Workout Recap - Week of August 25, 2019
Only four workouts this week, because my hamstrings got overloaded somewhere along the way and needed a little more time to recover. Looking over my logs, it's been a trend since mid-June for every third week to have only four workouts. That's marginally higher than my general target of one lighter week per month, but that target is meant as a rough measure of how well I'm recovering rather than something where there is merit in adhering to it. As it stands, I think all that this trend shows is that my summer was a little busier than usual, plus there was a random sickness thrown in as a wrench of entropy just to mess with me.
Sunday
Type: Pass/Fail
Fingertip Push Ups - 2 sets of 7 (pass)
Skin-the-Cats - 2 sets of 7 (pass)
Pistol Squats, both hands behind me - 2 sets of 6, each side (pass)
Bonus: 8 bridge kips, 7 fingertip push ups
I decided to do skin-the-cats instead of some variation of pull ups for this workout because I feel like my arm flexors are in better condition than my general grip endurance is. Just hanging from a bar and counting seems more tiring than doing other stuff while hanging from a bar and counting, for whatever reason. I'm sure there's an actual psychological explanation for it, but it doesn't interest me.
Tuesday
Type: As Fast As Possible
10 sets of:
5 Pull Ups
10 Push Ups
15 Prisoner Squats
Time = 11:30
Bonus: 5 bridges
This good old standby is something that I haven't done since the start of June, and I got the exact same finish time on it then, too. It's be easy to take that as a single of futile stagnation, but I prefer to see it as a sign of maintaining a certain baseline of fitness despite the ups and downs I've had this summer. After all, it was shortly after that workout that I'd had a good weekend challenge performance for pull ups and bridges, so I wasn't in a bad place physically when I last did this routine.
Thursday
Type: As Many Reps As Possible
12 minutes of 50 second intervals with 10 seconds rest of:
Archer Pull Ups (total = 21, each side)
High Knees (total = 158, each side)
Bridges (total = 51)
Mountain Climbers (total = 133, each side)
Bonus: 7 push ups
Considering that I needed an extra day of recovery for my hamstrings after the last workout, it probably wasn't the best time to be doing this one. However, sometimes, you've got to just do what's in front of you, regardless of how sub-optimal the timing is. Pushing through it under those circumstances and still getting decent results felt good. I would've wanted a few more reps of each individual movement, ideally, but taken as a whole and given some context, I think it was a reasonable performance.
Saturday
Type: As Fast As Possible
7 sets of:
7 Pull Ups
7 Bridges
Time = 6:15
Bonus: 1 pull up, 1 bridge, 8 burpees
Speaking of reasonable performances, there was this. It was a step down from the amazing one I had at the start of August, but after the poor times I had on my last couple of weekend challenges, I had some nerves about how I'd do here. Coming out with a solid result was a relief. Time will tell if I can carry that into better performances on future challenges, but if nothing else, it was a good place to finish the week.
