Saturday Morning Workout: Weights & Swimming

My daughter Hannah and I hit the weight room this morning for a key workout.  We've been working chest / shoulders / triceps on Tuesdays and back / biceps on Saturdays, but it's gotten us a bit unbalanced.  We've got more time on the weekends than we do for our mid-week workouts, leaving us struggling to keep our overall workload balanced.  I've been wanting to switch it up, and today we finsally did.  We put in a full-body workout this morning, turning it into a marathon session and trying to break through some barriers--both physically and emotionally.

John Cena covered M&F this month.

It went well.  We took a workout from this month's Muscle & Fitness magazine--starting on page 110, "Starter's Guide 2016"--and we made some modifications to suit our own needs.  Hannah is twelve, and as you can probably imagine, she's not lifting heavy just yet.

Warm-Up
 - Arm circles
 - Light full-body stretching
 - Spider-Man with rotation (x5)
 - Body weight squats (x10)
 - Push-ups (x10)
 - Jumping Jacks (x30)

We usually warm up with a mix of yoga and stretching, so this was a little more active than the norm.  The Spider-Man movement is not wholly dissimilar to our normal Sunrise Salutes, but the rest of this was more resistance-oriented and less movement focused than the way we normally work.  As a consequence, I pushed stretching throughout the rest of the workout.

Spider-Man with Rotation.
Start from the front-leaning rest and do this.

Weight Training
 - Standing Military Press / Goblet Squats
 - One-Arm Dumbbell Row / Russian Twists
 - Lat. Pull Down / Romanian Dead Lift
 - Incline Dumbbell Press / Walking Lunges
 - Lying Triceps Press

We always do supersets, combining diverse exercises to create a better full-body exerience and to reduce total rest time.  The idea here is that we want to keep moving in order to make weight training a better aerobic activity.  So you do Military Press and Goblet Squats together, resting your shoulders while you squat and your legs while you do the military press but keeping your heart moving the whole time.  That's a good way to go for endurance athlets, and it's the best way I know get in, get your work done, and get out.  Time is our most precious commodity.

We did three sets of each superset, with Hannah doing 12 reps of a light to medium weight and me doing a pyramid set--10 reps / 8 reps / 12 reps, going heavier on the 8-rep (middle) set.  I'm still not going super-heavy at any point overall, but we're maybe six weeks into our program, and I feel good when I work hard.

That's doesn't suck.

Sally taught PLYOGA while we lifted, and we finished before her class let out.  I wasn't watching the clock, but I think we were in the gym for maybe forty-five minutes.  That's a good bit of work for twelve-year-old Hannah.


Swimming
My goal this week was to put in about 100 points overall.  Because of the short week and the weather, I knew it was gonna be chaotic trying to get points on the bike, so I put in 2800 yards in the pool on Monday.  That left me needing something like ten points in the pool this morning, so I did a single 1000-yard set.

 - 200 Swim / Kick / IM / Pull / Swim

That felt good, and it was nice not to have to push it after spending an hour in the weight room.

I've got to put in 2.5 miles tomorrow, presumably on the treadmill given the weather.