Week two went better than I expected with all metrics met or exceeded. If you don't remember the physical challenge I set before me for the month of July, you can read those HERE. And a recap of week one, HERE. No fancy photos this week I am afraid. I'm impressed I included two hyperlinks in the opening paragraph.
Sit Ups. I always feel like weeks one and two are the easiest, not just physically but mentally. Doing 200 abdominal repetitions isn't all that difficult and take almost no time. I've been getting by with just a couple different movements to fill this quota. Today starts Week 3 so my reps are now 300 per day. To me 300 a day starts to equal real effort. I need to start adding different ab exercises, doing at least a couple more sets a day. In a couple more weeks I'll be too numb to care if its 300 or 600 reps but today the jump seems to affect me the most. Probably because I have to think about it now.
Push Ups. No stopping on this one now. The momentum has been created and the body does these automatically. Even if I wanted to I couldn't miss completing all my reps this month. Yesterday everything seemed to come together and I was able to complete 1,000 repetitions over the course of the day. As I totaled up my numbers for the month I was only 15 away from 6,000 push ups so I completed those just to put a nice fat '6K' on the calendar. I am split on how to end this challenge. My projection is to end on the 25th of the month but mentally I am committed to doing it for the entire month of July. I've done both in the past.
Running. The weather cooperated with me this week and got most of my runs done outside. A heavy downpour started during one of my runs which allowed me to do one of my favorite things in the world, run in the rain. I stretched out my run by an extra 30 minutes just to enjoy the experience here in the desert. I predicted this would be the hardest of the challenges and its turning out to be true. My legs are not used to day after day of running along with all the other exercises and training. My glutes and hamstrings have been fatigued thus more effort put into stretching and taking care of them. One day last week I was particularly tired and decided to do a mile on my home treadmill just to get it out of the way. After 5 minutes of occasionally putting my feet on the belt but mostly having it roll away between my legs while I was distracted doing three other things, I got seriously P.O.'d with myself, reset the unit and made that mile a true speed test. I don't like half-assing my workouts and hold myself accountable.
Burpees. I don't treat burpees with any great reverence. I do them and I get them out of the way. I am not scared of them, I don't try to ignore them. We co-exist. I have never liked my form though. I can fairly easily perform a squat thrust and complete my push up (not counted in my other challenge by the way) but bringing my legs back under me I have to constantly work to improve. In my mind to do the exercise correctly when the legs retract both feet are facing forward, knees facing forward, like a gymnast sticking their triple flip from the high bar. For my efforts, my feet plant under me as if I was standing at military attention, heels touching, feet at 45* angles. This forces my knees to shoot out at angles as well. The standing and hop are as I want. Luckily with the next 78 odd days remaining I will have thousands of opportunities to work on this aspect of my form. How that is different from the last 20 years I have done burpees I have know idea, but perfection is always desired.
The effort continues.
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