I jumped back into P90X again and did the chest and back workout on Monday morning. As you know, it is a lot of body weight exercises. I really like the workout.
At lunch, to continue to rest the legs – I have no kick after all – I swam 3000 yards in the pool. This was an easy swim with just 2 x 1500. My times were a little off from my best (less than a minute) but the swim felt good. I need to get in the pool on a more regular basis and pick my swim up. I am ready to get in the open water!
Tuesday I did my last speed session before the marathon and I did it on the treadmill. I had done a similar workout a few weeks ago and this one seemed better. After an easy mile warm-up I did 6 repeats of quarter miles at a 5:42 minute per mile pace (10.5 MPH). Now, the treadmill takes a second or two to get up to speed and a second or two to come back down but it was a solid workout. The recovery consisted of quarter miles at an 8:00 minute per mile pace. The total was 5 miles in 40 minutes with 3 of those mile taking 20 minutes.
After the speed session I did my pull ups.
About 8 years ago I set a goal for myself. At the time I could not do ANY pull ups. I had just started to embrace fitness and a healthy lifestyle. I laid down the gauntlet and wanted to be able to do 30 pull ups (I quickly revised the goal to be 30 pull ups in 3 sets). I used to run around this park that had a jungle gym and I would stop on many of my laps and try to crank out as many as I could. I would then walk a short path for about a minute and crank out some more. I tried all variations of the number of repetitions. Once I was able to get 10 pull ups in a row I add a few more. Maybe a combination of 12 / 10 / 8 would be the secret or maybe 14 / 10 / 6. Nothing worked. I remember the first time I was able to get 20 reps and then 22. I was stuck for a long time.
About 3 years ago I finally achieved my goal. I got my 30 reps in 3 sets. Now that has become my bench mark for my strength to weight ratio. I started doing them again this past month. Eight pounds ago I was topping out in the high twenties.
Twice this past week I have had success -2 out of 2 actually. The first time was 15 / 9 / 6 and then yesterday after my speed work I got the 10 / 10 / 10 (and then added 5 more in a fourth set).
It might be time to try the 40 in 4 – I love a challenge!
Wow...congrats on meeting your pull-up goal! I think the most I've ever been able to do was 4...ha ha! I haven't tried to do them in a long time though, so it would be interesting to see how many I can do. I might just have to find out! :)
ReplyDelete