It's been a week since I wrote a blog post because...well mainly because there hasn't been much to blog about. I haven't been back to KOP since the workout I did last Monday, so you haven't missed out on any WOD recaps. There are several reasons why I decided to stay home for the past week. My neck injury continues to bother me. It is a nagging pain more than anything and I've tried all sorts of things to get rid of it, but it continues to linger on. When I woke up this morning, it was the best I have felt in a week and I suspect it is because injuries appreciate it when you tap the brakes every now and then. Another reason for not going to the gym was due to the fact that I wanted to have more of a cardio focus in my workouts. That is without a doubt my most glaring weakness at the moment and it is not being fixed by doing 5 random WODs at the gym each week. Finally, my workout on Monday generated reactions that I would describe as disappointing at best. Those things happen. There is nothing wrong with people having differing opinions. You disagree and you move forward. The one positive takeaway from this experience has been that it re-affirmed the need to do more workouts from home, which I think will improve my cardio in the long run.
What can I do at home? Quite a bit actually. It's not like I have a 20 ft rope to climb or a pull-up rig to work out on, but I have a decent amount of equipment for a one-person gym. I have a 24" box. I have a 55 lb KB. I have lots of dumbbells. I have a jump rope. I have an abmat. And most importantly, I have a rower that has been under-utilized throughout the year. I am going to be doing lots and lots of rowing! Especially since going outside and running is going to seem like a bad idea very, very soon.
While I did not work out a whole lot over the past week (don't say I wasn't looking out for you, neck), here are some of the things I did from home:
- Burpee EMOM - When doing Barbulls, Coach Plentus gave us a bunch of cash-out like WODs that we could do at the end of the week. These were typically things that we could do outside of the gym as many of us were trying to do the program while traveling for work at the same time. One of the workouts I hated was a 6 minute burpee-fest of 12 burpees every minute on the minute. Not having a whole lot of faith that I could do this with my cardio in the state that it currently is in, I went for 5 minutes when I did this. After all, 60 burpees is still a lot for me. I managed to get through the whole thing without failing. I'll try the full 6 minutes in my next attempt. One big thing that I tried to incorporate in here was not allowing myself to do my usual squat rest. I could be bent over or leaning on something when I was waiting for the next minute to start, but I need to get out of the habit of resting in a squat when I'm struggling to breathe.
- Double Under Volume - Another thing I attempted was 5 rounds of 50 double unders with a minute rest between each round. I wanted each round to be an amount that I couldn't string. One of my struggles with double unders is doing a big set and then falling apart after that big set comes to an end. So by choosing an amount that would require multiple large sets (in all likelihood), I was working on fixing that problem. And by only giving myself a minute of rest in between rounds (again, no squatting allowed!), I was working on doing double unders while tired (my nemesis from last Monday). I didn't keep track of my time while doing this, as my focus was simply getting the reps in. I discovered that I need to be much more aggressive with how fast I am spinning the rope, so I put that in my memory bank. I'm not sure how to fix the issue I am having with the one side of the rope getting loose regularly, but I'll watch some folks at the gym the next time double unders are scheduled and see if I can pick up on what I'm doing wrong.
- Ringing of the Bells - This was event #2 from this summer's King and Queen competition. It was the event that crushed my soul. Sounds like something I could use some practice on. The workout had a rep scheme of 50-40-30-20-10 alternating between KB swings (55 lbs) and anchored sit-ups. There was also a 15 minute time cap. During King and Queen, I had more than 40 reps remaining when the time cap hit. This time around, I had just over 10 reps remaining at 15 minutes. These things are so much more pleasant when I'm not sweating like crazy.
- Sailing Simulator - The Flight Simulator is a tool for practicing double unders where you gradually increase the number of stringed reps up to a point, then come back down that scale to finish. I have started doing a similar program on the rower. The program goes 1-2-3-4-3-2-1 (in minutes) with equal parts work and rest. So to begin, you row a minute, then rest a minute, before rowing for 2 minutes and then resting for 2 minutes. The idea is to keep your strokes per minute consistent during the time you are working. When I did this the first time, I did it with the damper on 3 as suggested online. That felt too light though and my 500 meter split times were not as fast as I hoped despite keeping a pretty steady pace of 30 strokes per minute. As a result, I moved the damper up to 4 when I did this workout a second time and felt like it was a better workout. I kept a pace of 30 strokes per minute along with a 500 meter split of about 2:00. I also got to channel my inner Samson/Silver Fox/Josh M/Shane by rowing shirtless. Just one more benefit of the occasional home workout.
- Running - Not sure how much longer I'll be doing this as the weather turns colder, but I always feel like I get more out of a run than I do out of a row. I've had the opportunity to run in Valley Forge Park as well as around my neighborhood. I totally blew it by not getting to Endurance more often this year!
That's about it. I'll be doing a mix of home workouts, WODs, and Open Strength going forward and we'll see how that works out for me. My apologies in advance if the home workouts are a little more boring, but I'll do my best to keep track of times and stuff like that.
Tuesday preview: My first WOD at KOP in a week. Rowing, snatches, and pull-ups.
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