It's the first day of recovering from the clean eating challenge, and I already felt more energized going into today's session. Which was good, because what Jason had planned took every ounce of energy to get through. The fact that I can now manage to move my arms is a miracle.
We started with jumprope warmup, which I gingerly jumped through because I didn't want to risk my foot snapping on me like it did this during my run over the weekend (not literally, it just felt like it was going to snap after the third mile, fun times)
Then walking warmup: lunges, side lunges walkout pushups, the usual. Then...foam rolling? Something was up, we don't usually foam roll at this point. So while I'm rolling out the achy pain, Jason announces that today I'm doing a triathlon. In Jason language, that means kettlebells. And in Mayu language, that means my hands are going to die today.
So, the plan was, 6 minutes of jerks, 6 minutes of snatch, 6 minutes of long cycle (aka clean and jerks). You know, no big deal, whatevs. (::internal screaming::)
Oh, this is gonna suck, I already know. I don't know how this is going to make me skinny, or get my fat to disappear, but I do know that my hands are going to hurt and my arms will want to pop off. After the first minute.
Fortunately I only had to do this with the 25lb bell, and warmed up with some practice sets first to get a feel for it. I chalked up (whee! cough sputter, cough, gave it a whirl and was ready to go. And then the timer came out.
One reason I know I would do terrible in a competition (any competition) is that as soon as there is any kind of time involved I immediately psych myself out. Having to keep a pace or reach a goal in any timed event is not my forte. I'm much more likely to slow down or stop the closer I get to the end. A bit counter productive to the point of a competition.
I would much rather not know the details or play by play, and just find out how I did when everything is over. If I know exactly where I am and how much longer there is to go, my brain starts a rapid fire succession of hyper-analyzing every movement, criticizing each mistake, counting how far behind or ahead I might be, and calculating how tired I THINK my body should be at that point.
Once that starts, I immediately notice a change, and thus starts a dark steady spiral of decline. until I just give up or the time miraculously runs out. And that's just when conditions are perfect. If I feel any pain or discomfort, that decline becomes exponential.
So anyways, what that meant for today was that before I even chalked up to warmup, I was already at war with my brain, lying to myself that this was going to be no big deal, and immediately knowing that I was losing that battle.
But that's why Jason is there! I got through the 6 minute jerk set with basically no problem, I could feel my shoulders burning by the end, but almost nothing in my grip, so with his coaching I made it to the end. And stretched my shoulders for five minutes.
And then the snatches. I'm already hyper-paranoid of my hands tearing every time I drop, and even with chalk the bell keeps catching on the squishy part of my palm and it hurts like hell. I managed to get through almost half of the first arm with snatches, but I was going too fast and had to slow down to the pace Jason was setting, and it was just too much thinky brain activity going on and my elbow was not keeping up, so I dropped the bell before it gave out. I still had to finish on the other side, but basically already gave this set up for a loss.
So we regrouped and got ready for the last set of longcycle. My arms were exhausted already and I was fully encompassed in psych-out territory before even picking up the bell. In a last ditch effort to salvage this session, I basically just stopped caring about how many reps per minute I was supposed to do (8) and just went at whatever pace I wanted to, with a little extra time in between so I wouldn't have to think about slowing down any further. I think I did around 6 per minute, which was fine by me. And at least I finished it, but I was pretty done with life by that point. I can't lift my arms, but arms are overrated, right?
We were out of time (gee I can't imagine why), so I was spared having to do whatever I was supposed to do with the bulgarian bag (hah! As if I could use my arms at this point)
So I got an extra long stretch session and even got into the hip flexors today. And Jason let me borrow a roller ball to help fix my foot before my run tomorrow. Yay! I'm happy again
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