Construction, coaching

Last night Ali had asked me to walk her through an upper body workout.  Her training for distance running/tri’s is very cardio heavy but unfortunately doesn’t do much to make her stronger physically, especially in her upper body.  So when she got home from work I pulled out our assortment of dumbbells and walked her through a routine.

For the most part I tried to have her superset between opposing body parts.  It is the most time efficient and beneficial way to do a weight workout since the limited rest between sets also works your endurance.  I put her through around a half hour work out.  She was pretty spent at the end of it.  I’m sure she will be sore today.  I think it is a smart move by her to want to diversify her routine a bit to include strength training.

Last night I also made my last attempt at the March Bar-barian challenge.    In my previous attempts I held myself above the bar for 1:05 and then 1:06.  I was hoping to break the 1:15 mark.  Unfortunately my muscles failed at 1:09.  It’s an improvement but a very minor one.  Hell some of the young scrawny kids on the forum were able to up their times by 30 seconds or more in the span of a month.  This month’s challenge is max continuous straight bar dips.  I’ll be giving that a shot for sure.

The big item this weekend is I plan to construct my parallel bars.  They will be built in a manner similar to my existing pull up station, 4×4’s sunk in concrete with a 1.5″ or 2.0″ diameter pipe threaded through them.  I plan to pick up the materials to build the station after work.  Of course I will document the process much in the same way I did with the pull up station. Also much like the pull up station and almost every other project I undertake, the blueprint is totally in my head and will be modified and improvised dynamically as the work unfolds.

My physical activity this weekend will be hampered by my hurting heel.  The back of my right knee feels less gimpy today than the day before but my right heel is still painful.  I am 90% sure it is the start of planar fascitis so I need to nip it in the bud before it gets chronic.