Maxercising

I've been a fan of Steve Maxwell's "stuff" for some time now and have recently started to work some of his "material" into my fitness practice. About 3 weeks ago I switched up my PM sessions which I do 3X per week (actually 2X one is a Sat AM session).  I had completed 8 weeks of deadlift training and was starting to bog down with that lift (I'll revisit it again soon) so I decided to go in the opposite direction of heavy iron and use nothing but bodyweight exercise for these sessions. Enter Steve Maxwell's Spartan 300. This is a program I purchased a few years ago when I was fitness crazed, I watched it put it on the shelf and never used it for whatever reason. Time to put it to use! It's a 3 level program consisting of 10 different movements. The goal is 30 reps of each exercise, completing the workout in 40 minutes or less. I started out at level 2, I was familiar with most of the exercises but I limited myself to 20 reps of each exercise. I'm now entering my 4th week of this routine and I'm about to increase my reps to the actual 300. I've been at 250 for the last 2 weeks.

The other Maxwell program I've inserted isn't really one of his "programs" but something I got from one of his blog posts and it involves stairs. My community has a rather long set of steep stairs that lead down a bluff to our beach. It's around 130 steps in all. So SM's workout involves running up, hopping up, lunging up, and crawling up the stairs. Every time you reach the top or bottom a pushing or pulling exercise awaits. currently for me this is pull-ups and a pushup variation. I'm up to 6 sets and I'm doing 90 of the 130 steps. I'm not sure what an actual "flight" is but I'm seriously sucking wind by the time I'm at the top of the stairs on the 4th set. I've only done the workout twice (last Friday and this morning) but it is in the program for the next 6 weeks or so (M,W,F mornings).

Other training: Still working handstands, I  have good days and bad days but the good news is that I'm finally getting away from the wall and kicking up with no "wall spot". Yay! I'm getting some decent holds, the best probably around 15 seconds or so. It may sound strange but on the times where I kick up and don't fail it actually seems easier than when the wall is there, don't ask me why. I'm still doing  some of the other things from Ido's program out of the flexibility and mobility exercises plus a variety of other exercises. I do that stuff on M,W,F after the stair training.

Tuesday and Thursday mornings I am still training in the pool for about an hour. I do a half an hour of dynamic apnea alternating between bi-fins and a monofin, then another half hour of freestyle. I've started increasing my distance and I'm now making 5 lengths underwater quite regularly, that is 220' total distance. The thing that makes that difficult is the constant need to turn (pool is 44 feet long) which burns a lot of oxygen as opposed to just a constant forward swim like in a longer pool. Soon I will be getting into a longer pool so it will be interesting to see if my distance automatically becomes longer.

So that's what I've been up to, throw in a vinyassa hot yoga class here and there as well. I've been trying to do the yoga class 1X per week but sometimes it's only once every ten days because of schedule conflicts. I'll continue like this until June and at that point scale back a bit as I become more active with diving and work related stuff. Summer is a time to play!

March Update

I'm a still training. Just because you don't see me posting daily updates doesn't mean I've turned into a soft out of shape person! I've been going pretty well the last several weeks since the last time I posted here. Progress being made in all areas! Here's the skinny:

• Handstands, a slight change in head position has increased my average hold time by a few seconds and i'm balancing with less effort. A little post by Ido on his FB page brought something to light, I tried it and as usual he was spot on. He was talking about balance and equilibrium and brought up the fact that our sense of vision is very important and if we have no idea where the ground is it is more difficult to balance in a handstand, especially for someone who is still in the learning phase. I was practicing with my head in perfect alignment meaning that when in the HS I was looking straight across the room at the opposite wall. When I tilted my head down a touch so I could see the ground things became easier and I am getting some longer hold times as a result.

• Dynamic apneas. I had increase the distance I was training by a full pool length. And was resting for 1 minute 20 seconds between swims. I am now down to a one minute rest plus I am training with the monofin most of the time. See video below, I shot that yesterday and it's posted through a different account than my other videos.

