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  • 88. Minor ouch

    Strained or pulled or–who knows, maybe tore?–a calf muscle playing basketball yesterday. Nothing major, just a little painful pushing off and landing.  Gonna go easy on it a little while.  Still, there’s a lot of other body parts to exercise, so tonight’s workout will be:

    P90X Chest and Back + ab ripper X

    Shouldn’t cause any problems for my moderately sore calf.

    → 1:41 PM, Oct 4
  • 87. Tuesday's WOD: Homegrown Filthy 50

    We make up our own workouts patterned after actual crossfit workouts.  This was Tuesday’s backyard workout for Jeanie and me.

    Homegrown Filthy 50

    50 wall ball shots
    50 box jumps
    50 push ups
    50 squats
    50 pull-ups (d.b. heavy pants for J)
    50 double unders (100 regular jump ropes for J)
    50 kb swings (25#/15#)
    50 burpees
    50 situps

    J’s time= 22:02  R’s time= 17:24

    → 7:15 AM, Oct 3
  • 85. W.O.D. - P90x

    Did p90x workout tonight–shoulders and arms.

    Played basketball at noon for an hour.  Won 4 lost 1.


    → 8:13 PM, Oct 1
  • 84. W.O.D. - Helen

    Today’s physical exercise included:

    14 mile bike ride in what I can only describe as perfect weather.  (Ok, it was a little windy at times, but who cares, really?)

    “Helen”
    3 rounds of
    400 meter run (3 laps in my back yard)
    21 KB swings (30# dumbell for me, 20# for J)
    12 pullups (12 chair dips for J)

    My time: 7:15 (shaved 41 seconds off my time from 8/2)
    J’s time: 8:30 (shaved 49 seconds off her time from 8/2)

    → 4:47 PM, Sep 30
  • 56. A family workout

    This morning we did a “family workout”–Sydney, Jeanie, and me.  Here’s what it consisted of.

     
    Sprint 100 meters (from under the back deck, around the three huge oak trees in the backyard, and back).

    20 push-ups

    Sprint 100 meters

    20 sit-ups

    Sprint 100 meters

    20 squats

    REST 90 seconds
    Five rounds for time

     
    Jeanie scaled to 10 on each of the exercises.  Syd did pretty much whatever she felt like, but ran a lot.

     
    It was fun. 

     
    As a reward and to celebrate, Jeanie then refinanced our mortgage to a 3.25% rate.  Yowsa.

     
    → 11:53 AM, Jun 11
  • 55. On exercise

    I’ve been to so many chapel services at Bethel over the years and heard so many speakers that they all start to sound the same.  Occasionally someone says something that stays with me for a long time.  What tends not to stay with me is who said it.  So, somebody sometime at some Bethel Chapel service in the last fifteen years or so said this:

    “We don’t read the Bible to finish; we read the Bible to change."

    I always liked that.  Even though I’m kind of fond of the “read the Bible in 90 days” or “a year” or other Bible reading plans, the problem with them is this: I don’t want to get to day ninety and say, “DONE! Yay me.  Now I can get on with life now that I’ve read the Bible in 90 days."

    Occasionally I tweet about some “P90X” workout I’ve done.  I like this workout program, even though I have never really committed myself to strictly following the program for 90 days.  I’ve been doing the workouts semi-regularly for almost five years now, and they’re terrific.  I didn’t want to get to the end of 90 days and say, “DONE! Yay me.  Now I can get on with life after P90X."

    Which is why I like crossfit. It just sort of goes on forever and ever with constant variety with no end in sight.  But I’ve sort of used the Tony Horton workouts that way anyhow, so I was predisposed to liking crossfit before I even knew what it was or tried one of the workouts.  What I also like about the crossfit workouts is the insanely high level of intensity they typically ask of you and how short they are.  Most workouts are 15-20 minutes, but some incredibly great workouts take less than ten. 

    So here you go, exercise lovers.  Try one of the P90X workouts “crossfit” style.  I recommend the legs and back workout.  Instead of following the video (which you don’t need once you’ve done the routine a few times; you can remember–and if you can’t, it takes a whole two minutes to write the names of the exercises down on a little piece of paper), set your stop watch, say 3-2-1 go, and crank out the workout for time.  Here’s how I do it.  Each pull-up set is 12 reps (96 pullups total for the workout).  Each leg exercise is 25 reps.  You do the wall sits for the time Tony prescribes.  And you complete the “sneaky lunge” sequence at a reasonable pace.  And when you finish the workout, you record your time.  Next week you try to beat the time.  It’s fun and it reduces the workout to–well, lets say if you’re in decent shape you can crank it out in less than 25 minutes.  It would be nearly impossible to do it in less than 20, but some stud might surprise me here.  When I do it this way I use 20# dumbells–and if that’s too much for any of the exercises, I only use one of them instead of both.  Saves the trouble of figuring out how much weight is just right for the workout, since the goal here is not merely building strength but cranking your heartrate way the heck up.

    You can do the same thing with the chest and back workout or the shoulders and arms workout.  Suddenly they become both strength and cardio workouts–in other words, more like crossfit.

    I’ve also found that doing PlyoX “tabata” style (20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest; this will leave you in oxygen debt very quickly) while it shortens the workout–really increases the intensity.

    I keep looking at the P90X2 videos on youtube and I’m tempted, but it’s expensive for all those medicine balls and other crap you gotta buy.  The beauty of P90X was how minimalist it was in terms of equipment.  Pull-up bar and dumbells.  While the stability and core strength you’d get from this kind of training looks impressive to me–it looks like the kind of training professional athletes (NBA players, even) would do–I’m cheap.  What can I say.

    So here’s to one of the best things about summer vacation for a college professor: exercising.

    Tomorrow, tune in  for my rant on the relationship between exercise and remaining semi-productive as a “scholar” (gosh, I hate that word).

    p.s.  Today’s workouts were P90X chest and back; ab ripper x. 


    → 3:52 PM, Jun 5
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