Triathlon Training: Week 4 - Monday

Today's workout - 1000 yd swim followed by 45 mins of weight training

Week 4 brings my first rest week, which is not to say I get to sleep in and lay around for a week, HA! I wish, ok not really. It just means a reduced volume and workload for this week, aka less time and miles. This rest week is perfectly timed, 3 straight weeks of hard work and I'm physically worn down. One thing I've learned is that I need to get much more sleep. I need to stop falling asleep watching tv downstairs and start going to bed at a regular time each and every night to help maintain some consistency. Getting up at 4:30 isn't a problem for me, I've grown accustomed to it already but I know I need more sleep because I've found myself being very grumpy lately, especially this past weekend, so the goal this week is to establish a nightly routine and try and get to bed at a decent and consistent time each night.

Today's swim was nothing special, 300 yd warm up then 5x100's and a 200 cool down. I could tell my form was all over the place, did not feel as smooth and comfortable in the water, and I'm sure that had a lot to do with being physically tired. Other than that the swim went really quick for me I was done in under 30 minutes and I headed up stairs for what was supposed to be a low intensity weight workout...ya right!

What can I say, I am a meat-head, I love lifting weights, always have. I especially love doing circuit training where I move quickly from exercise to exercise, this is something I grew to love when I did a lot of MMA training. Don't get me wrong I love to push heavy weight, but the long breaks between endless low rep sets gets extremely boring for me now a days, but string together 4 or 5 or 10 exercises at low weight and a high rep count, that's what gets my blood pumping, literally and figuratively. I started off today and was just going to do some light lifts of some of the more basic exercises in my normal routine like bench press, pull ups, shoulder press, curls etc. but after doing 3 sets of bench press and pull ups I actually was bored and started feeling sluggish, so I ended up designing my own little crossfit WOD. If you've never heard of  CrossFit  it is basically a work out series (and kind of a way of life for some) based around functional movements, plyometrics, gymnastics and olympic style lifts that is used by soldiers, police, combat specialists, house wives and anyone who wants to get in the best shape of their life. Recently I have become enamored with crossfit, I love the workouts or WOD's (workout of the day), it is what I have tailored much of my strength training around lately. Today I ended up doing 3 sets of 500m row, 20 sumo high pulls and 15 box jumps (18" box) with about a minute break between each set. Before that I had done 3 sets of kettle bell overhead swings and dips. I love workouts like these, there fun, high intensity and when you are done you are covered in sweat and breathing hard, basically you know you've done some work, and they are relatively quick workouts to go through so if you are time crunched they are perfect for getting in and getting out of the gym quickly.

Until next time...Do today what others won't, so tomorrow you can do what others can't.