Tuesday 24 March 2009

300 Workout

I gave this a shot today and its a killer! The floor wipers are especially hard! All in all this is a quality workout and thoroughly recommend giving it a try. Its clear that just from looking at it on paper that its gonna challenge you and hats off to those that can complete this in under 20 minutes!

25 pull-ups
50 dead-lifts (60kg/135lb)
50 press-ups
50 3' box jumps
50 floor wipers (60kg/135lb)
50 kettle-bell hang-clean and press (16kg/30lb: I used dumb-bell since KB were unavailable touching down onto a 2" step)
25 pull-ups

I managed 20 pull-ups outright on the first set and my aim will be to get the whole 50 in one shot!

Time: 31:11

Magic 50 - No. 2

Had another bash at this again this morning and this time used a 22kg dumbbell instead of my ambitious 28kg dumbbell. It left my legs with just enough life to complete all 10 burpees on each set in one go. Improved my time considerably but stupidly I forgot to press start on my stop watch, so I only have the clock to go by. Next time I will make sure I use the SW properly ;-)

Friday 20 March 2009

Cortisol and Muscle Mass

I found a good article that explains the effects of Cortisol on the body and why it usually results in breakdown of muscle tissue if levels get too high. If you're trying to bulk up, this is definitely worth a read!

http://www.askmen.com/sports/bodybuilding_200/200_fitness_tip.html

Tuesday 17 March 2009

ICT 8

This killed me as it did the last time I tried it. I managed the 1:15 for the first interval but everything went to pot after that. From about the 4th interval I resorted to girls tactics with the burpees, keeping my arms straight just to get through it. The end result was a non-achievement of 8 rounds in 22:34 (after the 8th I had to retire). Next time I will start with the girly burpees until I can complete the whole thing in under 20 mins; then I will ramp up the routines...

After a few minutes recovery I punished myself with another km on the tredmill in hill mode; its becoming a bit of a challenge to cover as much distance in 10 mins as possible, makes it fun!

3.99 km Run

Managed to run a bit further this morning. I accomplished a tidy 2.46 km run using the random mode on the machine, which actually made for an interesting run. I ran at 8kph for 15 minutes solid with a fairly good climb rate on the random incline. Afterwards I stopped for a minute to grab a drink and got straight back on the runner for another 10 mins using the hill mode. That was much more fun and more demanding and I pushed myself a little harder (9kph). Some of the steep inclines (9% at one point) really hurt, but it was a great workout.

Followed up with some stretching to recover my legs for ICT 8 later this afternoon... *gulp*

Monday 16 March 2009

New Feed

I have changed my hosting service to use the Blogger hosting to take advantage of their widgets etc.

Sunday 15 March 2009

Feed

Blogger feeds went down on Friday and its taken Google quite some time to get them restored, but finally it looks like the RSS feeds are back up and running.

Friday 13 March 2009

2k Run

This morning I hit my first ever 2k (sadly on a machine though). Doesn't sound impressive but for me thats the longest I have been able to withhold the monotony of running. I've never really enjoyed long distance and as a kid I loved sprint sports and excelled at 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay, long jump, etc (basically anything that involved running as fast as you could for no more than 30 seconds). But now I am starting to appreciate long distance running for its CV benefits. I've been running Monday and Thursday mornings now for the past two weeks, and in that short amount of time I've gone from struggling for 1k to what felt like an easy 2k.

Session notes:

2k @ 10kph @ 3% incline ~ 12 mins :14 secs

Thursday 12 March 2009

One Handed Hand-Stand

This is my first attempt at this skill. Its great fun although I have a long way to go before I can sustain any length of balance. I am almost there with the free handstand, so felt it was time to start having some fun with it :-)

Tuesday 10 March 2009

Never Gymless: ICT Workout 7

Had another bash at this since I hadn't done it in a while. This time I had a friend join me which made it much tougher! There was a competitive edge there to see who made it to 100 burpees first and who could bang out the most squats and press-ups for time. I lost the burpee challenge but pulled through with the press-ups at the end :-) Heres how I got on:

100 burpees: 10 mins:26 secs
2 mins rest
8 x bodyweight squats @ (20 sec work:10 sec rest) intervals = 135 squats
8 x press-ups @ (20 sec work:10 sec rest) intervals = 86 press-ups

Getting down the gym steps at the end was quite fun on legs of jelly ;-) This is a cracking workout and recommend you give it a go!

Wednesday 4 March 2009

Loading Up

Finished my down loading week, so this week am working back to my maximum load again. I have become quite interested in learning the iron cross skill. It will progress nicely from the muscle up once that is mastered, so for the time being I have been strengthening my lats with some iron cross lever pull downs using a cable pulley setup. Works quite well, since my pull ups combine bicep and laterals whereas this targets the laterals quite heavily.