Another early riser has figured out the coffee machine in the office. I don’t know who they are; they’re not staff. I’m grateful, but part of me wonders with each sip: is this person *qualified*?
Tough Mudder is all in your head
Here’s something that took me a while to figure out: Tough Mudder was, for me, about 75% mental. Yes, the hills were a lot of work. And some of the obstacles were physically challenging if not impossible for me at my level of ability, like Hangin’ Tough and Funky Monkey.
But a lot of the other obstacles, when you step back and look at them, aren’t that grueling. Jumping into a pool of (not ice cold) water? Crawling through a tunnel? Going into the event, I thought they were just things to slow you down, and almost provide a break from the running.
And they were, for some people. But for others, who maybe have some fears or hangups about enclosed spaces, heights, or the unknown, they were the hardest parts of the course.
Here’s the thing: willpower is like a battery. Numerous studies have shown that we only have so much self discipline, and the more we use up, the less we have for later in the day. These studies have fascinated me for a while, and they usually involve having someone do tough math problems or keep their hands submerged in ice water, and then choose either a plate of cookies or fruit (harder problems lead to more cookie choices.)
Basically, if we use our willpower on task A, we won’t have much left for task B. Some theorize that we can mitigate this by taking regular breaks, so 50 minutes of work followed by 10 minutes of “active recovery” will yield better results than just pushing straight through consecutive hours.
In Tough Mudder, you’re looking at several hours of stress in a row, with no real breaks (you can stop for a rest, but there’s not much escaping this environment.) Under these conditions, willpower depletion can be massive, and that’s where the obstacles come in.
For me, I had to “work” hardest to simply start the Mud Mile and Walk the Plank. I’m still not sure why Mud Mile was so hard; probably I just didn’t think that I was going to make the leap across the first chasm (ours didn’t have that much mud to walk through; it was more about leaping deep and wide ditches.) Walk the Plank is a more obvious fear. Looking 12 feet down (17 if you include body height) can be intimidating!
So whether you’re jumping from a high height into muddy, possibly freezing water, facing fear of heights…
Or slithering through an underground tunnel that’s barely wide enough for your shoulders, facing claustrophobia…
Or just launching yourself into the world’s craziest slip & slide, facing fear of losing control…
(and don’t get me started about the electric shocks!)
Under the exhausting conditions of Tough Mudder, these actions can be incredibly daunting, and there’s no way to adequately explain it to Bob from accounting the following week.
The trick, really, is to embrace your inner four year old and remind yourself constantly to have fun. Because it’s tons of fun, and you’ll realize it when you’re through it but getting to the end is so much easier if you keep that in mind from the very first step.
Tying this back to my upcoming marathon, I’m lucky that I only have to do one activity, albeit for a very long time. My concern is that my willpower will erode over the course of the race, and each step will be harder to take than the one before it. I don’t have a solution to that yet, but I’m thinking a lot about the mindset I’m going to want to adopt for each quarter of the race. “Have fun” will probably enter some of it, but I still need to come up with some kind of “make it no harder than it has to be” system. Fingers crossed!
Photo Credit: Gareth Ledger
Internet failures, fitness edition
I’ve been thwarted – thwarted! – on a few occasions as of late with my internet research. This is a problem, because when I get what I want right away, it’s research, but if I don’t, then I start hunting for it, and there’s a very fine line between that and procrastination.
Problem the first: I was working with my trainer on low bar back squats, but had a really hard time getting into the starting position. They’re supposed to be a bit uncomfortable, but some of my reps were mostly working trying to keep the bar in place, and my legs got a break.
YouTube is usually great for instructional stuff, but all I could find were a mix of demos of the squat in progress and comparisons between high and low bar squats, plus some “hey, look at me squatting 400 pounds” videos (and don’t get me wrong, if I could squat 400 pounds I’d post it too.)
The texternet – I just made that up, please don’t let it be a thing but the non-video, non-picture part of the internet. Monomedia? Anyway, the texternet gave me a bit more to go on, minus pictures, and confirmed my suspicions: practice plus flexibility work will equal better squats, and there’s no magic cure this time around. For those of you looking for help with your low bar squats, this is the best I could come up with as of today.
