking like a pattern : come off nights ,have at least a days rest and then hit the gym with the plan of having a well rested workout, instead it was another zero energy, high gravity day and a rapidly curtailed workout.
So today i got on the site and posed a question about this problem ie : shift worker, tiredness ,stressful job, poor workout as a result (posted on chris thibs livespill as i thought that it might be a supplement problem–and it sounds from what thibs is saying that it is partially the problem i.e cortisol causing some of the problems.
However chris has now sent me down an entirely new route which came completely out of the blue i.e the neural charge workouts and a whole new thing to learn–no problem with that–just when i though i was beginning to get the exercise sorted and the knowledge coming together i find a whole new area i know nothing about.
So maybe one step back, a setback and once again a rethink just like my earlier transition from ‘cardio’ fitness to weights and weights to weights + conditioning+ diet + recovery…
This week is looking like a difficult week for training with all of what could be the ‘excuse’ elements in place : started very tired, had one crap workout, today had to run around like a mad thing with everything to do, then tomorrow i start on for 4 nights, one off and 3 on–nightmare shift pattern.
So today i was forced into either doing things different or not training at all, what i actually did was 2 shorter workouts instead of 1 long one so divided the session into :
Am lower body split , just 3 main exercises ie squats,deadlift, leg press. (new pb on leg press at 150kg for 5r)
Pm . conditioning : 3 rounds of “bastard” (rower, kb swings,clean/press/kb squats)
Wrappped around : going in for manual handling training (hilarious being officially limited to 10kg from floor just after having done a 100kg deadlift !!)
Pm later–teaching first aid at cadet unit.
I can see why 2 shorter sessions might be the way to go and how to maybe just have a short intense session when time is short–especially on conditioning, less so with weights.
During the week i need to start planning an actual neural charge workout (after q/a with thibs) and start learning the moves–anyone have any actual experience and/or thoughts on Nc work ??
Experimenting with shorter split sessions is looking good so far.
Today would have been an upper body split + around 20 minutes running and maybe some body weight exercise all in one long session.
Instead i just did the upper body split , and successfully with my bench first going up to a new high of 45 kg–and then as an experiement to 47.5 for 3r–but couldn’t bring myself to lower the bar at 50 i.e loaded it and pushed off the pins but it felt outside my range of control.
Upright barbell row went up as well to 60kg in the middle of a pyramid.
finished with just 10 minutes (fast) running maxing out at 10mph (fast for me !!) and 1.40 miles in the 10 minutes.
Aim is to hit the gym this evening on the way to work for some body weight exercise and conditioning–i don’t have the clear plan yet but maybe something like. Rounds of :
Press-ups
Pull ups.
Rower.
Weighted step ups.
Kb squats.
See you all later…
Oh and weighed in at a nice 83.5 kg this morning, definitely smaller skin (fat) folds this week.
Just a thought about your “rucking” - if your rucksack is maxed out you could try building yourself a rough-and-ready yoke. Just grab a decently long and heavy branch and suspend some more wood from that and carry it across your shoulders like a squat bar. Alternatively, try bear-hugging some pieces or carrying them in your hands farmers-walk style.
I live by the beach and try to do similar extra work, but with rocks - get some odd looks from those walking their dogs! Best thing to do is to smile and say “Good morning” in a friendly way! All the best and enjoy your training - you seem to be well into the way of it now!
OOthomi–thanks ,what i most often do is once i have got the rucksack up onto my back i also grab a piece or two to carry in my arms as well, what i may do now is change my route or distance to up the overall workload or just do more trips–my mate is going to get a good load of hard won firewood this winter all nicely cut and split !!.
My girlfriend met one of our neighbours last night who was asking about her ‘husband’ carrying loads of wood home and curious about it.
Maybe you could fashion a ‘Ray Mears’ style sled that you could pull along the ground behind you. You’d get loads on that.
These whole ‘manual handling’ guidelines have gotten ridiculous. An old farmer friend of mine was telling me how they used to carry huge sacks of grain weighing 2 cwt (224 lbs). They used to stand under a trailer and to other people would lower them onto their backs and they loaded and unloaded those all day.
Now we have just seen animal feed sacks lowered from 25kg to 20kg to come into line with European guidelines.
No wonder we are all weak and fat these days.
[quote]FarmerBrett wrote:
Maybe you could fashion a ‘Ray Mears’ style sled that you could pull along the ground behind you. You’d get loads on that.
These whole ‘manual handling’ guidelines have gotten ridiculous. An old farmer friend of mine was telling me how they used to carry huge sacks of grain weighing 2 cwt (224 lbs). They used to stand under a trailer and to other people would lower them onto their backs and they loaded and unloaded those all day.
Now we have just seen animal feed sacks lowered from 25kg to 20kg to come into line with European guidelines.
No wonder we are all weak and fat these days.[/quote]
By a bizzarre coincidence i am also a bushcraft instructor and had thought about either a sled or some sort of travois.
I think that there is some advantage in carrying the load in that it is a very ‘functional’ exercise when i have to carry a big load for real on the hill.
Manual handling trainer nearly had a hissy fit when i replied ‘100kg’ to the question " how much can you lift from the floor"–but seriously i had just come from the gym and just done a 100kg deadlift–honestly some people have no sense of humour !!.
When i was at my fittest ,working in a boatyard years ago we used to unload a lorry load of gas cylinders–including those really big ones–never neede to go to the gym with all the heavy work we actually did + all the climbing.
Sleds though. :
There were some plastic sleds on sale at our local climbing shop–thought about adapting one for sled dragging although i dont think one would last very long on the forest trails, looks ok for dragging around a grass field.
For ‘work’ days.
Watching out for a nice big tire to go and beat the living daylights out of with a maul hammer, equaly might buy a longer axe and just go and chop some logs up.