Gymnastics / Bootcamp – Page 8 – Something Beats Nothing Every Time

Weekly Now?

Last week ended well as far as exercise goes.

Wednesday I did 5 rounds of Chelsea plus a 20 minute Ab workout at gym.
Thursday off
Friday I did an all around 95lb Oly lift with combinations of DL, Clean and Squats
Saturday I did most of my FIRST EVER BODY BEAST workout. It was chest and tris and actually, I hate to admit it but I actually enjoyed it.
Sunday I took an hour of walking stairs with bins ranging from 10lbs to 60 lbs as I moved all the crap out of the garage upstairs to a store room.
Monday off
Tuesday I did another Oly lift day with everything but very fast and with only 75 lbs to increase the cardio component.
Wednesday I did Millenium Bronze, a workout that I invented on the drive home from work as follows:

Millennium Bronze

100 each:
Jump rope
Jacks
Crunches
Pushups
Squats
Military
VSnaps
Box Jump
Power Crunch
Burpees

I think the Silver and Gold will have to be harder by degrees, I am thinking something like this (since it’s really aimed towards my kids at gym)

Millennium silver

100 each:
MK Switch
Squat jacks
Bicycle Elbows
Ultra Wide Pushups
Pop Squats
Diamond Pushups
Single Jack and Jills
Double box jumps
Layed out power crunches
Pushup Burpees

Millennum Gold

100 each:
Arms up MK switch
SDHP with KB
VSnaps
Chinups
Pushups double shoulder touch
Pop Squat 180
Bar Leg Lifts
Double Box Clears
Bicycle Bicycle Vsnap
Plyo Pushups

Sore Doesn’t Cover It

Paleo mince pies will make it all better…

I am not sure why but since last week I have had extreme soreness in my lower back. It may have been from the hip stretching I did due to the walking I did last weekend but whatever it is I am in agony. It does get better with time but it’s agony whenever I haven’t moved for a while.

Wed – off
Thurs – off
Fri – Mini basement bootcamp – half of our old regular bootcamp full body
Sat – I think this was double under practice day which doesn’t sound like much but it was 25 minutes of non stop jump rope and pain as i whipped my toes with the heavy plastic rope. I had to work the time change from midnight an dit lasted until 5am then most of the day troubleshooting problems so…
Sunday – off
Monday – conditioning with the kids 55 reps of military, vsnaps, pushups and squats. It was supposed to be century club but I miscalculated and we only did 1-10 which is 55 not 1-10-1 which is 100.
Tuesday – 95lb bar (since my soreness is still fresh in my mind):

5×5 deadlift
5×5 deadlift with hang clean
5×5 power clean
5×5 deadlift with power clean

Wednesday – Today, I think I will do bootcamp at gym again. Either that or a short KB workout before gym if I have time.

I won the Biggest Loser for the month at work, but only 2.5% loss for the month which is way behind the curve. I should be at 5% per month. Weight still 256 but falling slowly.

My challenges?

Currently my exercise volume is low and my intensity is lacking, mostly because I seem to be nursing a lot of soreness and niggling shoulder and knee pain. I will be trying this week to address the volume part, the intensity may have to wait.

The Last Few Workouts

Thursday – 30lb shoulder cleans with medicine ball, 50lb deadlifts with heavy bag, 95lb deadlifts with barbell. 10 each x 10 rounds.
Friday – Off
Saturday – 30lb shoulder cleans with medicine ball, 50lb cleans with heavy bag, 95lb cleans with barbell. 10 each 10 rounds.
Sunday – 100 deadlifts 95lb barbell sets of 10. 100 shoulder cleans with 30lb med ball sets of 10.
Monday – Off
Tuesday – 50 deadlifts @95lbs. 50 deadlifts @ 135. Plus a little clean practice at 135lbs. Shoulder still problematic.

For the rest of this week I need a pullup workout, a dip or chest workout and a HIIT bootcamp workout plus 1 or 2 135lb barbell workouts.

My basic plan for now without gym workouts looks like this:

Deadlift / Squat Day
Clean / KB Clean and Press Day
Pullup and Dips Day
Multifunction HIIT / bootcamp Day
Plus whatever I can manage on my 3 gym days which at the moment is 1. Very Little and 2. About To Change.

If I can get to a point where I can do 2 days of HIIT at gym with the kids then I can start to work more aggressively on adding more weight to my deadlifts and maybe squats. I don’t think I want / need to exceed 135lbs for my clean and press at this point especially with a hurt shoulder. It will also give me what I consider the Absolute Minimum for consistency and that is 5 days work out of 7.

Time to stop talking and start doing…

A Word About P90X3 and Summer WOD Pictures (of the workout!)

