Weekly Workout Train 4/17/10

A sunny Monday and a charley horse started the week and I’m not sure what kind of mixed omen that is. Once again, the masochism that is Monkey Bar Gym was the first workout on the agenda. I know I should be scared when the phrase “fun stuff” is listed under warm-up. I’m pretty sure Lisa has a completely different idea of that than I do. But as I’m a trooper or an idiot, I stayed. The warm-up wasn’t bad, but then it went downhill.

There were two portions of the workout: cardio and strength. For the cardio, we were to do the rotation four times and strength was three times. Here’s the breakdown:
Cardio
100 jump rope or jumping jacks
50 runners
10 Hindu pushups
25 wacky jacks

Strength
25 pushups
50 Russian twists
25 Squats
50 crunches
10 jump knees to chest
That’s a total of 400 jump ropes, 200 runners, 40 Hindu pushups, 100 wacky jacks, 75 pushups, 150 Russian twists, 75 squats, 150 crunches and 30 jump knees to chest. How bout them apples? The only problem was the killer charley horse in my leg that made it really hard to think about moving. That damn leg was shaking for a good three hours!

Tuesday’s Monkey Bar was the deck of cards workout with the exercises being lunges (left/right=1), leg lifts, pushups and situps. I’m still too exhausted to count how many of each we did for 45 minutes, but trust me when I say it was a lot. The upside? Depeche Mode was part of the cooldown music. Then for level 2 it was a review of front kicks followed by stabbing defense against a front kick and plucking defense against a front kick. My pluck needs some work. After that was groundwork with choke and a headlock. I can’t buck very well (odd, I know) and I’m not really sure of my ability if it was someone heavy on top of me but practice will make perfect. To end class we did what I’m terming a fight circle where one person is in the middle and everyone attacks them with level 1 stuff. At one point in my turn I had someone choking me from the front and back. Not really sure how to get out of that one. But I did escape the headlock using the defense Lukasz taught where you really aren’t caught at all. Good stuff.

Thursday I took a nap and only did Monkey Bar. We did what Ryan affectionately called MMA Championships. It was a minute each of the following (a total of 5 minutes) and then a minute rest.
• Pushups
• Sit ups with a reach (holding a tombstone pad and pushing it above your head)
• Tombstone jumps (jump over the pad)
• Tombstone n/s with  5 palm heel strikes
• Snowboarders
It sounds simple right? By the second round I wanted to die. Hard work out. Then there was the expected yoga but at least I got him to play Depeche Mode again.

I even went to Monkey Bar on Friday. Then again, not like I had a ton of other plans. It started with 15 minutes of Dodge Ball. Now, this wasn’t your fifth grade Dodge Ball. If you got hit, you had to do 10 jumping jacks. You hit someone in the head, hit the window or the ceiling, 10 pushups. And you didn’t stay on a side, you ran around. This was followed by some intense yoga that made me super dizzy.

Saturday was the typical level 2 and then level 1. Level 2 was a little more cardio than I necessarily want at 9 a.m. but still good. And all the mounting, choking and bucking is a way to get a few calories off. Level 1 was instructor’s choice and I did the warm up which is slightly unusual for me (see, I’m already warm from level 2 so why put myself through the torture right?). Then we did some kicks, some ground work and some twisting and flipping ground work. Oy.

I was told though that my shape is looking different since I got in to level 2 (or started Monkey Bar which were pretty simultaneous so who knows). I don’t see it but I guess others think I look more muscular. Good I guess.