What Was Your Work Out Today?

On the water again (glassy water, reflecting bright Fall leaves, so lovely), rowing bow in the double, for 6955m.

Speaking of repetition. 😉

Morning session of Team Body Project's new "Totally", followed by a 13-minute outdoor mile "cool-down" walk.
Then hopped straight onto Zoom for another day of Kindergarten class instruction!!

I did an hour yoga pre-breakfast.

It's my birthday, so I'm hoping I can get a climb in over lunch. It's not rained yet today, so it may actually be possible. It it does rain, I'll fingerboard and lift instead.

Hope you have/had a great birthday, @drmwc - best wishes!

Happy B-Day Matt!

Same boring stuff for me today. 55 minutes of easy cardio, split between LateralX and AD Pro. Back rehab later today.

killed another 1,500 meters in the pool whilst flirting with the hot girl in the next lane over, so 30 minutes cardio plus 35 ego lifting

Today's morning session was Team Body Project's "Complete Low".
I just crunched in a brief one-mile walk during my break time. Woof!! The Autumn weather is speedily arriving! Rainy one here today, but still a grand day to rejoice -- especially in movement outdoors.

Squat
265@3
305@3
345@7
Defecit deads 2x5
Wide grip cable row 3x15
Dumbbell pullover 3x15
Close grip lat pulldown 3x5-8
Preacher curl 3x15
Shrugs 2x10
Reverse hyper 3x10

Today, more on-water rowing, bow in the double, with my favorite stroke rower (don't tell the others, I like them to all think they're special, which they are - in different ways 😉).

Garmin said 7672m, and some of that is right, because we spun, took a little extra upstream loop, and spun again to row back downstream, in order to stay closer to our young'un in the single for safety reasons. (It was cold = lwer 30s, still some frost on the dock ramp.)

The little (redacted) then took that at as challenge, and shot around the bend at speed, so we spent quite a few hundred meters after the bend saying "Do you see J? Where is J?". 🤣 Finally caught him at the downstream bridge where we normally spin, and gave him a good-natured bad time about it.

However . . . the 7672 is overstated a bit, because I forgot to stop it recording until after we'd carried the single, double, and (in my case) an armload of 8 sculls up to the boathouse. That's exercise, too, right? 😆

It was another lovely day, bright Fall leaves, light wind making a few riffles but nothing major, not so cold once we were moving, especially in the sun (but I wore my fleecy pogies!) I have the feeling we're in the last sweet bits of rowing season, so will keep enjoying it as long as we can. Most years, we make it into November, but it varies. Some folks row as long as there's open water, but I start worrying once the dock is routinely icy, and lose confidence about the singles' safety usually even before that, with the cold air/water.

MikePfirrman wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Another Thursday on the Concept 2 rower, same ol' 3 x (2k on, 2' off/CD), totaling 6651m, all zone 3 & below, low spm; followed by 52' messing with dumbbells.

The fact that you're 9 years older than me and I struggle to keep up with your workload is hardly hum-drum stuff. Nice work!

Aw, that's really sweet, especially coming from you, since I know you know the ins and outs of rowing machine workouts! But, man, I'm not even coming close to your routine volume and intensity ( . . . not even trying 😆).

For example, withness:

I did 8 minutes X 4 reps today -- half on the LateralX and half on the Assault Bike. 2 minutes active recovery between each set. Around 600 calories in 40 minutes. Finished 75 of my 100 pushups already as well and some makeup back rehab. I've been doing 100 lateral raises as well 3X a week with really light weights (on Sunday, Tuesday and Friday -- Tues and Friday are the hard cardio interval days as well). Still don't want to get back to overhead presses just yet with the back, so lateral raises and pushups are keeping my shoulders from atrophying.
(snip)

😉 I'll just keep plugging away at my SS, over here. 😆

I am considering, though, whether to back-order some kind of indoor bike, in the hope that it might actually show up in time to provide some Winter variety.

MikePfirrman wrote: »

@AnnPT77 - that would be great. I really loved the Rogue Echo but it was my wife's pick after the C2. She wanted the AD Pro, which is great, but it's a Schwinn. Rogue Echo is a full body workout that I think you'd like since you like the rower. Great compliment to rowing. I know a lot of strong indoor rowers that love it (and a few OTW ones too).

It's a digression here, but: I'd actually think about C2 ergbike, not because I think it's special or even abstractly good, but because I like their service & ecosphere and would appreciate the flexibility for the occasional challenge I participate in at C2 (I know it's 2 for 1 meters).

Since I'm a procrastinator, it may not happen at all!

I have a bike trainer a friend gave me, but am deeply lazy, and don't want to fuss with my bike, or with getting a "trainer tire" on it for Winter. Too fiddly. In my routine, even though my history is the more intense intervals of spin classes, at home I think I'm more likely to use a bike for easy steady state (maybe even while reading or something!), and do any (unlikely! 😆) home interval or intense work on the rowerg.

Fitnesswise, I think some lower steady state would pay off for me - I'm seeing goodness from my summer trail/road biking on the hybrid, which only barely moves the needle on my HR. (Last ride at Kensinton Metropark averaged < 50% HR reserve, peaked at around 65% 😆). I tend to push on the rowerg: It's been a huge psychological victory for me to routinely go above 2:30 at all, to the 2:40 max/low rating/<70% HR kind of stuff I've been doing lately. Feels like giving up, kinda. (However, that makes it more sustainable for me as a *daily* practice, realistically. Sigh.)

I know myself well enough to know that I need to motivate myself by fun and squishy subjective engagement . . . I won't mostly do things just because they're theoretically good for me, or in service of some abstract fitness goal (if not training to race, which is not in the cards). Any spare change I've got for that unfun sort of thing is already spent on strength workouts (ugh 😆).

I do appreciate the bike recommendations, though: I'd already planned to check out those options you suggest based on your previous comments.

Not sure I want full body - I already deprecate lower body strength (weight) workouts for recovery reasons given the rowing priority, maybe I'd be looking more for some lower body easy steady state cardio on strength days, since I'm emphasizing upper body push (and other underutilized planes), to improve balance in upper body. (there are points of fragility because of all the years of just rowing, I think.) If I reach a point where I can feel a little more well-rounded in that way, I might take an on-ramp to more conventional full-body strength programs . . . or I might chuck the whole strength training thing altogether, as I've done sooooo many times before. 😆 We'll see.

The above may sound angst-y, but I'm not really very stressed about any of it. At this point, my focus is on health, sustainability, independence . . . and I feel OK about where I am, as I look around me, pretty content to maintain and maybe make some incremental improvement here and there. Actually, besides maybe getting in a bit more lower-intensity SS over the Winter, I think my biggest payoff might be to spend a bit more time routinely on yoga/stretching kind of stuff. Old bod is kinda creaky, here and there. 😆

Oops, sorry, just yammering. 😐 Nobody in my personal life really gets this stuff. It's a mix of younger more "GoGoGo" folks, and very sedentaries my own age, mostly, with a few exceptions. I feel kind of out in the middle, wanting to be kinda active and strong, but without fitness-focusing my whole life and schedule. 🤷‍♀️