Problem the second: On the way home last night I spotted a guy in a blue shirt with yellow lettering that said “Thrusters Suck.” A thruster is a combination of a squat and an overhead press:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OhqIGYqELk
And they suck. More than burpees. But mostly I liked the shirt because it was a secret code shirt, where most people won’t even know what it’s about.
But do you think I could find it online? Is it possible that people still make shirts and sell them in… stores? Weird. Anyway, that led to a great deal of procrastination, thanks to Google Images and “crossfit shirts” (current favourite: “seems so short but sucks so quick.”
If the internet’s going to keep sucking time from me like this, I need to find a way to surf while I’m on the long runs. And at the speeds I’m going lately, that might actually be relatively safe, as long as I avoid trap doors…
Tough Mudder Everest (video and tips)
I’ve spent a week procrastinating on an overview of Tough Mudder Toronto 2012, but I think the overall concept of what we did is still too big for my tiny little brain. So here’s some footage of Everest, in which one climbs up a giant quarter-pipe:
This was the second last obstacle of the day, and we’d been climbing Mount St. Louis Moonstone’s hills for something like 14 km before that, so my biggest worry was that I wouldn’t have the legs to make the climb. I remember going into it trying to figure out how many attempts I was going to make before giving up and walking around it.
But I did it in one. Here’s some of how that happened:
Use the help available to you. See all those people at the top with their hands reaching down? They’re there for you. Sure, aim for the top ledge, but be ready to grab a helping hand. For some of us, accepting help is the hardest obstacle to overcome, so this is a great opportunity.
Pick ONE hand. There aren’t too many misses in the video, but a lot of the ones I saw seemed to be people without a clear plan going up. When they reach the moment where they know they aren’t going to make it, a quick decision has to be made among the many hands that are in reach, and quick decisions are not easy after a long day. I think a lot of people tried to grab three hands at once instead of just one. I had mine picked out before I started my approach, and I pointed to him just to be clear, both to me and to him. It was my teammate, but it could have just as easily been someone else. Oh, and as long as you’re picking, choose someone with long arms.
Go fast. High school physics time: your job on this obstacle is to convert kinetic energy to potential energy as you go up the ramp. You’re not going to get much additional acceleration one you start your climb, so bank as much speed as you can and try not to lose too much as the ramp gets steep. And it gets steep really fast – it’s not a gentle slope by any means.
Don’t let go until you’re secure. When I did Everest, I thought I my hand grab was almost a high five and I grabbed the ledge at the same time. The footage shows that I was a mile from the top. Perceptions get messed up on an obstacle like this, so make sure you’re locked onto the top before you let go of the hand that helped you, or you’re going to slide back down. I saw it happen, and I doubt that it was by people who were having so much fun they just wanted to do it again (though it was plenty fun.)
Fun follow up: fresh from our victory on Everest, we all knew we had just a mile or so left to trot out before the electric shocks and the finish line, and we all felt pretty good about ourselves. Plus we were at the bottom of the hill! Smiling confidently, we turned the corner, and saw another uphill. There were a few swears at that point… (See the first “near-breaking point” story here for back up)
Marathon prep: injury updates
Blogging about not running is almost as bad as blogging about how you haven’t been blogging, but here goes: my name’s Jason, and it’s been about three weeks since my last real run.
As I get closer to the marathon, I’m getting more and more nervous about my lack of training, but my team’s assuring me I’ve still got lots of time, and I’m still working out three days a week, just not on the road, so everything should be fine.
Anyway, about three weeks back my ankles died. No idea what caused it, but the nerves or tendons or magic beans under my outer ankles flared up big time, to the point where I was walking with a limp and couldn’t run a quarter mile on the treadmill without pain so severe I thought I was going to fall off.
Luckily, my trainer knew a good chiropractor and I was able to schedule a meeting that same day. I’d resisted going to one for years during injuries because I had these two assumptions: they’d put me in orthotics (which won’t work in Vibrams) and they’d tell me to stop training (which would wreck my whole belief system.)
As it turns out, I’m not a good candidate for orthotics, and my treatment is designed to get me up and running (literally) as fast as possible with more exercise, not less, to fix the issues we identified. As they say on eBay, A+++++ great service will buy again!