• Deadlift. I have not trained this in years. I am doing 5 sets of 5 using a heavy weight with a slow eccentric the tempo is 1040. 1 second up zero pause and 4 seconds lowering. I follow that with 5 sets of ten using slightly less weight and a quick tempo of one second up one second down, no pause at top or bottom. On the heavy sets since I hadn't trained this for so long I started with a weight of 155. I've been gradually increasing and I'm now up to 245 for my heavy sets and backing off to 215 for the faster sets of 10. I'm liking the way it feels to lift heavy things off the ground!

• KB Swing combo. went from using a 16kg to a 20kg bell.

• TGU's Up from 3 reps per side using a 24kg to 5 reps per side.

• Injuries. Still having some pain in the right elbow. I'm laying off pull-ups much to my dismay but they really aggravate it so until it gets better there will be none of that.

I'l be switching some things up in a week or so.

I'm still here

It's been a while since I've updated so here we go:

For the last 6 weeks ago or however long it's been since I posted anything my training has been like this:

• MWF AM - Mobility / Flexibility and Equilibre. Plus some kettlebell training - Getups and swings.

• TT AM - Dynamic Apnea and Freestyle - PM Deadlifts

• Sat or Sun - Yoga

So to go through where I'm at with things. The mobility and flexibility are drills Ido turned me onto. There are a few circuits I am doing with things like cossack squats, straddle-ups, seated pancake good mornings, 5 step horse stance, line drills, wall runs etc... I pick a few and then do them in sequence for several rounds sticking to the same circuit for 6 weeks and then switching things up. I'm still on the handstand mission and I'm making slow progress with that work. QDR's are really coming along and I'm working on a new variation of that exercise. I started doing TGU's with a 24kg bell and I'm up to 4 rounds on each side without stopping. Swings are one arm with a 20kg in a circuit doing regular hardstyle front swings then transitioning into lateral swings with the same arm, then switch arms and repeat finish with a 2 handed horn swing into alternating halo's and then repeat for 3 rounds. I was up to 5 rounds with a 16kg until switching to the 20. 

In the pool I was doing a pyrimid style interval training routine of two lengths underwater where the rest would decrease after comleteing a set # of rounds and then after peaking rest would increase. Now I've gone to doing 3 lengths underwater with a set amount of rest time. It's more difficult to do the intervals on a set time (as opposed to a set rest time) because of the odd # of laps and finishing at different ends of the pool. I will be syncing up the clocks eventually when I get a little more comfortable with the distance. I've been using bi-fins alternating with flutter and dolphin kicking on each workout. The monofin I ordered 3 weeks ago should be arriving this week from Finland (haha) where it was made. I've never used one so it should be interresting. 

Deadlifting 2 days a week. I started really light and I've been adding 10 pounds each week. Last week I broke 200lbs, I'm up to 205. I do 5 sets of 5 with a 1 secong up 4 seconds eccentric and I do 5 sets slightly lighter of 10 reps 1 second up 1 second down. Feels good to lift something heavy.

Yoga on the weekends, sometimes prasara flow yoga, sometimes a hot yoga class depending on how I feel. 

Rested, well maybe not so much

I just got back from another trip to the Bahamas. This time scuba diving off a live-aboard dive vessel. It was a 125 foot long diesel powered catamaran with a crew of 10 and 20 or so guests. I did a lot of diving and ate a lot of food! Surprisingly only weighed 2 pounds more when I returned home and that was more likely due to several glasses of wine each night.

Anyway, back into the swing of things this morning. Worked on some flexibility and mobility to start the morning then handstand training, QDR's and finished up with a 10 minute kettlebell swing combo. I'll stick with this routine for the remainder of the year. I'm going to have to look at my goals very soon for the next year, My handstand has stagnated and I don;t feel significant progress has been made over the last month or so. I'll have to re assess that aspect of my training. Hopefully after the launch of Ido's new website there will be a way I can learn some more from him on the HS. I'm thinking maybe a good 6 week cycle of deadlifts to start the new year is on the agenda. Nursing injuries has lead to some muscle loss. I feel pretty good now with just the one elbow bothering me a little bit. I would like to work on my conditioning as well keeping my 2 days (maybe 3) a week in the pool as well. I'm not sure at this point how many evening sessions I will be putting in. It all depends on other household projects I'm working on and of course my work schedule.

