Alright, I might have "borrowed" the title of this post from an author (unfortunately he is deceased, because I loved his work.)
So I've been working on getting a new website up for work, and most of my work is done. Now I have to wait for everyone to review it so we can take the site live. This will be exciting, as my children, and in-laws are some of the models for our photography. (I know my in-laws are really excited about this.)
As an aside, because of the photo shoot for the website my oldest daughter has now appeared in some of our print publications as well, and let me tell you how proud she is of that.
Anyway, since most of my work is done, and I'm stuck doing the little busy work things I've put off, it has been a long Tuesday, and it is only lunch time.
Since there isn't much new going on, I thought I'd tell you about the gym last night. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are cardio nights. When I think cardio, I think running or biking. Our sadistic trainer, Jason Muir, has different ideas.
We started off doing Bosu Touch and Reaches. You stood on the Bosu's platform, and with dumbbells in hand, reached down to the platform, and then pressed up above your head. These suck. Mainly because you are standing on half a ball. I had a much easier time getting on and balancing than my lovely wife (sorry Mel it's true), thanks to my years of skateboarding. Getting on a Bosu feels like getting ready to drop in on a half-pipe. You put your foot on one side, take a big breath to gather your courage, then throw the other foot on, and put your weight down.
We then moved on to doing push ups with your hands on medicine balls. This wasn't the worst, it was just a really deep push up.
After that we moved onto curls, upright rows, and triceps kick backs. These were all done at a light weight as fast as we could do them. Instead of dumbbells we used the exercise bands.
Then pikes with your knees on an exercise ball.
That was the warm up.
Working out with Jason is kind of like Rocky Balboa in Rocky IV. We have not yet chopped wood, but there are a couple of 20 pound sledge hammers in the gym. We now moved into the part of the workout that was designed to kick our buts.
Jason has four punching bags, they weigh between 50 and 75 pounds, and are about 3 feet long. Jason had us squat down, pick up one end of the punching bag, and flip it end over end. We would do this down an approximately 30 foot section of the gym, then back to the start, then down and back again. My quadriceps were burning. I really had to focus on form, so I didn't hurt my back.
Once we were done with that, Jason wanted us to teach our bodies to recover under pressure, so he didn't want us to take a break. We went right into lunges with a medicine ball on a rope (picture the old soap on a rope, but instead of lovely scented soap, there is an 8 pound medicine ball.) The rope loop that comes out of the medicine ball is about 1.5 feet long, and you hold onto the rope. As you lunge, the ball moves around, and forces your body to balance. This was especially horrible, because my legs were still very tired from the squats. Luckily this doesn't focus on all the same muscles as the squats.
Then we moved over to the actual punching bags (not the ones on the floor for flipping.) Here we had to throw combination kicks. We would throw a thrust kick with our front leg, followed by a roundhouse with the back leg. I like doing this, and it does get your blood pumping. The downside is this does use the leg muscles we had just tortured.
We finally moved into the last exercise, which focused on our abs. Using a little wheel with handles, we would sit on our knees, extend out as far as we could, then pull ourselves back in with our abs.
Now I said finally, but as with shampoo, we then repeated the whole workout two more times.
On top of that our trainer challenged us to do 500 sit ups this week, outside of class. Now it has been a long time since I did sit ups. We do a lot of crunches and leg lifts, as well as some different ab workouts in class, but not sit ups. He wanted us to do sit ups to help train the muscle groups in the core to work together, not to work on our abs. So after the kids were in bed, and my wife was showering I went into our living room and decided I would try to knock out 100 sit ups. I was surprised when I did 20 without stopping. I had to take a break every 20-30, but I felt great that I could do it.
The other good news is my back has not been hurting. I have focused on good form in everything I do, done my PT exercises, and occasionally ice it. It seems to be getting better.
Well, lunch is over and I need to get back to being productive. Have a happy Tuesday, and let's hope Wednesday isn't as slow!
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