So what started in my ankles led to some work on my left knee which led to some work on my left hip. And in the process I got to find out that I’m not as broken as I thought – I’m a little bow-legged but it turns out it’s just cosmetic – and I’m learning a bunch of biomechanics that’ll be a big help down the road.
Now if we can just find some tape that doesn’t call even more attention to my feet…
So with any luck I’ll be running soon, though with Tough Mudder next weekend I’ll probably limit myself to some light 5-10K sessions to build my confidence a bit without risking too much. In the meantime, crossfit is going well, and I even got my name on a WOD board this week for the first time – scaled and I hit the time cap, but it’s great to see where I’m headed!
Scheduling the long run
As promised in my post about the long run, a few words on time management as it pertains to training. For the Scotiabank Waterfront Marathon, my main plan is to do one long run per week in addition to the weightlifting and CrossFit WODs I was already doing. This means, at this stage in my development, that I need to find about three hours in a row to run 25-30km.
Of course, the run is only a piece of the puzzle. There’s the warm up, and more notably, the recovery. I’m slowly getting better at the end of each piece as my legs get used to the new demands I’m placing on them, but I’m still pretty much a wreck. It takes me an hour or so for my body’s cooling system to adjust when I’m done, so I’m not doing much but rehydrating, and then my legs sometimes, well, hurt an awful lot. There is limping, and the couch becomes very attractive.
Owning my own company means I have some flexibility of schedule (I get to choose which 70 hours a week I work, sometimes!) but there are still limits to how I can structure my week for a long run, especially if I want to avoid injury or overtraining that conflicts with my gym work. Right now I’m faced with two options:
- Run in the morning, and plan to not do much else until 1:00 or so in the afternoon while I recover, or
- Run in the evening, and risk not being able to sleep.
The advantage to both? Less exposure to heat. It’s insanely hot in Toronto right now, so early morning or later at night (pre-dusk, for me) are generally nicer times to train.
Getting to sleep after an evening run has been interesting. I found that I was dead tired from the exertion, but my body’s hydration was messed up, and I didn’t want to have to get up to pee in the night if my legs were going to be really stiff. On the other hand, the evening run means I get 8 hours of recovery before I have to actually do anything else with my legs, which has been a big advantage.
The other challenge, for both, has been discipline. I’ve read numerous studies that suggest self-discipline is like a battery, and if you use too much of it, you need some time to recharge, and in the meantime you don’t have much self-control. This makes it harder for me to commit to a long run at the end of a hard day, but on the other hand, if I run in the morning I don’t have much left in the willpower tank for the rest of the day where I’d like to get some work done.
Oh, and as for my other workouts, I usually train Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, so my optimal run times are working out to be Tuesday night (stacked after a session, but with a few hours rest in between) and Saturday morning. This maximizes my recovery window, but so far I’ve felt like an extra 24 hours rest would help top things off. For now, I’m sticking to just one run out of the two possible sessions, but hopefully as my body adjusts to the load (just as it did for the gym stuff months ago) I’ll be able to try for two runs in a week followed by a lighter program the following week.
My training as a whole is very 80-20 focused. I know people who put in a lot more miles, and part of me would love to do that, but right now it looks like 3 hours (plus recovery) per week will get me where I need to be, and it’s actually achievable without much risk of burnout, so that’s the plan for now!
The Long Run
One thing I realized pretty quickly as I started to mentally prep for the Scotiabank Marathon is that I actually don’t have a lot of time in the week to train specifically to running, and even though the race isn’t until October, I don’t have that much time to build up a solid weekly mileage base anyway (Brendon Brazier suggests adding 10% a week for three weeks, then doing half of the average of that on the fourth.)
I also don’t want to cut back on my current gym sessions that I do three times a week. They’re giving me some solid strength, developing core muscles and fixing weaknesses that’ll lead to injuries, and boosting my VO2 max nicely in the process.
So my plan for the marathon? The long run, pretty much exclusively, at least until I get my legs used to covering the distance.
Basically, I’m aiming to average one long run per week. Some weeks will have two if the schedule lines up, but others might not have any (for example, if I have a race like Tough Mudder lined up.)
