August 6, 2010 Friday Musings

It was a beautiful morning today. Not humid at all and pretty cool temperatures. It was perfect weather for our morning workout. Unfortunately, I talked Sharon into working out yesterday later than we usually would so it was less than 12 hours since we had last worked out. Ouch.

Ryan started us out with a jog across the grass and then suicides. What is with all these suicide drills lately? Actually they really get you going and can be kind of fun. We run forward to a designated cone and then did a star jump. Then we'd run back to the beginning and do it again, only going to a cone a little further out, doing our jump and then back to the beginning. We did the same thing doing side shuffles as well and I did really well on those so I enjoyed that.

After the suicide drills we worked the hill. We did 30 second runs up the hill, jogged (walked really) back down and then did some kind of exercise on the mat like planks or sitting russian twists. We did this a few times and finally did something that I think will be a great benefit to me. Ryan would tell us to go and we would sprint up the hill, then on his signal we would switch to a very slow walk, then when he signaled we would go back to the sprint and so on. This was to help improve our take off. I need this because I pick up speed pretty well but my take off is weak. However, by this time I could really feel yesterdays workout.

After the cardio we went back for water and then our circuit. I liked the stations in our circuit today. I'm not good at jumping rope though. I'm just trying not to trip over the darn thing. Could use a nice little jump rope ditty here too. We also did one with the medicine ball where we took it up and over our body and then jumped over it (we set the ball down for this). That was fun even when I was tired. I think there were about 6 stations in all.

I thought we would repeat the circuit after our water break but we did a different circuit. Wall sits, squat hops, and then hopping on one foot going forward, back, right and left. That one was really hard to balance. I had to keep putting one foot down so I wouldn't fall. I laughed during the squat hops because everyone else seemed to be hopping in place and I kept traveling. I didn't think we were supposed to be moving but I was and wound up pretty far from my starting point. Just like a frog. I hate wall sits but they weren't too long so that turned out okay.

Ryan said our last thing would be push ups. So I went down for my minute and a half of push ups, going as fast as I could and really trying to push them out there. When we were done my arms were very tired and I was ready to call it a day. But that was only one set of the push ups, we had to do another where we went down and held the push up in various positions. Ow, ow ow! Then partner push ups but Ryan told us that was the last thing. 10 partner push ups so I tried to crank those out as fast as I could while still staying in my toe position. I really could see the end and it would be time to go home. But then, even though we were done, we had to do jumping jacks until everyone was finished so Ryan could see when everyone was done. Dang, I thought if the people who were done just left, you could figure out the ones on the ground were not. Of course, Ryan's way was much more effective for the body.

Another really great workout and I left very tired but happy. Not only did I know I was keeping my promise to myself to keep going and working as hard as I could, but I was also done with my workout for the day!

Have a good weekend.

Roger