Training - hay fever edition

So today's session was called 'I can't breathe, and I'm so sweaty' and that was before we even started! I just got back yesterday from a week away, and I was mentally ready to get my workout on. My body not so much.

Allergy season has descended upon us, and I spent a week deep in the belly of the beast. As bad as hay fever ever hits in the city, it's ten times worse in Maryland. So I came into the session today heavily medicated, but on the tail end of the dosage, so all that movement started to swish around my already precarious sinus cavities.

On top of that, the mta had another one of those days. Packed train, trains re-routed, and conflicting announcements of what was going on. Welcome back to the city, I suppose. So I ended up sprinting to the gym just to make it five minutes late. At least that covered the warmup!

I already gave Jason the heads up that I wasn't feeling so great, so he had a nice easy workout planned. And by easy I mean 'let's see how much we can make her sweat.'

This is the "easy" workout he came up with (and mind you, I can barely speak, my throat is bone dry, my nose is a faucet waiting to burst, and my brain is swimming with pseudoephedrine):

Dynamic Warmup: walking lunge, lateral lunge, and inchworm back and forth across the floor (about 10 each way)

I actually got to lie down on the mat for:

10 single leg lifts 

10 single leg bridge

3x

Then:

35lb Kettlebell: 12 one arm swings

3x

Followed by:

35lb bell: 8 clean & jerks each arm

15lb db (you know he's being easy on me when I'm using anything lighter than 25 lbs!): 12 overhead reverse lunge

3x - 

And finally:

45lb bell: 8 swing to front squat

25lb bell: 12 dragon twists

3x

I could barely protest as most of the session was spent focusing on trying to breathe between getting sips of water. when I did pathetically try to speak through a mila kunis voice, it only came out in little peeps. To a comical effect, I'm sure. 

I thought we were going to do more, but to my surprise (and delight) I got to stretch early. and even then my voice was so far gone that I couldn't even laugh from the pain.

Thursday punishment

So I've been slacking a bit. It's hard to be fit when you're an inherently, deeply rooted, stubborn foodie with no "stop" signal, and an insatiable sweet tooth. Unless I diligently plan out every single piece of food ahead of time, and then somehow trick myself into sticking to that plan, I'll just eat whatever is easiest and most convenient and lie to myself that because its healthy or not 'that bad' that it will be okay. But even clean food has calories! 

So today was measurements day, and let's just say it did not go so well. Around 137lbs, and way too much pinching by the pinchy thing. I see a lot more cardio in my future. Boo

So, to kick-start my butt-kicking Jason came up with a simple-sounding, but actually-killer workout. 

First, dynamic warmup across the entire gym floor. I began to contemplate square footage on a whole new level, the rent on this place must be crazy!  We finished up the warmup with Jason's blue bell, I forget how much it weighs, but I had to do 50 one arm swings...per arm. And that was just the warmup

Then, the butt-kicking.  With the same blue bell, two minutes (per arm) clean & jerks. I did 10reps per minute, and had to do so many sets. 4 many sets. So many.

We wrapped up with the biggest punishment of all, the pink Kettlebell. Sadface. It's the lightest bell, and pink. Both my least favorite things. And I knew that meant something crazy was coming up. Something crazy like 2 minutes snatch (per arm), at 20 reps per minute!!! And there was no chalk on the handles, so my hands stuck on every.single.drop.

So that was my punishment for slacking.

And tomorrow I have to run 3 miles.

Monday, training day!

It's Monday, it's raining. It's a perfect day for training!

I've been slacking big time, and even though I ran around the park this weekend, I still started the week feeling squishy and blobby.  Yet somehow just by putting on my workout gear, I always feel thinner and more toned. Maybe it's just delusional association. Or years of strategic and brilliant R&D by under armour.

Anyways, I was ready to sweat, and Jason was more than happy to make me do just that

Quick walking warmup, and while I was making my way back with the last few inchworms, I caught a glimpse of what Jason was doing: gathering the whip --I mean jumprope-- and bulgarian bag

Oh boy

So in between one minute sets of jumping, I did 10 spins and 10 snatches with the bag. After I finished what I thought was the last set, I found out I had to do another! My arms! Ungh!

After that, we ramped it up even more with two 25lb kettlebells: swings, cleans, and squats(the last sets were squat to overhead press). All the while Jason regaled me with tales of his Kettlebell competition in Florida (he got 1st place, of course!), which quickly turned into a discussion of the lifestyle of 'deep Florida' and skinning boars and alligators and swimming with alligators...because apparently alligators only attack if you're on land, not already in the water. Yeah, that's not really an assumption I'll be banking on the next time I'm in swampland. Oh yeah, and I should keep lifting, right? (To clarify, no one was swimming with alligators, as far as I know)

After the kettlebells, I did reverse lunge twists with the bulgarian bag racked on my outstretched arms (I'm sure there's probably a real name for all of those things, but this is what it is), and overhead squats.

And then I was done, sweaty, but done. And Jason only had time to do a quick stretch, but it was enough time for him to hit my pain threshold of laughter, and at one point he hit a spot that hurt AND ticked that I wasn't expecting and I burst into uncontrollable giggles for almost the rest of the time. Hah

Training on a Wednesday!

Well, Jason has a Kettlebell competition this weekend and he leaves tomorrow, so we bumped my session up a day so I could get my sweat on. And pain on, and soreness on

We started with a quick warmup of 3point lunge and walkout pushup. I became conscious of something I do, where every single time I stand up from a pushup, I have to brush the 'floor crumbs' --as I call them-- off my hands. And I realized that I have been doing this every time, since the first time I started doing them, and today I became consciously aware of this and it made me really self-conscious and I couldn't stop!  So then as I stood up on the next one, Jason grabbed my hand so I couldn't brush it off and kept doing it each rep and I actually did the last 2 reps by myself! It was like full immersion therapy for OCD people,and it actually worked, haha

So, then it was time for the free weight room, and after goofing off a bit with fellow girl-buddy gym-rat Arlene (much to Jason's eyerolls), he herded me over to the pull-up bar. Where I had to JUMP to get up to the bar. I mean, Jason helped, but still... So I did three chin-ups by myself!! Even I was surprised!! In between sets I did one hand swings with the 35lb Kettlebell

After that, I guess all the squat racks were taken, so I did weighted squats on one of the big machines. Followed by deadlifts in some sort of cage-like deadlift contraption where instead of one bar, it's open in the middle (where you stand) and there are handles to pick up the cage around you. I don't know how much that thing weighed, but I do know there were 2 25lb plates on it. Boy was I glad to be done with that contraption

So we moseyed up front and as soon as I saw jason grab the 12.5lb dumbbells, i knew i was about to die. Yeah, you read that right 12.5lbs. The baby weights. I haven't touched those things in years. Which could only mean he was going to make me do something crazy. Crazy like 20 alternating jump lunges followed by 20 jump squats. Two rounds. And by some sheer miraculous force of will, I managed to survive while mostly standing upright. Only a little hunched over. Most definitely not collapsed on the floor, as much as I wanted to be.

Then just some v-ups and stretching time!!  But now I have to wait until Monday until I get to train again. d'oh.