Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Tabata This

Workout of the Day:

15 minutes of EDD’s

6 x 4 box jump for height

Tabata this:

Back Extensions

DB Push Press (22 kg/48 lb ea)

Side to side leg lifts with pressed barbell (40 kg)

Chest to bar pullups

The soreness that had begun to creep into my legs yesterday worsened considerably today. My hamstrings, glutes, and quads were all tender to the touch. Getting up after my 2 hour lecture this morning was like unfolding myself from within a suitcase. There is now little doubt left: single leg DB deadlifts are a must-have addition to your lifting regimen. I’d love to hear some feedback on this if anybody tries them out.

The EDD’s are going great, not much to update there. The back bends using the wall are getting stronger and my balance with the handstands gets better every day.

For the box jumps, Niels and I wound up stacking every bumper plate we could find in the Cite gym. In addition to being a little tipsy, this drew some priceless stares from the other patrons. The height is hard to estimate, but it reached about to my bellybutton. I don’t think this was a maximum height, probably could have gone about 4 inches higher. I’m going to have to find a different method of creating ledges without boxes.

And the tabata… Well, this sequence proved more of a muscle endurance test than a cardio vascular one. With the exception of the leg lifts (the weak programming link in this chain), I felt acute muscle failure in every exercise. The back extensions especially hit the spot. By the half way point I was starting to really feel fatigue all the way along my erector spinae. By the 7th and 8th sets I had to split the 20 seconds into 3 parts. The push press’s started strong and finished pretty soft. The weight began to overwhelm me by the 4th set, but I never strategized around it, so that was good. I repeatedly went to failure, took a few breaths and did a couple more before time expired. The chest to bar pullups were definitely my weakest point, as could be expected. I still have a hard time finding a rhythm with this exercise when tired, and wound up doing them one at a time. This actually worked pretty well. I didn’t get too tired in my grip or lungs and was able to do about 6 per set every time. My totals for all exercises are below.

Back Extensions: 79

Push Press: 75

Side to side leg lifts: 70

C2B pullups: 50

Total: 274

Less than three weeks until the Copenhagen Challenge, and I'm feeling pretty good about things. Looking forward to seeing those friends again and testing myself against whatever they come up with.

Tomorrow is for resting and exploring some more of this city. Paris, light the way.

7 comments:

  1. Dude, the best way to explore that city is by Rollerblade. I highly suggest looking into that; you can get anywhere, and they are easy to quickly pack up if you find a nice place to walk in. Trans-Con #6 soon?

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  2. Hey Blair, I've been following the blog for the past couple weeks, great job. It's a great resource for workouts and motivation. One question though that I couldn't figure out -- What are EDD's? Thanks.

    Demetrios

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  3. Single leg Deadlift are a b#@ch ! i do them cause i dont have enough weight at home on my BB ( ~ 80 kg). I play with several kinds, suitcase deads with a BB are also challenging.

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  4. EDD stands for "every day drills." While in Leiden I picked a series of skills and weaknesses that I wanted to improve through repetition and have proceeded to practice a few, or all, of them at the front end of my workouts.
    They are: planch progressions, static handstand holds, pistol squats, weighted dead hangs/other grip exercises, and back bends using the wall.

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  5. Hi Blair. So I tried the single leg deadlift (I held 20 lb dumbells,and then 40 lb little bar). I did sets of 5 per leg for a total of 30 each leg. I am sore already. I can probably increase the weight next time, I just wasn't sure what it would feel like.

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  6. single leg deadlifts are great. i started doing them a few years ago when i felt my grip couldnt keep up with my hamstring strength. i mix them with heavy barbell lunges and ive really gotten some big gains in my sprinting speed/recovery as well as front squat max
    great blog by the way

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