Tried something different today.

“Week 4”

• Deload – Squats (working max: 240#)
  • 2x5x45 (warmup)
  • 2x5x95
  • 2x5x120
  • 2x5x145
• Asst. #1 – Squats
  • 5 x 10 x 95
• Asst. #2 – Leg curls
  • 5 x 10 x 60
• Metcon
  • Sprints – read below
• Grip
  • 3x10xS – 2 second hold for each rep

Deloading, so nothing to write home about… but a few things of note.

With squats, I really worked to keep my torso tight, pushing outward with my abdominals. Boy that makes such a difference… not to just be tight, but to explicitly push out. Keeps the torso more upright, causes the posterior chain to be more involved, even felt it more in my adductors, and you just get more push overall. I dug it. I have been working on this, and today was very productive in this area.

The other big change? I opted to sprint.

Jumping rope isn’t bad, and it was a good way to start, but I feel I’ve adapted and plateaued… it’s not pushing me any more. So to increase it, I wanted to do the “running in place” and while that’s helping, I can’t keep it up — either coordination gives, or the muscles are too tired already to keep going, and thus I trip up on the rope and so what’s the point? I can’t get enough jumps to make the effort work out.

But that Prowler? Boy that works. The trouble there is the equipment belongs to someone else, and so it requires him to be there and to be there when I’m there. Generally possible, but not always (e.g. he was out of town the past week).

So looking at all of this, plus that a general suggestion for things like this is hill sprints well…. there aren’t any hills around, but I can at least sprint. There’s a long driveway right next to my gym, more than enough distance. So, if I can Prowler, I’ll do that. If I can’t, I’m going to sprint.

I only just considered it this morning before I left for the gym, so I only got a little bit of reading done. I want it to be HIIT style. But what would that be? Well, I’ll work on it. Here’s what I came up with for today:

• Found two markers on the ground, paced off the distance at about 45 paces (so somewhere between 40 and 50 yards)
• Walk from one end to the other.
• Turn around. Jog back.
• Turn around. Sprint back.
• That constitutes “1 rep”.
• When jogging or sprinting, it isn’t about trying to cover the distance as quickly as possible, but rather trying to put as much effort in as possible. I’m working to pull my knees up at least so my thighs are parallel to the ground, my impact is on the balls of my feet (not trying to heel-toe it), arms pumping through a full range of motion, and sure I’m still trying to get from here to there, but it’s more about effort. Perhaps more akin to running tires than pure distance sprinting.
• Today, I did 4 “reps”. I’ll work my way up in reps, probably landing at 10 or 12 reps. We’ll see where things go from there. In fact, as I do more reading about good sprint HIIT programs, I may change things entirely.

So I’ll see what comes of this. I am wanting to not just increase my conditioning, but accellerate my fat burning. HIIT is the way to do it, and while the Prowler will be my first choice, when it’s not available I want to do something that’s “up there” so…. here we go. We’ll see what happens.