I’ve been doing the runs with a heart rate monitor (the Nike+ GPS Sportswatch, review pending,) keeping my heart rate in the low 150s so I stay in an aerobic state. This has been huge for me, and it’s really increased my distance. That’s been at the expense of speed though, and that’s the toughest part of the long run: you will go very, very slow. To keep your heart from going too fast, the only thing you can do is give it a rest by slowing down. Which means people will pass you. You will have to run your own run, and not theirs. I found this very, very hard to do.
But on the flipside, the heart monitor kept me going where I would stop in the past, when I felt like I was going so slow there wasn’t any point. When that happened, I was able to look at my pulse, realize I was still doing work, and kept going. And pretty much every time, that feeling would pass and I’d get faster again.
I’m also finding my pace is getting faster even as the distance increases. At roughly the same heart rate, my average pace per kilometre has been speeding up with every run (on the same course, anyway. That time with the hills and heat was a different beast entirely!)
I’ve been thinking about a marathon like a super-high volume, super-low weight workout. If you were to do, say, a dumbbell curl with a 1 pound weight, it wouldn’t feel like much. But 10,000 reps would introduce problems and issues that you couldn’t have foreseen. Long runs are helping me identify these issues. Here’s an example: I run with an iPhone in my front pocket (for music and in case of emergencies.) On my last 24km run, I actually got a bruise on my thigh from the light tapping it made with every stride.
Joints, tendons, and everything in between get tested in new ways over really long distances, but the fastest way to get to those levels, for me, anyway, has been with the heart monitor keeping me from going into the red zone, so my body doesn’t die before it’s been tested with these new challenges.
That’s the theory anyway: get far, then get fast, then get far and fast.
One three hour run per week is a lot easier to find time for than several days of mixed training, and I figure I’ve got more time to recover and avoid injury this way. It’s still a challenge to fit in sometimes though – more on scheduling the long run next time.
Photo by Angela Del Buono
Spartan Toronto 2012 Race Report
June 24th was the Spartan Sprint, “Toronto Edition,” which I put in quotes because it was actually in Oro, which is about a two hour drive from Toronto. We were in the 12:30 heat, and we got there about 11:00, which turned out to be perfect. Parking was a few miles away with shuttle busses, so by the time we registered and (I) warmed up it was pretty much time to start.
We had no real idea what to expect from a Spartan Race. Tough Mudder does a better job of describing the course and obstacles (while leaving a few secrets intact) but all I had to go on was a participant video from the 2011 event, which was at a different (closer!) location and left me feeling pretty “meh.”
Thankfully, it looks like they stepped up their game this year, and it was a blast.
There were three of us on our team (we lost a fourth member to the “my wife won’t let me” excuse, which she apparently denies all knowledge of,) and we decided to make it a team effort instead of every man for himself. Of course, it took about five minutes into the race to see who’d been training, and two of us formed an “advance team” with occasional pauses to see if we could find our straggler (who ended up finishing just a few minutes behind.)
Also, not knowing what we were going to face, one thing we noticed quickly is that finishers from previous heats had one thing in common: they were very, very dirty. And we didn’t know exactly why, but looked forward to finding out.
So: the obstacles, as best as we can remember them:
The trail itself
I should point out that the first half of the race was mostly running, and the obstacles were definitely “back loaded.” We could see the last six or seven at the finish line, and had no idea how many there were, so at times it felt like it was a run with a few tricks at the end. It all worked out well though, and I’m pretty sure this design was intentional, since it worked to thin out the pack pretty quickly, making the waits at the obstacles pretty minimal. And I don’t know what the rush was; there were more than enough challenges to keep us entertained.
I’d never really done trail running, and I’ve got to say, it was a real joy. The hills weren’t too huge, and the terrain was challenging but not so much that I spent the whole time in fear of breaking my ankle. I really wish there was a trail system near me that I could keep doing this kind of running on instead of concrete. The terrain was fairly soft, and this course could totally have been run in Vibrams. I saw a few people doing that, but I brought shoes in case there were a lot of jagged rocks (there weren’t.)
Low hanging net
The first real obstacle was a cargo web on a hill that you had to run under. All you had to do was bend over, close to 90 degrees and climb up the hill while the webbing ran over you, so as long as your lungs had room it was a nice warm up.
