Monday 28.1: Barbara

Monday. Barbara. Rounds between 3.06 and 4.47.

I wanted to start my CF week with own bodyweight workout and make it a tough one. My solution was one of the benchmark workouts: Barbara. She was nasty and made me gasp for a while after the workout. It consisted of four movements, pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups and squats. Toni called in sick today so he naturally took a rest day.

Barbara. Rounds between 3.06 and 4.47.

• 5 rounds of
• 20 pull-ups
• 30 push-ups
• 40 sit-ups
• 50 squats
• 3min rest

The rounds were as follows:

• First round, 3.06
• Second rounds, 3.35
• Third round, 4.11
• Fourth round, 4.47
• Fifth round, 4.43

There were a total of 100 pull-ups, 150 push-ups, 200 sit-ups and 250 squats, total of 700 reps. It's been a while since I've done pull-ups or cleans to strengthen my upper back so going for 100 pull-ups today was magnificent. My elbow has been screaming for the start of this year in pain, which is the reason for falling back on pull-ups and cleans. Therefore it really boosted my confidence a lot as I was able to do first and second round unbroken, 20 each round. On the third one I did 15 at first attempt and 10 reps on the fourth and fifth round. Very pleased about that!

My push-ups are my goat, as I've told you guys before. I had troubles with them from the very beginning, especially going for them after pull-ups isn't easy for me. The number of sit-ups caused me to go slower from the mid-workout on. In the beginning it was easy but as the reps grew over 100, they started to become slow. Squats weren't that bad. It hurt my legs but I was able to keep on going.

As a summary, my pull-ups and squats were near to perfect but my pace with push-ups was pathetic and I also got slower in sit-ups towards the end, which actually surprised me somewhat. But hey, there were 200 of them so I guess that should have been predictable =) This was a cruel workout but worth doing. Desperation crawled in just before the middle of the workout. I was able to push those feelings aside and continue to push forward. It would have helped to have a buddy to shout and cheer, no surprise there. Still, I want to emphasize that there were 100 pull-ups, c'mon!