Tag 300 work out

An anniversary quietly passed by, the one year anniversary of me starting the 300 work out. Much like World of Warcraft, I never would have expected to be doing the 300 work out for a full year.  First of all it was so damn hard, harder than any exercise routine I ever had tried.  I also figured it was so hard that hurting myself doing it was pretty much inevitable, which would lead to me bagging it.  Then there is just the burn out factor, doing the same thing for that period of time gets old. Yet, here I am still plugging away.

When I was doing the work out twice a week and wearing a watch to get my time down as far as possible I was borderline crazy about it.  Much to Jeremy’s dismay, I haven’t worn a watch since the Spartan Halloween 07 contest ended. After a year, the week to week improvements are minimal.  I have been doing the full 300 reps for well over 6 months at this point.  I do however continue to make small improvements.

Some exercises I break down into smaller sets with very short breaks in between.  For example I used to break my 50 dead lifts into a 1st set of 30, small break, 10, small break and then the final 10.  Now I do a first set of 35, quick break then 15.  With my push ups I used to pause in the up position briefly at 40 and 45 reps, now I go straight through to 50. The floor wipers at first took me up to 5 mini sets until I eeked out my 50th rep, now I do it in 3 sets with small breaks at 28 and 40 reps.  Likewise the final 25 pull ups could take me as many as 4 sets to get through if I was really beat, now I do it in two with a small break in between.

I expected to get some fitness results when I started the 300.  I didn’t expect the degree of results that I acheived.  When I started the routine I was in the mid 190’s on the scale.  Now I tip them at between 175 and 180 pounds.  When I cut back to doing the routine one time a week in November I expected to gain a few pounds and maybe lose some of that fitness level.  Surprisingly I didn’t lose a thing and have actually lost a few pounds since then at the same time leaning out even further.  It seems like I have my muscle mass at a point where it wants to keep my body weight where it is.  I still eat pretty clean but nowhere to the degree I was when I was preparing for the contest where some dinners consisted of little more than a can of tuna and a big glass of water.

I guess that is the biggest reason I continue to do it.  It works for me.  It has gotten me into the best shape of my adult life and keeps me there.  That and I still enjoy some of the weird looks I get at the gym as people stare back into my corner watching me do rep after rep after rep.

23:20 for my 300 today.  The clock has become my mortal enemy.

I’m happy the Red Sox won the series.  It’s impressive that they swept a team that had won 21 of their last 22 games.  I didn’t watch one second of any of the games.

A bunch of the guys that are in the Spartan Halloween challenge got together for a party over the weekend.  Evidently a lot of them know/work together out in California.  Some funny pictures are here.

Speaking of funny, how about an extreme beard close up??!!

Jeremy and I normally talk back and forth about our fitness routines.  He has been intrigued by my 300 routine and has even tried it once or twice himself.  On Friday I was describing the various exercises and how with some of them I pause to take small 10-15 second breaks in the middle of them.  I told him how I was only 16 reps from that magical 300 I have been working towards since the beginning of April. He suggested that I should just throw in whatever additional rest I needed and add those last 16 reps in and then just work at getting the time down from there.  After a brief pause, I agreed, I should do that! Today I did.

My energy level was not high due to a weekend of hard work.  My shoulders were especially tired. It didn’t matter, I had my goal laid out.  Just as I was getting my stuff ready, I was annoyed to see the trainer the gym employs back in my room, stealing my Reebok steps for his “client”, a young girl he does nothing but flirt with the entire time he is training her.  He is the worst trainer I ever have seen at the gym.  With this cute young girl he flirts constantly and is very attentive.  However when I have seen him with other people like older folks and fat guys he acts totally disinterested and just directs them to machines and tells them to do some reps while he looks around the room, checks his phone, etc… He is really bad.

Well anyway I knew there was going to be an issue when I got to the box jump/floor wiper sections of my routine since I use the steps for both of them.  I started the torture anyway.  When It was time to do the box jumps they were still on the steps so I mixed up the order of the exercises for the first time ever.  I did the one handed clean and presses after push ups. By the time I got done with those, which were a mighty struggle with my tired shoulders, the happy couple had moved on to other things.  I grunted out 50 box jumps and then set up for the wipers.  I threw in one extra mini-break to get to 50 reps.  Sweat was running down my arms as I finished.  All that was left were the last 25 pull ups.  

I was so tired already, I was taking an extra long break before starting.  I knocked out 15, dropped off the bar and rested for a bit.  I hopped back on and was able to get another 5 before the muscles started seizing so I dropped off again.  Another panting rest period and then back on the bar to get the last 5 reps. 296, 297, 298, 299, 300! I stopped the watch which read a disappointing 30:32 but I didn’t care all that much.  The routine got thrown out of whack from the lousy trainer so I think I would have easily been sub 30 if things went normally.  It felt good to hit the number, the number that 7 months ago seemed impossible to hit when I struggled to squeak out 156 reps.  Damn, I finally did it. Now I just have to get my time down.

I plan to continue on doing the 300 for the foreseeable future.  I like the changes in my body since implementing it.  As tough as it is, the effort is worth the satisfaction of completing the routine.  I like the looks from people at the gym, wondering what the hell the hairy faced guy back in the corner is doing.