BOOTCAMP!!!

Workout of the Day:

2 km run

5 x (30 steps bear crawl, 20 squat thrust, 5 clapping pushup)

400 m run

5 x (50 supine scissors, 20 second straight leg hold)

400 m run

35 atomic pushups (burpee w/o standing

5 x (50 supine scissors, 20 second straight leg hold)

35 atomic pushups

15 minutes of group log stuff… Alternating shoulder presses, bicep curls, static holds

20 strict pullups

Today was my first bootcamp experience, apart from the indirect effects of Sveinbjorn and co. in Halmstad. It didn’t disappoint. We worked for a legit hour. No water, no loitering around, no breaks. I emerged pretty beat up, with a few splinters in my hands, but overall completely satisfied.

This workout definitely had a military mentality to it. The exercises seemed engineered to make you uncomfortable and test how long you could hold out against your brain’s wish to stop working. From this point of view, it’s no big mystery why the athletes that come from here hold up so well mentally. It is physically impossible to do 5 sets of 50 spine scissors with 20 second straight leg holds in between without dropping your legs. But that’s what all the trainers were yelling and expecting from everyone. Perservering in the face of the impossible will inevitably build some fortitude.

The team log stuff was great! 7 or 8 people to a log and we never put it down. Overhead presses, curling it from waist to shoulder, even simply holding it at waist height while 2 at a time ran inside to do pullups. So creative and so simple. I loved this part.

From a physiological perspective, the movements we did today could be criticized for their repetitive nature. Sure, things could have been a lot more varied, but that’s not really the idea behind this type of workout. My hips haven’t done that much flexion in I don’t know how long so there was no way they were going to hold up. The point was to make sure they kept going even after they failed.

Tomorrow I will go to CrossFit Sport for the Level I cert they’re hosting and I’m sure there will be plenty of activity. Here’s hoping I recover quickly.