What Was Your Work Out Today?

KB Simple and Sinister
100 swings
10 getups

Yoga
Chins, Dips and HSPU

I'm probably only going to get in my lunch walk today. I was going to go for a trail ride this evening but I totally spaced that my 13yo has a jazz band concert this evening.

Lower Power day in the weight room, featuring deadlifts. All of my lifts, upper and lower body, are now up to pre-injury weights...with the exception of deadlift, which caused the injury in the first place. I'm being far more cautious in bringing that weight up.

Some slacker-tude lately.

Saturday, clean up and open house day at the rowing club boathouse, so I did quite a bit of physical stuff (carrying & washing boats, chiefly), but no workout. Sunday, usual rest day. Monday, had a physical therapy session but didn't manage my other time well so didn't get in a workout. 🙄

Today was too nice to pass up, so I went for a bike ride. Water level finally dropped enough to un-flood the trail at a highway underpass, so I rode the river trail up into the city center, then took a side branch to a park across from the rowing club area, for a total of not quite 22 miles, all easy pace.

At one creek-side meadow, besides the usual numerous geese (some pairs with fuzzball babies), there were 10 whitetail deer feeding when I first went by. On the return pass, they were all lying down under a tree. (They herd up some in the Winter, but we should be reaching the point where they usually break up into smaller groups.) I did see one by itself on another stretch of the trail.

Here they are being tiny dots in the distance, roughly under the trees at right and center.



Supposed to get some rows in later this week, in quads. Water's still cold to get singles out, for my tastes. Soon, I think.

Hour elliptical, 5.85 miles.

Wasn't sure how well today's session would go, considering I was short sleep. I actually was preparing to go to bed early, until my wife came to me in a panic saying she couldn't find her cat (who had missed dinner, already abnormal) and was freaking out that it had somehow made it outside and was now vulnerable to the foxes and coyotes which roam the area. So what should have been an extra hour sleep turned into a two+ hour search through every single crevice and possible hiding spot from attic to basement looking for this critter. Do you realize how many places a cat can hide in your home? Long story short, we eventually found the cat safely inside the house in the furnace room (should not have had access, but hey, curiosity and all that), and I finally got to bed with a tick under five hours to sleep before my gym alarm. Thought seriously about skipping the gym and getting that hour sleep before driving straight to work, but I wanted my Wednesday post-cardio donut run, so I went anyway, lol. Pace, calorie burn, heart rate were all within norm, even if it felt like I needed just a touch more exertion to make it happen. But I got it done, and those donuts tasted awfully nice during my hour commute to work, lol.

Near perfect weather, so we got out on the river this morning, rowed just under 7k, with me in bow rowing and steering. We're all working on de-rusting our skills after the Winter hiatus.

I'm anticipating we'll start into our regular M-W-F-Sa (weather permitting) group rowing schedule sometime in the next couple of weeks . . . just need some warmer night temps to get the water warmed up. I'm so ready.

Why so cautious about water temp? Once we're going full bore, some of the group will be out in singles. An old rower saying about racing singles is "it's not if you flip, it's when you flip". The racing shells are usually about a 12 inches wide (low 30s centimeters) at the waterline. Rowers dying after a flip isn't nearly rare enough (in the US, certainly), and cold water is usually a factor when it happens.

It's much more difficult to flip a quad . . . usually only happens if there's a collision with a power boat, or every rower in the boat does something very wrong simultaneously. Right now, we're making up quads of quite experienced rowers. I've witnessed many dozens of singles flip, only seen a quad flip once (new rowers all did something wrong simultaneously), and heard about one other case on our river. I and another rower flipped a double one April in Michigan. We had a coach out with us who fished us out quickly, vs. the usual self-rescue scenario, but it still wasn't fun.

Upper body hypertrophy day in the weight room, lots of sets of 12 reps. Easy reps to start each set, but if you slow your pace down, those last couple reps remain impressively difficult to complete.

Felt a twinge in my recovering elbow tendon, which made me a tad nervous. But it wasn't when moving a heavy weight, nor when gripping and pulling. Rather it was while doing lateral DB raises focusing on my side delts (shoulder) with very light weights. In this case it wasn't mass, but physics, which was putting undue strain on my elbow.

