Here's Another Ten Bitch, Do it Again

For a little while, Friday was our DE Lower Body Day, but we didn't really feel like we were getting too much out of it, so we upped the volume slightly on our other low body day, and made Friday a "conditioning day with a lower body focus." Which basically means we find something that seems like it might be fun or interesting, and try to make it so miserable that we wish we were doing anything else.

Squats

45x10

135x5

185x5

225x20

I wanted to do this because I wanted to work on my form some more, and because it is difficult. I chose 225 as a weight that I felt was close to my 10RM. I did the first 10 as a straight set, and though the 10th rep was tough, I think I could have gutted out one or two more without resting, so next time I will add 5 or 10 lbs. However, after the 10th rep, I started stopping between reps to take a breath or two, and quickly realized that resting with 225 on your back can hardly be called resting. By the end, it was just something that I had to tell myself I would finish no matter what and force myself to rise from the bottom. It was a good feeling to get through that.

This was followed by

Circuit (30 secs work, 30 secs rest)

Alternating Swings

One Arm Snatches (each side)

Windmill (each side)

Front Squat (twice, holding weight on a different side each time)

Push Press (each side)

Sumo Jump Squats

If you're counting that's 10 total movements, so it took us 10 minutes, and left us pretty wrecked. I did the whole thing with my new (16 kg) kb, and Sean used a 40 lb db. I shot for a minimum of 20 reps each set, and pretty much hit that, except that I kept losing count a lot. Also, I didn't count on the windmills, just tried to hit the form correctly. I got the idea for this circuit from this book
which I recently bought. Once you cut through the hyperbole and the piss poor editing, I like the book because it has a lot of different ideas for ways to structure complexes, circuits, and other high intensity type work. They are probably ideas I could come up with myself, but I at least find it nice to have them already thought out for me.