Week 6

Back in the cave again this morning. During the Holiday week I really kicked things into high gear getting in AM and PM workouts every day plus an additional swim workout which I really want to make part of my weekly routine. 2 days a week swimming is OK but I think 3 days will really speed up progress especially with the dynamic apneas I've been doing. I'm enjoying getting back to some basic kettlebell work for conditioning purposes, I've added a swing combination to the end of my M,W,F AM sessions. I started at 3 rounds last week and now I'm up to 5 rounds which takes roughly 10 minutes to complete. Not much else to report here, still nursing the right elbow a bit hoping it heals one of these days!

Week 5 report

I can definitely feel myself coming along with my current fitness routine / program or whatever you want to call it. Heading into the 5th week now after returning from my trip to the Blue Hole in the Bahamas. I had been planning on returning again for a late winter class but then last week I see MovNat is running a week long retreat in Costa Rica, one of my favorite places in the world.  So now I have a decision to make! It's win win either way, I know I'll get a lot out of either class. Right now I think I'm leaning towards MovNat.

Although I do feel I am making some progress in the pool I really think adding in a 3rd pool day would  help me to make gains quite a bit faster. The problem is when? It might just have to be on Saturday mornings or perhaps after work on Saturday. I'm going to see if I can implement that change during my next six week cycle. That cycle will run for two weeks and then I have another Bahamas trip, this time for Scuba diving. So I'll more than likely turn it into an 8 week cycle starting from day one again after I return from the trip.

Happy T-day in advance to everyone, don't eat too much!

Week 4 off to a good start

I saw a cool show in NYC last night "Fuerza Bruta"  It's a performance based show, sort of a mix of Blue Man Group, Stomp, with a dance party-like atmosphere! The music was awesome and you stood through the entire show (little over an hour) as the sets changed you had to move to different areas of the floor so they could set things up.

This is week four of my current routine. I definitely feel like some progress is being made on these exercises. My flexibility warmup is starting to get a little easier (Loaded Cossacks and Straddle-Ups). I'm making tiny little adjustments in the handstand trying to find that perfect balance point when I find it and stay there it feels great. My tendency is still to over compensate with the finger tips mostly which causes me to lose it. Last week I got in PM sessions on M,W,F. The PM is a Flow Fit session. Last week I did 10 rounds each night (level 4) this week I will increase that to 11 rounds.

Checking In

This is the 3rd week of my current routine and I am thinking I want to kick things up a notch with some additional PM sessions on M,W,F and throw in a session on one of the weekend mornings. The additional sessions will be nothing more than Flow-Fit and perhaps some yoga flow work.

Another change I had to make is that I discontinued the pull-ups and dips I was doing. I am still bothered by the movements in my right elbow, I thought I could get back to doing them but I think I'm just making things worse. I'll lay off for another month and test it again to see how it feels. In place of the ring dips and PU's I did a kettlebell swing combo that I haven't done in a while, good stuff. I'm liking getting the heart rate up a bit. I sort of miss that with all the gymnastics training Ive been up to over the last 10 months or so.

Today was one of those days where the handstand just wasn't clicking unfortunately, I'm feeling in a bit of a haze this morning for some reason, not sure why but my equilibrium was off and I couldn't get any significant hold times.

Training update

Heading along the same path as last week. I will be doing this same routine for five more weeks. I might not be able to get to the pool tomorrow because of Hurricane Sandy which is approaching the area now. It's crazy windy outside right now and supposed to get quite a bit worse as the day progresses. If I get lucky, don't lose power or have downed trees and power lines preventing passage to the pool I'll think of something else to do!

As far as this morning is concerned I'm liking what I'm doing with my handstand. I'm starting to get comfortable kicking up and not hitting the wall. I've made a few where there was no wall contact over the last few workouts and it's starting to happen more frequently. I'm looking forward to the day I pull myself away from the wall totally! My right elbow is still hurting a bit. Though it's nowhere near what I went through with the left side (which is better now) I REALLY feel it during pull-ups which I'm doing from rings. It also doesn't feel that great doing dips but the pull-ups are worse.

My pool work has been dynamic apnea with fins intervals. I do a pyramid of increased sets while decreasing rest and then half way through the workout the rest increases as the sets decrease. I start with two 50's on a minute then four 50's on 55 seconds, six 50's on 50 seconds, eight 50's on 45 seconds and then back down the ladder. So I'm doing thirty-two 50's total. That is followed by some freestyle training. The entire workout takes about an hour to do, it feels great when it's done!

