Workout Recap - Week of February 9, 2020
This is a holiday weekend in my corner of Canada, so it felt like a good opportunity to do some experimenting with my workouts during the week and then attack some tried-and-true routines on the weekend. Thus, while I did do some stuff on the days that are omitted below, they were mostly start-and-stop affairs without any notable structure and thus felt undeserving of recording formally.
Monday
Type: As Fast As Possible
3 sets of:
5 Uneven Pull Ups (each side)
10 Handstand Push Ups
10 Bridges
Time = 7:30
Bonus: 7 burpees
Following up on last Friday's workout to see if my forearm would hold up any better. It did, but there was still some troubling tightness in it during the back half of the handstand push up sets, so I decided to avoid pushing for that fourth set yet again.
Wednesday
Type: Pass/Fail
Close Handstand Push Ups - 2 sets of 12 (pass)
3-limb Bridges - 2 sets of 1, each combination (pass)
L-Hang - 2 sets of 25 breath isometric hold (pass)
Bonus: 10 breath isometric towel dead hang
I almost had to take a failure on the bridges because of struggling with the single-armed combinations during the second set. Obviously, I scraped together enough energy to pull through, but it turned me off from trying to push for four total reps in the immediate future.
Friday
Type: As Fast As Possible
1 set of:
40 Squats
30 Push Ups
20 Hanging Knee Raises
10 Pull Ups
Time = 3:30
Bonus: none
"The Century", as this routine is called by Al Kavadlo, is the physical fitness test used for his Progressive Calisthenics Certification (PCC) program. I don't recall exactly what the time limit for it is in order to get certified, but I'm fairly sure that I blew it away. I say this not to brag but to appreciate how far I've come with my fitness. It's amazing to reflect now that I've been keeping up my workouts for close to six years at this point (my earliest record is from June 2014). When I started, I got winded from trying to string a dozen push ups together, and I couldn't budge from a dead hang except to let go of the bar. I did my first full handstand push up in February 2015 (which I recall doing on a whim during the halftime of Super Bowl XLIX). The following month, I started doing pistol squats. Further advances in the last five years have been less dramatic (as with many things, the better you are, the harder it becomes to do even more) but no less rewarding for it. It's a journey without a fixed end, which can undermine motivation at times, but I find it's also uplifting to feel like I can always get better.
Saturday
Type: Pass/Fail
One-arm Pull Up Negatives - 2 sets of 4, each side (pass)
Fingertip Push Ups - 2 sets of 19 (pass)
3-limb Bridges - 2 sets of 1, each combination (pass)
Bonus: 2 sets of 6 Superman push ups, 6 bridge kips, 5 breath isometric one-arm dead hang (each side)
Speaking of which, here's a little improvement with my fingertip push ups. I'm very close to being able to do two sets of twenty, and once I get confident with that, I can start having fun with mixing in variants. I also went aggressive with the bonus work on this one because I had an excess of energy.
