Report Out

I think this week went pretty good, despite the absence of el señor B and roomie D.

The hardy participants: C & K, E & M, myself.

Dynamic warm-up (1X):

high knees
butt kicks
reverse lunges
spiderman lunges
wall scapular presses with forearms in low, mid, and high position (these are very difficult for such small movement)
all were preceded/followed by regular, X-style or Y-style jumping jacks

Hip-opener warm-up (1X):

front/back leg swings
side/side leg swings
reach up/reach down
side lunges
deep squats (bw)

Core warm-up (1X): this varied slightly from the original plan due to participant input. Hey, why not?

bird dogs
dead bugs
glute bridges
quadruped extension/rotation
rocker hip stretch
all preceded/followed by mountain climbers

I didn't deviate a lot from what has become our standard warm-up. Just a few different things thrown in.



1-min. station circuit (2X): 1 min. at each station, no rests, for a total of 12 min. work

jump rope
right plank
split squat right (bw)
jump rope
left plank
split squat left (bw)

I got this idea from the time it was just Bond and I inside Ford's, and we did something similar in 2 15-min. sections. That was really brutal. Today's incarnation was still pretty brutal. We all noticed how the minutes at the end seemed WAY longer than the initial minutes.



5-min. station circuit (1X): 2 min. rest between stations. Each station consisted of two alternating activities.

1. one person does a KB farmer's walk to the end and back while the other chooses push-ups or plank. I think the ladies all rolled with ~26-35lb. KB. The men's KB were larger, didn't catch the weight. This was fun, and I'm feeling it across my shoulders already.

2. one person OH carry to the end and back while the other does good mornings. A wide range of KB/sandbags got used for this. Personally I managed the first two reps with the 16lb. KB, but for my last 3 dropped to a 20lb. sandbag.

3. one person prowler push and back (I believe we had 90lb. loaded on) while the other slams a 12lb. or 6lb. medicine ball.

Since we had an odd number, I went partner-less and just chose a number of push-ups, slams or good mornings. I tried to keep an eye on people when they were on the split squats (new) and the good mornings (new for some). Overall it looked pretty good. I really like thinking about the good mornings as reaching your butt back vs. leaning over, I think it helps to develop good form. We all did these standing next to a wall to have a target to reach toward.

We were all pretty toasted by the end, and it was fun making a KB caravan to take all the equipment back inside. Then we hit up the People's Bakery for gyros, falafel and doughnuts. All agreed this is a good way to end a workout. I don't know why I was so nervous last night, it was a fun workout with game friends!

Big Boots

I'm running the Saturday warehouse workout tomorrow morning.

I'm a teensy bit nervous about it. No injuries (everybody) + no crying (me) + hard effort (everybody) + doughnuts after (definitely me) will = success.

My favorite doughnuts are plain cake. You can tell the true quality of a bakery by their plain cake doughnut.

I'll post how it goes later on.

Hmph

I'm not a resolutions kinda gal, but informally I made 3 this year (progress in parentheses):

• Drink a lot more water (getting there...)
• Don't use snooze button as much (extremely minor improvement, thanks A for the idea!)
• Blog more often (FAIL)

I guess I've got some work to do still. I'm going to try to have something to write about once a week anyway, no matter how mundane.

Some recent highlights:

I traveled to Minneapolis a couple weekends back in order to visit with B-alicious and to see roomie J and K perform in the Best of the Midwest Burlesk festival. The festival was AWESOME, way more professional than last year, roomie J and K were AWESOME and B-alicious (who, by the way, is always AWESOME) and I dressed up, as illustrated by the photos here,and managed to hold ourselves to a single bottle of wine during the event. Got to do some chillin' with A and J (very gentlemanly, per usual) as well.

I just gave my first exam of the semester today. I'm a little nervous to look at them, partly because most of the students finished fast, and I'm worried that's not a good sign (as in they either gave up or didn't understand the complexity of the questions appropriately). But maybe it means they found the exam to be easy. Only one way to find out...

I've been editing my department's web page. The school has implemented an exceptionally limiting version of Drupal for the job. No html coding allowed. It is very frustrating.

On the calendar: an xmas date with el señor B next weekend, for which I have been saving a very tasteful (read: not especially revealing) dress. Yeah, it's pretty late for an xmas date, but that's just how we roll and also we've been waiting for his post-holiday diet experiment to finish. I wish to go to a fancy steakhouse, and am thinking here.

I've got a nice workout balance going right now:

• Mondays = HipHop dance class (more strenuous on my brain than anything else)
• Wednesdays = climbing
  
• Thursdays = Zumba (I miss the 3X weekly Zumba schedule, but that's just how this semester panned out)
• Saturdays = el señor B's park/warehouse workout

I've gotten in some random XC skiing here and there, but the snow hasn't been great this season. Speaking of the Saturday workouts, roomie D pointed out to me that he and el señor B will be absent in 2 weeks for the Birkie. Mayhaps I shall run the show?

Phew, that was a lot. Okay: next anticipated blog date = Monday, Feb. 22. I can do it!