Exercise Log 11.13.13 (Ab & Fun Day, No Cardio)

An unusual and refreshing workout today. I had ab & fun day, which is generally just a day to do development exercises, nothing specific, but core work if I fail to find something to do. While I pondered how to use the day, I thought up a brutal ab exercise and executed it. I did 10 reps of each of these exercises: ab crunches, elbow to knee crunches, toe touches (upper ab exercise), 45 degree jackknifes and lower body raises (keeping the shoulders on the ground and raising the pelvis and legs straight up, I don’t really know the name of this exercise). A brutal set of 50 reps that I repeated for 3 sets, I swear if an exercise ever made me consider crying during, it was this one.

To set the burn in for the ab workout, I used a declined bench like a roman chair and did suspended ab crunches for 3 sets. This was pretty painful and I started to fail, but I felt good about that. After having done some ab exercises I decided what sort of workout I wanted to do next, some goblet squats. Goblet squats I feel are really good for developing squat form, and just in general is a great exercise. First I did a round with no weight, just to practice stretching my hips and dipping low, then I squatted with a 50lb dumbbell and worked up in 5 pound increments to 70lbs. That was quite a lot of reps (50) and I felt like it really helped my squat driving force.

One thing I had a lingering feeling about from arm day was that my biceps didn’t get a good enough workout, which is a fair concern given that the only real bicep heavy day is arm day, and arm day is split between biceps and triceps. Triceps on the other hand, get a good workout out of chest and back day on top of arm day. So I decided to do a few bicep exercises today, with some preacher curls (3 sets, heavy weight), chin-ups (4 sets about 8 reps each) with a few static chin-up holds for 30 seconds to set the burn even deeper and finally some bare barbell curls (3 sets, 12 reps each). I’m a bit annoyed because I know there was another bicep exercise here before the preacher curls, but I completely forget what it was. Hrm.

That was it, felt like it was a pretty good workout all said. Hit a few key points and got a move on. No cardio today will save some of my running energy for the weekend.

On a somewhat related to personal fitness note I got me some awesome new shoes, Reebok Crossfit Nano 2.0’s, a shoe designed for crossfit enthusiasts. Crossfit is a high intensity exercise plan with a lot of lifting, aerobix and gymnastics which means the shoes are made to be very flexible and multifunction. Flat soles make good platforms for lifting, it’s flexible and breathable for running, basically the whole kazoo, we’ll see if it lives up to the hype!