As you all know very well I am a very big P90X fan, so much so I am actually a Canadian Beachbody Coach. However, the rumours surrounding the release of P90X3 have me a little worried. For a start, the big THING is that it’s only 30 minutes. Now, I have done a LOT of P90X and P90X2 workouts and for the most part after round 1 they are usually only about 40 minutes. I tend to shorten the warmup a little but I don’t listen to Tony ramble on, I skip to the next movement or even better skip ahead and then catch up while he and his pals rest and hang out looking cool and making pseudo sexual jokes about chokes and oil. My hope is that this next iteration is exactly that, as I always say to my kids at gym, More Work Less Talk! There should be some changes, I am guessing that they saw the Tapout XT video series and decided that was exactly what P90X needed, a little butt kicking MMA conditioning. So I am cautiously optimistic and I will happily ignore the 30 minute spiel and hope that it doesn’t include the warmup or cool down so they will be basically the same amount of work with less “50 years old” chirping from good old Tony.

For myself I am WAY behind where I wanted to be a few weeks ago but I am feeling OK. I wanted to have been to the Crossfit box at least a handful of times by now which I haven’t. I had hoped to be doing the gym conditioning with the kids which I haven’t either mostly because of my very sore shoulder which I have half a mind to go to the clinic to get referred for xrays or an ultrasound because it’s still hurting like hell from 2 weeks ago when I did dips at the gym with the kids.

Speaking of the kids, here are a few pics of the workouts they are typically doing at the moment. So for those of you following along at home (ex-gymnasts) keep up if you can!

Home Bootcamp

I am trying to get back into the multifunctional workouts so last night I inadvertently did half a bootcamp, only doing 1 round of each section instead of 2. It’s the same workout that I think the kids will do tonight. It took me 35 minutes and I was bagged at the end, just goes to show what horrible shape I am in at the moment.

x2
10 regular pushups
10 military pushups
10 sphinx to plank step or drop
10 pushup side hold
10 pullups

x2
20 shoulder crunch
20 leg up crunch
10 full situp double twist
10 side crunch
10 hanging leg raise

x2
20 Air squats
20 step back lunge front kick
20 belt kicks
20 front lunge
10 pullups

x2
20 shoulder touch
20 hip touch
10 spider each side
10 knee to elbow each
10 knee to opposite elbow each

x2
20 single leg knee raise
20 super skaters
30 second chair pose
20 side lunge
10 pullups

10 pushup step out
10 clap pushup
10 plyo pushup
10 pushup side raise leg raise
5 Worlds slowest burpee with clap

Mud Hero 2013

It was always my goal, right since I learned of my surgery in April to do the Mud Hero on August 24. I figured it would be a measure of my recovery and a test of my mettle.

I didn’t realize how much of a challenge actually deciding to go would be since I had thought that I would be almost fully recovered and ready for anything. That was hardly the case. The week before the race I was sore every day, my back was actually feeling very delicate up to the day of the race and even on the way there, I was still debating in my head whether to cheer my girls or suck it up and run. Since there is only really ever one answer to that dilemma I put on my big boy pants and headed for the start.

I was actually really surprised by how easy the course was this year solely due to the fact we knew what to expect. I remember last year not knowing how far or how hard to run and that lack of knowledge really sapped my energy. This year, knowing exactly where we were going and what to expect made it all the more easy. That’s not to say that I didn’t find it hard, it was terribly difficult given my lack of mobility for certain movements especially when it came to ducking under things, such as the first mud pool under the logs. There was not much running done by any of us, my loyal and wonderful athletes and co-workers stayed with me, and despite obviously being able to do much more than I kept up with the encouragement and added so much to the enjoyment of the day.

The course was very similar to last year, however they had bolted the car boot and bonnets closed so no surprises there and the water slide which almost made a lady out of one of our male competitors last year instead of letting out into a small forest went straight into a deep mud pool. They had added another mud pool with tubes up which you had to climb which was a little challenging given my girth but I am proud to say that I did not skip any of the obstacles and only finished about 15 minutes behind last year’s time.

It was an amazing feat for me, I am so happy I decided to run, I am certain I would have regretted not going if I had stayed off the course. I must also say a huge thank you to my wonderful wife who, instead of running the course, took the time to hang out with our daughter to watch her daddy make a mess of himself.

All in all, a huge success, and I guess the next few days will tell just how close to a full recovery I am but for now I can say that I made my pre surgery goal of competing in the Mud Hero only 4 months after back surgery… and I am old too!!

BSRD48 – A Matter Of Perspective

It’s time to start summer conditioning at the gym. The difference between summer and season conditioning is that summer conditioning may or may not be related in any way to gymnastics. It’s more a general functional conditioning system to help the kids get in overall better shape in order to handle the rigours of training more easily. I have a feeling that I may be getting the new influx of kids sooner rather than later and the average age of my group is about to take a massive nosedive. That said, I will have a new group of kids who are not used to the kind of conditioning my groups do and summer training will give them a chance to acclimatise to the system before we start hammering them with required skills and gymnastics specific drill sets. That said, my current kids still have at least a couple of weeks and maybe even the rest of the summer. So tonight, it’s the second day of my summer WOD system. On Tuesday we did a kind of Chelsea version with the following:

5 Burpees
10 Vsnaps
15 Squats

5 clean (50lb)
10 pushups
15 Squats

Today is a little different, we are going to do our version of Fight Gone Bad, in other words 5 minutes work with 2 minutes rest x3. It looks like this with one version for an athlete with a bad shoulder and the other for the rest of us.

