My Legs be Hurting

Before I whine about my legs, I am sending out a belated Happy Birthday to my brother-in-law Jason. His 27th birthday was yesterday. I told him Happy Birthday yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to post it! We went out tonight for his birthday dinner and ate some outstanding food at Longhorn's. Great choice.


My legs are killing me. I started working out at the gym on base yesterday. I couldn't go until I had a form signed by my doctor saying I was OK to work out and listed any limitations I may have. I went to the doctor Tuesday. I get 3 hours of paid workout time each week. Nice, huh? Today's workout was pretty brutal. I probably should have held off on such a demanding workout only 2 days into getting back into working out, but I didn't. I follow the workout program Crossfit. I really enjoy it and highly recommend it if you are searching for a routine. Well, routine probably isn't the best word because there is no set pattern. To me, that keeps it enjoyable and challenging. Usually it's 3 days on and then a rest day. They post a new WOD (workout of the day) each day. You don't have to follow that exactly and some exercises are hard/impossible without certain equipment. There are several substitutions exercises for those, though. I'm about 2 weeks behind if going by the calendar. This helps me because we have 2 gyms, and I can plan in advance which gym to go to because of differing equipment in each gym, as well as plan for substituting exercises. Sometimes, you just can't do the workout as prescribed, so you just pick another one and do that. They all hurt, unfortunately.


I like it because it pushes you to do the most work in the fastest time possible. That really works your muscles and your endurance at the same time. I have a long way to go in both. Here are my workouts from the past 2 days:


Monday:
5 rounds for time:
10 pull-ups
20 push-ups
30 sit-ups
40 squats (body squats, harder than you think!)


Actual workout was 5 rounds for time:
20 pull-ups
30 push-ups
40 sit-ups
50 squats


For time means do it as fast as possible with as little rest as possible. Rest time counts against you. 1 round = 1 time all the way through, every rep. Since it was my first day back, I didn't time myself. I was slow. It looks easy enough, but if you add up what you did, it's 50 pull-ups, 100 push-ups, 150 sit-ups, 200 squats (100,150,200,250 if you did it as RX'd). That's a lot of work and you are doing it as fast as possible, so you're getting a great workout. Also note that you don't touch a weight - this workout is all body weight. Great and challenging for everyone.


Tuesday:
My workout - 3 rounds for time:
95# Deadlift, 15 reps
95# Hang Power Clean, 12 reps
95# Front Squat, 9 reps
95# Push Jerk, 6 reps


My time: 23 min 33 sec. Very slow. My 1st round was in less than 5 minutes. The last 2 killed me. At least I finished. I haven't been that happy to do a workout, either. I also haven't been that beat up by workout in a long, long time. And I did the easy one.


RX'd (prescribed) workout - 5 rounds for time:
135# Deadlift, 15 reps
95# Hang Power Clean, 12 reps
135# Front Squat, 9 reps
135# Push Jerk, 6 reps


Brutal. There are some people who are doing this in under 17 minutes. Maybe I'll get there one day. Maybe.


So, you can see why my legs are gone. Thankfully tomorrow hold weighted pullups only. Only. It seems hard, and it is, but like I said there are scaled workouts. The best place for those are Brand X Crossfit, an affiliate in California who posts scaled workouts.



Enough of me rambling about the program. Take some time and look around the website. If you don't know what a exercise is, look at their exercise/demo page. They have everything there. Check out the videos. They have men who came in in their 50's and couldn't do a pushup who are know knocking out pullups, cleaning heavy weight, etc.


Well, I had some more stuff to type out but my computer sucks and is being retarded tonight. Blogger lost half of what I typed when my browser crashed. I need to upgrade the RAM, bad. I fear the hard drive may be nearing its end, too. Hopefully this computer will hand on a little while longer. I'm sure you were tired of reading about my workout attempts, anyway.


Have a good evening.