I'm hoping to do some more freediving this winter or early spring. I'll definitely be making some trips to the quarry in PA next season!

Back from the hole and back in the cave

I returned Saturday from the Bahamas and Dean's Blue Hole where I was training with William Trubridge. I learned a lot, and got in a solid four days of freediving plus an epic day of freediving and spearfishing on the outer reefs. I fell short of my goal to hit the 100' depth. My maximum was 72' which I did on the second day. One of my problems was my ears. I had been sick for the 10 days prior to the trip so every time I came up from a dive I had tons of snot in my sinuses. There were many dives where I couldn't get past 45' because my ear(s) wouldn't equalize. I'm happy I exceeded my previous personal best but a little bummed I didn't hit the mark I though would be reachable. The other positive was that I got really good marks on my form which definitely improved during the 4 days. Overall it was a great experience and I'm contemplating a return this coming February.

Meanwhile back to my training. I started this morning getting back to what I was doing before I left. For the next six weeks the program shakes out like this: M,W,F Mobility/Flexibility/Equilibre. I start out with basic joint prep which takes about 45 minutes. Next up a little flexibility, right now that would be cossacks with a 12kg bell, followed by straddle ups and then a 30 second round of wall runs. I repeat that circuit 3x with little to no rest, I was sucking wind this morning. Then on to wrist prep (full wrist pushups followed by first knuckle raises). After the wrist prep I do some handstand practice, 3 attempts followed by back bends 3X repeated. Then QDR's one hold alap on each side w/head off the floor. This is followed by some Jefferson Curls and repeated for 3 sets. I finish up with a combo or ring pull-ups and dips. Strict tempo on these doing 6 pull-ups followed by 3 dips and resting 120 seconds after each combo is completed and no rest between exercises. On Tu. and Thu. I will be back in the pool doing some dynamic apnea training tables and some freestyle intervals. I am going to try when I have time in the evening to work on some breathing and stretching exercises I learned at the freediving course that are designed to help expand the ribcage so you can get more air into the lungs.

Here's a picture of me and the lobster I caught while freediving on the last day of the course. I got him in 40 feet of water.

Slackin'

On posting here. Got a bit of the sickness last week into early this week. Finally starting to feel close to my old self. I came down with an upper respiratory infection. This is the most "sick" I've been since changing to a mostly paleo diet. It's been a good 3 to 4 years since I had anything this severe and what was nice is that on a scale of 1 to 10 this probably hit a 7. It was only really bad for like two days. I wound up missing two days of training because of it.

I picked up a new GoPro video camera. Love the super wide angle lens. This is a quick video I made of some of the training I did this week. I shot it yesterday and today.

Still going

I guess I forgot to write something here last week. Not much has changed workout-wise. MWF it's been an assortment of things from the Ido program. The handstand training (even though I'm down to 3X/week) Is going great. The 30 second mark has been hit a bunch of times, getting there at least 2 times a week. Last week I think I just may have hit a minute! If it wasn't a minute it was easily 45 seconds. Boy did that feel good. The QDR's are getting much easier as well. I have to start thinking about the one handed version at some point down the road.

My Tuesday and Thursday session have been in the swimming pool. I start with some dynamic apnea (fins and no fins). So far I've been able to hit 220 feet twice with fins. My maximum without fins has been 176 feet. The 220 makes me feel good because I am shooting for 100 feet deep coming up soon at the training in Dean's Blue Hole. I will be so stoked if I can hit 100 feet there! I've also been swimming freestyle for cardio. I'm up to 50 laps over about a 20 minute time span. I start out with descending sets with a descending rest period to accumulate 28 laps. An then I swim a bunch of 2-lap sets on a minute until I hit the mark of 50 laps.

Lots of time spent in the water over the weekend. Saturday on scuba off of Block Island and then yesterday in the Sound teaching a class in the morning and then spearfishing in the afternoon for a few hours. I can not believe how clean the water was in the Sound yesterday even though we had a North wind. an easy 15 feet. It was nice to be able to see the bottom while on the surface breathing from a snorkel.