Workout Recap - Week of December 3, 2017
Only four workouts for me this week. I would've done five, but I had some lingering soreness in my left arm after my Wednesday workout, and so I thought it best to take an extra day off to heal rather than pushing things too hard.
Sunday
Type: Pass/Fail
Shoulder-width Handstand Push Ups - 2 sets of 8 (pass)
Uneven Pull Ups - 2 sets of 10, each side (pass)
Pistol Squats, Both Hands Behind Me - 2 sets of 4, each side (pass)
Bonus: 4 sets of 3 Superman push ups, 10 breath 1-armed dead hang (each side)
I'm getting better with these pistol squats, but I'm still not comfortable consistently enough to feel like I can increase the rep count yet. There's a fine balance to be struck between pushing your limits often enough to keep developing and being patient enough to avoid trying to do too much too soon, whether in exercise or in other pursuits. When it comes to exercise, though, I try to err on the side of being conservative, because getting injured is always a big setback.
Tuesday
Type: As Fast As Possible
4 sets of:
10 Close Grip Pull Ups
15 Burpees
20 High Knees
Time = 8:45
Bonus: 10 bridges
This was a substantial improvement over my previous time for this workout, which is always great to see. I don't keep track of my results for these in-week workouts with the same attention as I do for the weekend challenges, but when I'm using a previous one as a reference instead of coming up with a new routine, I do like to take note of how I did in comparison to my last time trying it.
Wednesday
Type: Pass/Fail
1-Armed Push Ups, Feet Together - 2 sets of 8, each side (pass)
Stand-to-Stand Bridges (with one touch of a wall on the way up) - 2 sets of 8 (pass)
Hanging V-Raises - 2 sets of 10 (pass)
Bonus: 4 sets of 3 Superman push ups, 5 pistol squats
For whatever reason, it felt like it'd been some time since I'd done two sets for this triplet of exercises, so I decided to fix that this week. The fact that I ended up with a sore arm afterwards probably confirms that that feeling was accurate.
Saturday
Type: As Fast As Possible
100 Burpees
Time = 10:00
Bonus: 10 bridges
There will be no rant on the merits of patience and perseverance this time, since I only tied by personal record for 100 burpees instead of beating it. Nonetheless, it was great to see that that time wasn't just a fluke event. I've been making clear strides with my endurance lately, and managing to do twenty-five burpees before my first breath break and sixty burpees before my third one both serve as clear evidence of that. As for why I take the third breath break as something of a benchmark, I'm not sure. I suppose it's because it's late enough to show some effects of fatigue while still being early enough that it's not a huge struggle to make progress with it. In any case, averaging twenty burpees over the first three mini-sets felt great, since that seems to be the chunk that people who can't just do the full hundred in one go tend to use, from the videos I've seen. You'd think that there wouldn't be a whole lot to be learned from watching someone do a hundred burpees in a row (particularly when their style of burpee differs from my own), but sometimes it's possible to glean bits of information from seeing something done that you wouldn't think about otherwise.