Regular:
22lb push press
26lb Sumo Deadlift High Pull
box jumps
30lb ball clean x10 with 25m run
wallball

Modified:
Vsnaps
20lb weighted squats
Box jumps
wall handstands with jump
stand roll back to shoulder stand to stand

BSRD4 – The Work Begins

Today was a tough day.

Physically I am paying the price for deciding to quit the percocet before it gets it’s grip too tightly on me. I’m sweating for no reason, I am nervous, anxious and feeling really on edge. As the day wore on, it got better, but I was a real basket case this morning. It was a rainy day here so I was resigned to trying to walk on the treadmill which was unimpressive. Unfortunately it’s just not up to the task of running with me on it at such low speeds. It was jerking around like crazy and the walk was therefore a total bust as far as being emotionally uplifting. I did try out the bench just to see what the position was like and for future reference if it was even possible to keep the weight off my back as I lifted. The test went well, if I brace my legs just a little I can carry all the bench weight across my shoulders and my back is almost completely protected. I didn’t go too far with it, just a kind of see what happens session and it did lift my spirits a little.

The big news of the day is that Lightning is home again, his numbers (creatinine) went from 1000 down to 355 which is basically a manageable number. We do have to give him subcutaneous fluids which will no doubt be an adventure but for the time being it looks like he has dodged a bullet. Hopefully this will give us another couple of years at least with him regardless of his bum leg and his obesity.

By the evening, I felt so much better that I decided to go to the gym to see the girls and have them explain in their own words what happened at competition. All I can say is that is went badly. Very very badly. A hard to swallow end to a very challenging day.

Bootcamp Wednesday – Long One!

20 shoulder crunch
20 leg up crunch
10 full situp double twist
10 side crunch
10 hanging leg raise

10 pullups
10 regular pushups
10 military pushups
10 sphinx to plank step or drop
10 pushup side hold

20 shoulder crunch
20 leg up crunch
10 full situp double twist
10 side crunch
10 hanging leg raise

10 Knees at wall assisted squats (Sissy Squats)
20 Air squats
20 step back lunge front kick
20 belt kicks
20 front lunge

10 regular pushups
10 military pushups
10 sphinx to plank step or drop
10 pushup side hold
10 pullups

20 shoulder touch
20 hip touch
10 spider each side
10 knee to elbow each
10 knee to opposite elbow each

20 Air squats
20 step back lunge front kick
20 belt kicks
20 front lunge
10 assisted squats half distance (Sissy Squats)

10 pullups
20 single leg knee raise
20 super skaters
30 second chair pose
10 front kick back kick each side

20 shoulder touch
20 hip touch
10 spider each side
10 knee to elbow each
10 knee to opposite elbow each

10 pullups
20 single leg knee raise
20 super skaters
30 second chair pose
10 assisted squats full distance (Sissy Squats)

10 pushup step out
10 clap pushup
10 plyo pushup
10 pushup side raise leg raise
5 Worlds slowest burpee with clap

Still booting

With March Break and so on we had a disruption in service, however all is back to normal now and I am going to commit to keep more up to date. The problem with not keeping up is not only do I lose the record of what I have done and what I need to do but I get a bit aimless in my workouts away from bootcamp and start to slack off.

Last week we did a bodyweight class with bosu that looked like the list below. After that I alternated with Olympic lifts (deadlift and clean) and a bench day, also a MMA day where I hung the bag in the garage away from everything breakable and did about 40 minutes of kicking and punching along with a little kettlebell swinging. However it all feels a little haphazard and unfocused. So I am going to try and put together a couple of weeks plan here and stick to it. I have to say I have been keeping up with the 5-6 days a week which I am happy with but I have also not been keeping good enough tabs on my dairy intake which I think is keeping me a little bloated.

Anyway, here is last week, I will post tonight tomorrow if that makes sense!

Balance Of Death

x2 in a row 1 off bosu 1 on bosu
10 regular pushups
10 military pushups
10 sphinx to plank step or drop
10 pushup side raise
10 pullups

Sit on bosu

20 in and out
20 crucnhy frog
20 knees to elbow alternate
20 in and out abs hands on upside down bosu
20 side crunch per side

x2 1 on BOSU 1 on SB
10 SB pushup boing
10 SB Burpee lift ball
10 SB Plank to sphinx
10 per SB elbow plank side raise

Feet on SB

10 regular pushups
10 military pushups
10 sphinx to plank step or drop
10 pushup side raise
10 pullups

20 Crunchy Frog
20 vsnap
20 laying triple bicycles
20 full situps

Arms on SB 20 360’s
Arms on SB plank to sphinx
10x feet on SB walk out and back
20x feet on ball face down roll ball in to chest
20x laying hamstring pull

20 laying leg lifts
10 per rainbow leg lifts
10 per scissor hold on count
25 per side to side scissor rapid

BONUS ROUND!!

Burpee ladder – 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1
on the minute every minute (10 min burpees)
rest in plank position.