kentcowgill.org/blog

So it seems that nearly every time I write about what I plan to do or what I'd like to do in the near future, I do just about everything in my subconscious power to not do exactly that. And if I just shut up about it, I tend to do what I intend to do.

I actually did Plyometrics Tuesday night like I intended to do, but I think I got a fairly late start on it. Now I know I have indeed been squatting deeper ad jumping higher - my quads and glutes were sore for days.

Wednesday turned into a surprise rest day. It probably had to do with the rest of my family coming into town for Thanksgiving.

Thursday morning I did back and biceps - luckily I was able to do this because we weren't cooking for Thanksgiving, so we didn't have everyone crammed in our tiny little kitchen and making me too self-conscious to work out. Instead, I snuck in my workout before everyone came over from the hotel.

And of course, we had Thanksgiving dinner Thursday evening. Because we weren't cooking, there wasn't any taste-testing the food during preparation all day, and there wasn't any real ability to eat way too much.

I did eat a lot - hey, it's Thanksgiving after all! - but I was still able to come home and later on and do the Ab Ripper X workout. And I improved a bit from the time before, instead of just 332 moves, I did 342. Still not at the top of my game, but still up there.

Friday I did 43 minutes of Yoga again - stopping just before Warrior 3 since there's no way I can do those.

Saturday morning I mixed it up a little. Since I could still feel some residual soreness from Plyometrics, I decided to completely skip the legs part of legs and back. Instead I did all the pull ups and chin ups interspersed with bits of Ab Ripper X. All tolled, I did 76 pull ups and 51 chin ups. That's no typo, that is one hundred and twenty seven chin to the bar moves in a single workout.

For Ab Ripper X I've finally got it to the point where I do every rep of every exercise as on the Ab Ripper video. Even the cross leg wide side ups - I did 50 of those, with a few rests thrown in. And when I say 50, I mean 50 the way I started counting them, which is in reality 25 the way the video counts them. And I'm also counting the V-up roll-up combos differently - I did 13 in my way of counting where the video calls that 25. So I'm finally at the magical 349 that the video counts, which in my way of counting the moves is 362. Whew.

I'm not going to talk about what I want or plan to do tonight. Because I want to do it, and I don't want another self unfulfilling prophecy.

The week is about half way over, and so far I haven't skipped a beat. Unless you count skipping physical therapy (which at this point, is just like an extra "bonus" workout twice a week).

But I did Plyometrics yesterday, Back and Biceps as well as Ab Ripper today.

I hope Plyometrics eventually gets easier. Maybe the reason it hasn't done that so far is that maybe, just maybe, I'm actually doing it a little harder, squatting a little deeper, jumping a little higher, covering more distance each time. Maybe. I'd like to think I am, anyhow.

The Back and Biceps routine is still tough - I just finished up a little bit ago and my arms are feeling like jelly. Of course my triceps are still sore from Monday, but I was almost expecting that. Again, I increased the weight on nearly everything, all except the "static curls", where I increased the reps to 16 "c'mon, everybody does 16 of these". A lot of the biceps moves are hard, and since there are so many of them I'm not increasing the weight a lot. Which is another great thing about my Bowflex SelectTech dumbbells , tiny increments! Instead of going from 25 pounds up to 30 pounds, I can increase only one side of them and get 27.5 pounds. It's a little unbalanced, but I think that's OK.

As far as the non pullup back stuff, I'm increasing the weight a little faster, since I've been starting light in order to take it easy my shoulder, and these back exercises don't hit the shoulder too hard.

Pullups are plugging along. 56 pullups, 19 chinups, up from 45 and 16, respectively. Again, I might've gotten to a higher number were it not for those blasted corn cob pullups. I got 6 of those, but just barely.

Ab Ripper X was good. I did a few extra of a few moves, with a slightly different mix than last time, for another 380 move abdominal/core workout.

I just need to keep this up.