Workout Recap - Week of October 7, 2018
Seeing as I'm both back home and well aware of the regression with my upper body flexors, I was making a point of working on the bar every chance I got this week. As a result, my shoulders and upper back are still pretty sore, but I could feel the improvement with each workout. The horizontal rows that I'd been doing during my trip didn't seem very effective in keeping up my arm and back conditioning (in retrospect, I suppose I should've been doing them one-armed to increase the difficulty), but on the plus side, they did seem help maintain most of my grip endurance, so that hasn't been much of a limiting factor.
In any case, my journey towards one-armed pull ups continues. These trips have been a major step back, but in the greater scheme of things, recovery shouldn't be a significant problem.
Monday
Type: Pass/Fail
Shoulder-width Handstand Push Ups - 1 set of 10 (pass)
Uneven Pull Ups - 1 set of 7, each side (pass)
Pistol Squats, both hands behind me - 1 set of 4, each side (pass)
Bonus: none
Lost in the shuffle of lamenting the lack of overhead bar access during my trip was that I'd just been doing regular pistol squats, so I stepped things back up to this much harder variant. Let it suffice to say that I definitely felt the difference.
Tuesday
Type: Pass/Fail
Shoulder-width Handstand Push Ups - 1 set of 11 (pass)
Uneven Pull Ups - 1 set of 8, each side (pass)
Pistol Squats, both hands behind me - 1 set of 4, each side (pass)
Bonus: 3 skin-the-cats
Easing my way back towards where I was previously, with a slight step up from the previous workout.
Wednesday
Type: Pass/Fail
One-armed Push Ups, feet together - 1 set of 4, each side (pass)
Stand-to-stand Bridges, one wall touch on the way up - 1 set of 6 (pass)
Hanging Straight Leg Raises - 1 set of 8 (pass)
Bonus: 2 hanging V-raises, 7 burpees
This workout was about gauging myself on the other strength-focused movements I'd been working on. The bridges took me a few reps to get comfortable with the motion again, but otherwise, I felt pretty good about it. The lack of a second set was more about protecting myself due to the soreness from three straight days of these types of workouts than a lack of endurance (as evidenced from throwing in an extra two V-raises at the end of the leg raise set).
Friday
Type: As Fast As Possible
5 sets of:
5 Pull Ups
10 Push Ups
15 Prisoner Squats
Time = 5:00
Bonus: 5 handstand push ups
A return to an old classic for my first timed workout after recovering from my trip and subsequent illness. I started out great, but the last set was a bit of a grind. I think it's a matter of what I've experienced before about needing to remember the mental aspect of these timed workouts.
Saturday
Type: As Fast As Possible
50 Chin Ups
Time = 6:00
Bonus: 7 handstand push ups
I know, by the calendar, this should've been 100 burpees. However, given the circumstances, I wanted to do something to push myself on the bar, so I did this instead. The time was a little bad, considering that these were chin ups instead of pull ups, but it can serve as a measuring stick to improve on for the future.
