Tag spartan

See all of em here. This is a damn fine photo shopping if I do say so myself.

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. 

Well I firmly stepped into my commitment for the Spartan Halloween contest by ordering my costume today.  The costume is only one part of the prep.  Starting next week I plan to begin my all October long ritual of not shaving.  I also plan to make a significant reduction in my carb intake to lean out as much possible as well as pick up the intensity on my non-300 workout days.  I need to get the abs showing as much as possible since I’m not going to develop tree trunk arms in 30 days. Yes I know, there is no real point in all of this, no real payoff except whatever self satisfaction I derive from it.  Sometimes that is enough.