Ending the week the right “Way”, today’s gym sighting

Oct04
by Duf on October 4, 2013 at 5:15 pm
Posted In: Daily Workouts, Ray's Way, Soapbox

Today I wanted a full test of the durability of my cut finger.  I figured what better way to do it than with a Rays Way circuit?

I chose to do an untimed variety but I made sure to keep my pace on par with the 20 minutes you normally get to complete all 5 rounds.  I felt pretty good through out and not one drop of blood was spilled.

This was also the first workout in the last three days where I didn’t do anything at the gym that reintroduced a limp to my stride.

I usually reserve funny/annoying gym sightings for my main blog, but I might as well share one here.  Today one of the in house “trainers” at the gym had an older woman as a client.  If I were to guess, the woman was probably in her early to mid-60s.  For her age she appeared to be in decent shape.

I had to shake my head when the trainer had this woman doing balance squats on an upside down bosu.  The brilliant trainer had set the bosu about 18 inches in front of a free standing speed bag/heavy bag rig.  The trainer faced her client towards the contraption and stood 6 feet away as she watched the old lady do shaky reps with her body pitched precariously forward.

The other in house trainer pays similar levels of attention to his clients.  I often see him f’ing on his phone while the person that is paying large amounts of money for his “expertise” is doing exercises using improper and even dangerous form.

 

 

 

Today’s Workout

Untimed Ray’s Way

5 rounds of:

15 bodyweight dips

8 pull ups

20 push ups

All reps utilizing full rom

Comments Off on Ending the week the right “Way”, today’s gym sighting

Enough is enough

Oct03
by Duf on October 3, 2013 at 6:15 pm
Posted In: Daily Workouts, Injuries

I decided the deep slice on my finger had sufficiently healed enough to resume more normal workouts.   For the second day in a row I walked into the gym normally, tweaked my knee, limped around for 20 minutes and then again walked out sans limp. This time I aggravated the knee coming down from a wall handstand.

Today’s Workout

5 minutes cardio/stretching

20 pull ups

Following three movements in a circuit

30 second wall handstand x 3, 30 push ups x 3, Side/front lateral raises(straight arms)- 15 pounds x 15, 20 pounds x 12, 25 pounds x 8

Skin the cat repeats – 3 sets x 4 reps

 

Comments Off on Enough is enough

Better than nothing

Oct02
by Duf on October 2, 2013 at 8:12 pm
Posted In: Daily Workouts, Injuries

I didn’t even bother to post yesterdays workout which was a boring 30 minutes on the cross trainer, burning roughly 350 calories.

Today despite my right knee still feeling marginal from the Monday treadmill 5K I thought I would try some leg work, skipping the dead lifts because of the cut on my finger.

When I got to the free weight area someone was already using the squat rack so I decided I would give the leg press machine a go instead.  I had problems right away with only 225 pounds on the sled.  I had pain in my right knee in the first 6 inches of movement.

When I stood up the pain was actually worse, I was walking with a limp.  Despite this I slapped another set of 45’s on each side and went again.  For that set  and all subsequent sets (stopped at 5 plates on each side) the knee felt ok during the leg press but shitty when I got up to add weight in between sets..

The limp remained for most of my workout but by the time I was going out the door the pain had subsided.  This reenforced my assertion that I simply have something floating around in the knee where it shouldn’t be, causing the pain.  I have had this before and I will have it again.  The good news is it generally always sorts itself out.

Today’s Workout

5 minutes cardio/stretching

15 prisoner squats

Leg press – 10 x 225, 10 x 315, 10 x 405, 5 x 495 (knee crunched)

Leg ext – 10 x 100, 10 x 130

Prone leg curl – 10 x 90, 10 x 115

One leg calf raises – 2 sets of 10 reps, each leg

45 second extension plank

30 sec 1 arm extension plank (both arms)

Comments Off on Better than nothing

Slice = run

Sep30
by Duf on September 30, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Posted In: Daily Workouts, Endurance activities, Injuries

Over the weekend I managed to badly slice the top of my right ring finger on the very sharp and fast moving propeller of my RC plane.  The cut appeared to be very deep as it bled like mad.  As a result I decided to keep this week’s gym work heavily cardio based as doing any exercise that is putting pressure on my right hand via hanging, pulling or pushing could be just enough to pop the cut open again.

I  need to heavily focus on my cardio anyway since the 10-12 mile Tough Mudder race is barely more than a month away.

Today I did a treadmill 5K.  At first I had it set for my normal 1% incline with a speed of 7 mph which translates to an 8:34 mile.  Somewhere before the half mile mark I realized it was going to be a major struggle for me to maintain that pace for 3 plus miles. I dialed it back to 6.5mph which translated to a more manageable 9:13 pace.

Even with the scaled back belt speed I found completing the run quite challenging.  Running a certain distance on a treadmill for me is much more difficult than running the same distance outdoors.  The belt forces you to keep your legs going at the same uncomfortable speed and the static scenery seems to amplify the misery level.

If I bring headphones and find something on tv that is entertaining it can help the miles pass by a little easier.  At times the swinging headphone cord can become quite annoying as it can get caught on your swinging arms/hands. Regardless, I did not bring them today and as a result only had a silent movie version of Sportscenter to try to take my mind off the discomfort.  It didn’t help much.

To make matters worse, once I completed my 3.12 miles and slowed the belt down to walking pace to cool down I felt some more than casual pain in my always troublesome right knee.   By the time I got back to work I was walking without a limp so I am hoping it was just a temporary glitch.

My cardio endurance just does not feel good.  I think the extra weight (hopefully muscle) I have put on that has helped me do things like dead lift 365 pounds hurts me when I try to do endurance activities like running.  No matter if it is muscle or fat, 182 pounds requires more energy to move and creates more impact on the knees than 170 pounds does, a lot more.

Comments Off on Slice = run

Start of the Century

Sep27
by Duf on September 27, 2013 at 5:30 pm
Posted In: Daily Workouts

Today’s workout

5 minutes cardio/stretching

Century (40 BW squats, 30 push ups, 20 hanging knee raises, 10 pull ups)

Following supersetted together:

10 reps x 4 sets pull ups varying grips (chin up, super wide, close grip, neutral grip)

5 reps x 3 sets Dragonflags

15 reps x 3 sets back extensions

Comments Off on Start of the Century