Tube crawl
Running without glasses means not knowing what’s coming up, so while I saw the cargo nets in the distance I almost overlooked the plastic pipe on the ground that we were meant to crawl through. I don’t know how wide it was, but not a whole lot bigger than shoulder width. You could probably extend your elbows out to each side. I slithered through, mostly pulling myself forward with my arms.
And I came out a little dirty. Hmmm, I thought, maybe a few of these would account for the dirt levels we saw from other finishers?
Cargo net climb
Right after the tub was the cargo net, maybe 8 or 9 feet high. Lots easier to do with someone holding it steady below you, which I did for the person in front of me and someone else did for me. Lesson #1: I’m really awkward swinging legs over a wall, and even more so when my feet are tangled up in rope. I’ll have to practice that somehow. Anyway, no real exertion, just mental strain.
Rope climb
Shortly after this was the rope climb, which was maybe 9 or 10 feet up but could have been any distance, really, since I’ve never tried to climb a rope before. The choices were climb the rope or do 20 burpees. I did a test pull, then realized I didn’t know how to climb a rope but I did know how to do burpees, and my teammate was already starting them, so I opted for the low road and burpeed up.
Pulley weight lift
This was pretty simple stuff, hauling a few small kettlebells into the air by pulling down on a rope. It was just a “do it and move on” kind of thing.
Mud/barbed wire
And then we found the mud. It was your basic belly crawl under barbed wire, with mud the consistency of Play Dough. The wire was tied at a pretty safe height for a lot of it and at times I found myself going on my hands and knees with plenty of clearance. The mud was pretty cooling, actually. At the end of this phase there was a tighter squeeze over a log with the wire just above it, which dropped me into…
Mud slog
Now this was mud. Roughly waist deep, with the consistency of oatmeal. It wasn’t far, but the ground under the mud was pretty uneven with logs and branches peppering the way, so luckily I made it through without falling. Apparently my back was pretty clean (I’m over six feet tall, which helped here,) so one of my comrades helped me out by slapping some more grime on me.
I don’t know how they made this mud, but it had to have been 60% glue. The stuff wouldn’t scrape off. My hands were like mitts for quite a while after and no amount of rubbing and scraping would help. Lesson #2 of this race was to bring compression shorts. My shorts turned into rough grit sandpaper on my thighs for the rest of the race.
I was really hoping for a water obstacle so I could rinse off, but that wasn’t in the cards…
Javelin throw
The next event was a javelin throw at a hay bale-based man-shaped target. If you made contact, you could move on, and if you missed, it was burpees for you. The target was huge, but I was terrified of making the javelin equivalent of an air ball. Because that’s how coordinated I am. Thankfully my spear hit the target. It actually made contact sideways, but I said I stunned my opponent with blunt force so the next racer could finish him off.
Little wall hop
A four foot wall. Probably vaultable. Pop up, get a foot on it, and jump. No problem.
Sandbag haul
This was a refreshing break from the hills: grab a sandbag, pop it on your shoulder, and walk quickly through a trail circuit before handing it off to the next competitor.
Rollup weight lift
There were a few obstacles that didn’t really test strength, coordination, or anything and just took time to finish. This was one of them. Pick up a stick with a rope and weight tied to the middle, hold it shoulder height, and wrap/roll it up to bring the weight up to the stick. Repeat, and you’re done. A basic forearm exercise.
Deck crawl
This was another belly crawl but under a wooden platform. It wasn’t hard, just… boring. Like, my brain is playing tricks and saying “this isn’t a lot of fun, let’s stop for a while,” but there’s someone right behind you so you keep moving. Getting out of these kinds of crawls is the worst part, because you want to stop slithering but then you don’t know if you’re far enough out to stand up without smashing your back on the platform.
Big wall
Another wall climb. This wall was higher, but not so high that you can’t jump up and grab the top. My teammate set himself up to give me a boost, so I went to the top and reached down to pull him up, but he did the pull up. Again, I’m awkward with the leg swings, but happily I landed OK. There was one wall with blocks of wood on it to help people climb up, but the line for that one was long so I’ve no idea if it would have been easier.
Wheelbarrow
Similar to the sandbag haul, this one had a wheelbarrow weighted down with concrete and sandbags that you took through a trail circuit. I felt like I was grocery shopping.
