Weekly Workout Log

Monday-

Tuesday- Ran for 1 hour, 3.75 miles, 657 calories

Wednesday-

Thursday-

Friday-

Saturday-

Sunday-

Sunday, October 11, 2009

INSANITY

No, my week hasn't been insane, just my average busy week of work that led me to not workout too much. Although it didnt help that a lack of vehicle led me to depend on other people for a ride and kinda messed up my schedule. I will say though, that I totally love getting to work at 6 instead of 5. I've never really went to do detail about my job, quite honestly because I'm somewhat ashamed of myself that I have the job I do instead of a fitness job, but that will come in due time. But my schedule is weird, I work at a truck company, the same one my dad works at, I detail/clean semi trucks, and on weekends I clean the office as well. My dad starts work at 5 am, so we leave at like 4:20 every morning, since I dont have a car or anything, but since I work outside (in trucks) I can't really get anything accomplished before the sun comes up, so when we get there I sleep from 5 until normally around 7 or 7:30 then I start work. Its a really odd sleep schedule that really messes me up, the last few days, since we've got there at 6, and I've got about another hour of sleep before we left, I haven't really slept, maybe just dozed off for a few minutes here and there, and I have to say, I like it WAYYYYYY better. Unfortunately, I'll be paying a few hundred dollars to get my dad's car fixed in the next couple days, I'll be back to my normal schedule. Can't you detect my enthusiasm??? lol

Anyways, I digress. The reason I titled this post INSANITY, is not because I am insane, that is debatable. I am currently watching a new informercial, or at least one I've never seen before, for a fitness program called INSANITY. I figured it would be kind of like p90x, and I suppose it sort of looks like that, tons of pics of people who were already in pretty good shape getting completely ripped in 60 days after this "fitness expert" 's boot camp thing. It looks pretty fun: athletic, lots of activity, plyometrics, all that kind of stuff. This one guy giving a testimonial mentioned how, on his first day, he was really "feeling the burn", sweating up a storm, when about 10 minutes into the workout the trainer said "okay thats the end of the warm up" and he was already exhausted, but after a few weeks it was actually a warm-up for him, i.e. it didnt exhaust him anymore.

This reminded me of the S.A.Q. (speed, agility, quickness) class I took when I was in school, it was one of my favorite classes of the entire fitness trainer program I did. As the name implies, the class is designed for athletes, by the teacher who has been a strength and conditioning coach for major colleges and pro teams, to increase their explosiveness, speed, agility, etc. I'll be honest, when I first started the class I wasn't in overly great shape, way better than I am now, but definitely by no means an athlete. And when we first started I was exhausted after the warm up, but like the guy in the video after a few weeks I could do it with no problem. That class was so fun, we did all kinds of, what I consider to be, unconventional stuff. The teacher had a big thing for rhythym, we'd do stuff like we'd all line up across the basketball court, and we'd have to skip across the court, in a straight line, with our feet hitting the ground at the exact same time, when we could actually do it, it sounded pretty cool. We did, or tried to do, a can-can line, you know like the Rockettes do, that was funny because a lot of people couldnt do it. And we also did a lot of jump roping, we'd do regular jump roping, we'd have to hop side to side and front to back while jumping, skip, run all kinds of stuff. He'd make us run around the basketball while skipping rope frontwards, then we'd have to try to run forward while skipping the rope backwards, incase that doesnt sound crazy, its extremely hard, I don't think I ever managed to do it. Anyways, I'm rambling now. But I guess the point is, I had a shit load of fun in that class, I took it twice. Once in the fall quarter, at my school we had quarters not semesters, and then again in the spring. It was cool because in the spring the teacher, who also taught several other fitness trainer classes, was like "wow Sean (uhm thats my name) you'r alot better at this than you were before", compliments always make a person feel good lol. Oh and the other point is, follow my line of thought here, seeing the informercial INSANITY, made me think of SAQ class, which for some reason led me to go digging in my bedroom and I dug up my jump rope, an "athletic" type one, not the ones with the little plastic things on them, and I think I'm gonna start playing around with it tomorrow. Although it does hurt like a muggle fuggle when I hit myself in the neck/back of the head/shins/calves with jump ropes, it can still be fun, lol.

OHHHHHHHHHHH and as promised, Chris (I would've used that before, but I actually didn't know your name haha) here are a few ab exercises. You mentioned some back problems, these should be okay, but let me know if you have any problems and I should be able to figure out some others, and trust me I know a few good core exercises. This particular set, when I first starting doing it, literally within like two weeks I noticed my waist was a little tighter, and I had a little bit of a "v" going, that actually surprised me lol.

1. regular crunch- feet on the floor, knees bent about 90 degrees. The trick is to cross your arms on your chest, do lock your hands behind your head because that leads to pulling on your neck, which is how people strain their neck doing crunches. If you need help you can try putting like a tennis ball, or a rolled up sock, or anything like that, between your chin and chest to keep yourself from straining your neck. Flat on the floor, feet like I said, hands across your chest, crunch up with your abs, try to suck your bellybutton in as far as you can, don't pull with your arms, go up until your shoulder blades come off the ground, hold for 2 seconds, go back down until just before your neck hits the ground, and repeat.

2. cross crunch- Like before, flat on your back, knees at 90 degrees. But this time, cross your right leg over the left, it helps to try to keep your ankle bone on your thigh right up by your knee. Position your left hand lightly under your head, remember no pulling with your arms or neck. Let your right arm lay flat on the ground out to the side to help stabiliize your body. While keep your leg still, do a crunch. Try to think that you're trying to touch your shoulder to the opposite knee, that helps to avoid just reaching across with your elbow. Like before, crunch until your shoulder blade comes off the ground, hold for 2 seconds, and you know the drill.

3. cross crunch- Exact same thing, except cross your left leg, and use your right arm.

Just those three exercise are pretty challenging. The cross crunches do a good job of hitting your obliques. Aim for 7-10 of each exercise, make sure that you for sure do the same number of each cross crunch. Thats a pretty good core series, you'll definitely feel it the next day.

Those ones are pretty simple, not easy but simple. Let me know if you'd like some more complex exercises and I can give you some more.

Wow, its insane how I tend to ramble off long posts, pure INSANITY!!!!!!!

3 comments:

  1. Thank you sean. I am back to the gym tomorrow so am looking forward to trying the crunches and cross crunches. A towel sounds like just the thing to keep me from straining my neck. I am goint to try p90x when I get about ten to fifteen pounds from goal. I will probably need the push at that point, and I will be in the right shape to do the program properly...oh, and lmao muggle fuggle...

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  2. I might have to try those exercises. thanks!

    - Lisa
    http://inweighovermyhead.blogspot.com/

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