Alright, Friday was brutal. Haha. I took one look at the workout and almost wanted to cry a little. I have a new nemesis and his name is Arnie. He will be defeated next time. ;)
For starters we had the choice of bench press or Pendlay rows (which I have yet to try) for either a 5 rep max or 3 sets of 5. I opted for bench press because I was kind of disappointed in myself from last time. I talked to the trainer and she gave me a really helpful piece of advice. She said when you attempt a max and fail (like I did last week) you shouldn’t attempt a max again for a few weeks. Instead you should work on increasing you 3 sets of 5 weight by a small amount because that is the best way to increase your overall max. Once you fail at a certain weight for 3 sets of 5, then you attempt a max again. I thought this was really helpful and I’m going to make a note to do this from now on.
I ended up doing 3 sets of 5 at 80lbs. Next week I’ll try 82lbs for 3 sets of 5. Week after I will try 85lbs at 3 sets of 5...and so on and so on until I fail. Then I’ll go back and try my 5 rep max. I think this little bit of extra structure is going to really help.
The second half the workout was “Arnie”. Arnie is just plain brutal and I actually only did half of that workout (to be fair, a lot of people only did half of that workout). The full Arnie looks like this:
21 Turkish get-ups, Right arm
50 Swings
21 Overhead squats, Left arm
50 Swings
21 Overhead squats, Right arm
50 Swings
21 Turkish get-ups, Left arm
Turkish get-ups suuuuuuck (note: in the video they use a dumbell, but we used a kettlebell). Big time. The right arm wasn’t so bad but the left arm was just awkward. I felt like I couldn’t move that way and my leg kept cramping. The kettlebell I used was only 15lbs, but that felt plenty heavy, trust me. The version of Arnie I ended up doing was:
10 Turkish get-ups, R-arm
25 swings
21 squats
25 swings
21 squats
25 swings
10 Turkish get-ups, L-arm
It was plenty hard, let me tell you. The worst part was easily the Turkish get-ups (the rest actually wasn’t too bad). I finished in 12:18. The most shocking thing for me was the difference between my left and right side during the get-ups. My left arm was shaking for a while after I finished. It was kind of remarkable.
And that was Friday’s workout. I hope everyone had a great weekend. I’ll post more later.
- N
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