Balance beam
The light at the end of the tunnel! I saw this one during my warmup run so I knew we were close to the finish. I also knew I’m not highly skilled at balance beams. Plus, the wood wasn’t entirely stable after many heats before us. I took the 25 burpee penalty, unlike my more graceful teammates. You get 1 free fall on this one, but on the second you’re out. That took me about 2 steps in.
Tire tunnel
A very short tire course under a bridge. Maybe 12 steps and you’re done. Just enough time to make a joke about being tired, which everyone around me appreciated since it meant I wasn’t using my now-hilarious rally cry of “halfway there!”
Fire jump
Literally, jumping over a fire. As I got close, I caught a whiff and thought of marshmallows. A split second after the jump, I thought of the rapidly warming sensation in my groin. Er, from the fire, not from some marshmallow fetish. Luckily, I did not ignite.
Rowing
This one surprised me: they had about 20 rowing machines on the course. We had to do 20 strokes. I felt a little bad for the machines in this weather, covered in mud – they ain’t cheap pieces of hardware. I should have done shorter strokes but I don’t know how to cheat at rowing. I mean, I know how, since I’ve logged a bazillion hours on the ergs and in boats, but cheat strokes have been excised from my DNA. Which left my lungs and legs a bit wobbly for the last few obstacles.
Ice crawl (missing)
This was running when we started but it was tarped over when we got there. It was another belly crawl under barbed wire, but through a bunch of ice cubes. Maybe they ran out of ice. I’m still working on my cold temperature resistance, but I was bummed to miss this one: it would have been a refreshing obstacle at about that point!
Ramp
A basic run & jump off a four foot ramp. I think there were two when we started but one must have broken. This wasn’t hard, but I was worried about my landing – my ankles tend to get sore by the end of a workout. No problem here anyway.
Hay bales
A climb over hay bales, assisted by rope ladders. Climb up, hump down. No real challenge, and you know it’s near the end, so no pacing required. Just fun.
Gladiator Challenge
This one I knew from the promo videos. Two Spartan warriors with pummel sticks. I had no idea what to expect here. Was I supposed to dodge? Charge through? The first guy made this elaborate slow motion move that probably was supposed to make sense to me, but I fell for it and he swept my legs right out from under me, flipping me head over heels. The ground was soft and I landed fine, so it was mostly funny.
I came to the second warrior with a look on my face that said, basically, “hey, there’s nothing you can possibly do to me.” I don’t know if there was just a one-hit quota or if he gave me an out but he high fived me and let me pass.
Rope-wall climb
The final obstacle! Walking up a steep incline with a rope, then awkwardly transitioning to grabbing the top of the hill, lying flat on your belly, pulling yourself over, then dropping down. Unfortunately this one was too crowded and I didn’t have room to do my awkward leg swing, so I hung out a while at the top and waited my turn before trotting across the finish line.
Finish
I got my medal, got my t-shirt, and then waited in line to get hosed off by the, uh, hose guy. Who seemed to think everyone needed special attention around their groins, so it was soccer poses for everyone. No amount of hosing was going to fix this mess. A lot of people were wearing their finisher shirts, but for an even like this, finisher overalls would have been a nice touch.
Final thoughts
I think this is the kind of event that’s really dependent on the venue, but I had a ball doing it and would sign up again in a heartbeat. I’m really looking forward to Tough Mudder in August now, which is more or less the same number of obstacles but almost triple the distance, so I’ll get to enjoy running a bit more (the run is the easiest part, but the obstacles are a great break to the monotony!)
There wasn’t a whole lot I would have improved with the event itself. I know it’s a venue constraint but I was surprised how crowded the pre-race area was. There wasn’t room for a lot of sponsor tents, and the food choices were… surprising (fries and pizza? Really?) so I’m glad I packed some meals. Organization was a bit off (we got in without handing in our waivers, and there’s no way they would have found my emergency contact info if there was a problem, etc) but the parking shuttles were great and there were more than enough staff and volunteers on hand, both at the start and on the course, if anyone needed anything.
