Workout Recap - Week of September 15, 2019
I've said already that I think Monster Hunter World was a fantastic game (and that was before I spent about another 120 hours playing it). Well, the Iceborne expansion game came out recently, and rather than jumping straight into the master rank content after a long break from that game, I decided to play it with a new character file. I figured that would also be a good opportunity to give the ranged weapons more of a real try. Unsurprisingly, it's still a fantastic game (with some slight changes on the margins that are mostly for the better). If I'm a little short with my notes for the workouts today, it's because I've still got a chunk of my mind thinking about shooting giant wyverns.
Sunday
Type: Pass/Fail
Fingertip Push Ups - 1 set of 12 (pass)
Towel Pull Ups - 1 set of 10 (pass)
Pistol Squats, both hands behind me - 1 set of 7, each side (pass)
Bonus: 2 sets of 6 Superman push ups
I keep trying to do different things with my pull ups. I'm fairly sure that the faster route to doing one-arm pull ups would involve focusing on one-arm dead hangs and negatives, but I'm not in a rush. I'd rather enjoy the journey and have some fun doing more interesting stuff along the way.
Tuesday
Type: As Fast As Possible
4 sets of:
10 Burpees
10 Bridges
20 Straight Leg Raises
20 Speed Rows (each side)
Time = 10:45
Bonus: 2 sets of 7 pull ups
It seems like I keep talking about wanting to get better at burpees. Well, here was a small steps towards getting better at them. I tried to really pay attention to what I was doing while doing the burpees, and I noticed a couple of spots in the motion where I had a bit of a hitch (the transition from squatting to kicking my feet back and the transition from squatting out of the push up phase to rising for the jump). It'll probably slow me down a little bit to think through smoothing out those motions in the short term, but that should set me up to go faster once I've worked out my muscle memory.
Wednesday
Type: Pass/Fail
Close Handstand Push Ups - 1 set of 10 (pass)
Stand-to-stand Bridges, one wall touch on the way up - 1 set of 10 (pass)
Hanging V-Raises - 1 set of 12 (pass)
Bonus: none
A quick and simple workout, prioritizing larger sets to emphasizing developing endurance within a set to dovetail in with my general goals of improving my 100 burpee times.
Friday
Type: As Fast As Possible
5 sets of:
5 Pull Ups
10 Push Ups
15 Prisoner Squats
Time = 4:00
Bonus: none
On the surface, this might not look like much since it was only five sets. However, I did that on purpose, because I went into this with the goal of trying to push through the workout with minimal breaks to catch my breath between segments. I fell short of my ideal goal of no breath breaks (which is probably unrealistic, depending on how it's measured), but a thirty-second improvement in the completion time compared to my last time doing this workout is phenomenal.
Saturday
Type: As Fast As Possible
50 Burpees
Time = 4:45
Bonus: 2 sets of 7 pull ups
Less wonderful was finishing this challenge slightly slower than I did last week. Honestly, though, the difference between them is probably exaggerated by my rounding to the nearest 0:15. It is undeniable that I was slower this time around, but part of that is likely the repercussion of my self-study from Tuesday. The whole thing felt smoother, and it felt like I was taking less time to catch my breath along the way, so on the whole, I think there was progress there despite how the end result looks.