The physics of gravity says when you hold a weight at the end of a length (such as my arm), the torque increases very rapidly with either increased weight or with increased distance. This means holding a heavy weight close to my ribs can have the same torque on the shoulder/arm as a light weight held with my hand stretched out as far as it'll go. Because I'm working the side shoulder, my arm was raised out to my side. With my wrist facing down (back of hand facing up), my wrist extensor muscles have to work extra hard to keep my wrist straight. And those extensor muscles are connected to...my elbow tendon.

I have some thoughts I can use in future workouts to try to alleviate this strain while I continue to rehab (which from my reading can take up to a year to fully heal). I can still do the lateral raises, but twist my wrist so my palm faces forward is the obvious choice. I can also seek out one of the machines which has me brace my elbow against a padded arm while raising my arm, no gripping required thus no elbow torque. Not sure if my gym has one of these machines (I've seen them in other gyms). I want to avoid upright rows.

Got a week before repeating this workout to figure it out.

nossmf wrote: »

@AnnPT77 your post reminded me of my old Boy Scout days earning merit badges in canoe and rowboat. One of the requirements was to paddle/oar out to the middle of a lake, intentionally swamp your craft, and demonstrate how to return the craft to normal floating and then climb back in. We were wearing life vests and were not belted in, not sure how that compares to your experience. But the water was always very cold, since our camp lake was fed from a stream originating with the mountain snow/ice pack. We always said it was a glacier-fed lake, which is not far wrong.

Camp staff kept a roaring fire on the side of the lake for boys to warmup next to upon returning to the shore. Nobody was allowed in the lake until this fire was up and running.

We have our learn-to-row class members flip a single intentionally and get back in, after one of the coaches demos (with the other coach or experienced assistants on the dock with the class members to point out other details or answer questions). They do it in a recreational single (wider), but the method is the same. Also, it's late June by then, and the water's much warmer. There are quite a few involuntary flips during the class, usually, too.

That process of getting back in is tiring but achievable. The issue is that cold takes a person's coordination (and possibly mental clarity) quite rapidly, so that's a worry. There's also a potential shock effect from hitting very cold water while working very hard. People can gasp and drown.

Most rowing (in shells) is done without a life jacket. Standard PFDs, even kayaking ones, increase flip risks. (It has to do with interaction of the PFD with the hands or oar handles.) People who row in cold water (safely) usually rely on pontoon-like floats that attach to the riggers (the bars out to the side of the boat where the oars fasten into the oarlocks), dry suits, and specialized (expensive) PFDs. Larger clubs will put safety launches on the water with the rowers. Ours is a small club.

We're not belted in to the boat, though we usually are wearing shoes that are attached to the boat. When the shoes are properly configured (important), they're designed to automatically release the rower's feet if the boat flips. The boats have buoyancy, float even when flipped. Even the oars float enough to be an aid.

Waiting for the water temp to be more forgiving is frustrating when we want to be rowing, but it's a relatively inexpensive, logistically convenient safety measure.

Even after that, those in the bigger boats (double or quad) watch out for our fellow rowers out with us in singles, and will deliberately change our normal route to stay closer to them, especially early in the season, and especially when there are newer rowers out in singles.

I've done rescues of capsized single rowers multiple times from a double or quad. (Happens more if the in-water rower panics, doesn't think through the self-rescue scenario, and gets over-fatigued with multiple attempts.) It's awkward, but achievable if folks in the bigger boat have reasonable skills. We end up with the wet rower draped over the bigger boat's stern, and the single pulled up alongside and held there by one of the big boat's rowers. Rowing that non-hydrodynamic configuration into shore is a strength workout, and slow.

Spring weather seems to have finally settled in around here. This afternoon, my friend and I did a short, tempo style bike/run session. Bike workout was 48 minutes with some climbing at an overall 16.5mph pace. We jumped off and went right into a transition run, my first run off the bike this year. Only 15 minutes of running for me at a comfortable 10:30 pace. The goal was simply getting used to the bike/run transition. My friend Kristina is a few weeks out from a HIM race, so she went longer. Good thing I didn't try to stay with her, since she knocked out a 5k in under 25 minutes right off the bike, lol.

Plan to swim tomorrow. Group ride on Saturday.

30 min. pool swim this morning, rest day tomorrow.

Enjoy the weekend, everyone!