As for improvements with my own performance, well… I felt good about the event while I was doing it, and afterwards, and right up until the time that the official results were posted. Sure, I finished in half the time that some other people did, but there are people who can say the same thing about my time. I went in with the mindset of having fun and learning, but I missed an opportunity to compete. If I sign up again next year (and I don’t have many reasons not to,) I want to aim to shave 20 minutes off of my time. I reckon that’d be 10 minutes off due to training, and another 10 from being in the right mindset at the starting line.
Going in, we thought it’d be a fun learning experience, and there’s no doubt that people with a wide range of fitness levels could complete the course, but there’s a lot of room in there to push yourself. I’m going to be working on my unilateral movements (balance beam etc) for the next while as I gear up for Tough Mudder, and with any luck, at the rate I’m improving this year the marathon in October will feel like “just” running (more on the long runs soon!)
Photos by Peter Ledger
3 kinds of burpees
Six months ago, I didn’t know what a burpee was. Good times.
Generally I see these added in as part of a larger set of exercises (like in a WOD) but they also show up as “penalty” phases in various obstacle-style races, where if you can’t do the challenge you do burpees instead. Here’s the video:
Basic burpees
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqM9hKrP9Hc
I couldn’t find a better example than this one, but one of the tips my trainer gave me for high volume burpee work is to hinge at the hip on the way up – don’t do a full push-up, just get your shoulders up, and then you can snap the hips forward to get you into the jump position. It depends on what your goals are, of course – full push-ups will get you a better arm workout, but then things get harder later. In my opinion, the jump is the deadly part. Which brings us to the variants:
Bar-facing burpees
You can make this a lot harder by going straight into the jump-over part, or you can get up, jump, turn, and repeat. Oh, and I can’t resist this one – no way can these kids beat me!
Lateral burpees
In this variant, you’re using a bar (or some other barrier) but instead of facing the bar like in the previous example, you stay parallel to it and jump sideways over it. I’m not used to lateral jumps, so I found this one really challenging on my legs and lungs. I picked a video with overhead squats in there too just because I love overhead squats so much more than burpees, but also to highlight how easy it is to mix them into a workout.
You can do a workout of just burpees (this year’s CrossFit Open had a 7 minute AMRAP that I want to retry, except for the big part of my brain that doesn’t want to do it,) and they’re also common in “every minute on the minute” style WODS, where you either stop what you’re doing every minute to do some, or you do a single rep (say a deadlift or snatch,) some burpees, and then wait out the minute before repeating.
I hate these things, but that’s probably a sign I need to do more of them…
The day I met Cindy
I was really looking forward to today: my first meeting with Cindy, one of the CrossFit ladies:
- 5 pullups
- 10 pushups
- 15 air squats
20 minute[abbr title=”As Many Rounds As Possible”]AMRAP[/abbr].
I’m pretty sure I lost sleep over this one – my first all-bodyweight WOD! I’m at the point where I’m familiar enough with most of the exercises and know my strengths and weaknesses, so I’ve started to strategize a little. The next phase will be once I’ve gotten a few more of the “standard WODs” under my belt so I can have actual experience of how things feel at different points in the workout, but for now all I can do is visualize.
Of course, the visualization would have worked a lot better if I hadn’t somehow gotten 3 pullups in my head instead of the prescribed 5. I used a band for assistance, but those extra two take me over the fatigue line a lot faster.
So I had a bit of a notion of adding a small rest phase between sets to pace myself out, but that got taken care of during the pullups, since if I can’t lift myself over the bar, it’s a null rep, so I needed to wait in between 3-5 after the third round or so.
There’s not a lot I would (or could) do differently on this one. It’s a great benchmark workout for overall fitness, but other than improving overall conditioning and my strength/weight ratio, which just takes focused effort, I’d go out pretty much the same next time.
The only minor tweak would be my rest position if/when the pushups fail out. In the first few cases, I was just laying prone, with my hands still in position, which kept my arms and chest semi-engaged and made me start from a dead stop. Later in the workout I switched to more of a cat stretch, on my knees but with my hands still in position, and I found I was able to go from banging out singles to doing 3-4 at a time.
I’ve found that hand-release pushups have been a big help with my overall pushup, so basically I’m going to keep doing those, continue my training, and next time I want to aim for 15 rounds (today was 11 plus 4 pullups.)