Workin' it

What's that you say dedicated blog follower?  I haven't been talking about running as much lately...Am I still running?

Well, I'm glad you asked.

The answer is yes, I am still running...just not as much.  After starting up again just a couple weeks ago now and quickly feeling the pain in my left calf again, I decided that cross training and developing some better core strength might just be a good idea.  And good timing because it came at a time when I need to be stronger than ever - both mentally and physically.  So here I am, focusing more on cross training and developing my core strength.

Tomorrow marks my two week anniversary of starting cross training, so I'm heading into my third week.  And I feel like I can already tell a difference.  When I ran on Saturday this weekend, my whole body just felt smooth and natural - in line.  And when I look in the mirror, I can see results in my arms.  And as much as I hate my stomach, it's feeling pretty nice when I have clothes on these days.  I think my muffin top is pretty much gone.  I think I still have a little ways to go on my stomach and I honestly don't know that I'll ever feel good about it...but we'll see.  My legs and butt...well, I haven't paid too much attention to them, but with the quantity of squats I've done in the past two weeks...I can only imagine.

So, what's some of my strength training workouts look like?  Well, the guys at work who so graciously allow me to attend the workouts with them (and bare with my silly questions and lack of form as I completely kill their timed workouts), are big cross fit fans and follow Crossfit Southie.  So they grab the workout of the day (WOD) each day and we do that after doing the warm up.

Today's workout...
Strength
Overhead Squats
3-3-3-3-3

WOD
100 Overhead Squats(95,65)
Every minute on the minute 4 burpees
Level 2 (75, 50)-3 burpees
Level 1 (45, 25)- 2 burpees
So I did the strength warm up with just a wooden pole that probably weighed less than three pounds - but it was to focus on form.  I think I did the last couple of reps with a 12 pound bar and I did almost all of the my 100 squats with that bar.  Also, despite being probably lower than Level 1, I did four burpees at each minute mark...although again, my last couple of reps ended up being girl push ups because my arms were burning.

I'm not going to lie...this was a pretty intense workout.  I wasn't really expecting it to be.  But both me and Crazy Feet (my nickname for A who was there today...hi A if you ever stumble across this!) were rather exhausted after this workout...in a good way.

By the time I exited the locker room, my quads were basically spasming from the crazy workout this was.  I did lots of stretching and it must have paid off because I'm not in pain now.  I don't mind squats so much.  I feel like I've mastered them because I've done so many in the past two weeks.

As my closer to the night, I went through the core training exercises that I posted about from Life's Run yesterday.  Then I followed that up with 125 crunches of various types.  I usually don't do follow up exercises on gym days, but honestly I wanted to see if I could best my plank time (Yay, 1'15") and I figured it couldn't hurt to try to get in the habit of doing these for a bit...so I'm going to try to do it every night.  We'll see how that goes!

Plus, all this muscle building is really giving me more excuses to eat, drink, live chocolate.  I'm not going to lie...I'm consuming a lot of it lately.  Plus lots of healthy vegetables, fruit, and water.  I'm trying to eat more protein but I don't quite think I've found the good balance.  I'll get there hopefully.

So that's what I've been up to.

What have you been up to?  Any questions for me? Any tips for me?

~A