Tuesday 15.4: Sprints, bar mu's, outdoor metcon

Tuesday. Outdoor training at Pirkkola. Sprints, 4x400m. Skills, bar muscle-ups. Metcon, 4rds of: 350m run, 20 pull-ups, 8/8 kb shoulder-to-overhead (32kg). Time 15.30

Outdoor training at Pirkkola, with my big bro, c'mon! I intend to spend more time here in the spring / summer, goal is to go once a week and practice on my running skills / speed / intervals and also bar muscle-ups. It's also great to combine running into metcons. These are actually all the elements we did today with Sipa, "sprints", bar mu skills and metcon with running. Tough one.

Sprints.

• 4x400m run

Those sprints were quite pathetic at this time of the spring. Haven't been running much during the winter time. My legs are still out of order from Sunday's funday-squats. They were stiff as wooden logs as we entered Pirkkola. Our goal was to take couple of faster runs on the track. Then hit some skills and metcon. Since it's been a while since running 400's we decided to take it easier on this first track and field session.

It felt like my legs were led. It was far from having a light feeling. My bro's body and steps looked way lighter and he felt like running faster. This was a good season opener, looking to improve my time a lot from today's time. I have actually never in my life timed 400m. Last summer we ran 1.10 when we took some sprints with Sipa and Toni. Today those splits were around 1.30. That's a pace I should have on longer distances too. I've maintained about 1.35min / round pace for 3k in the past.

Skills.

• Bar muscle-ups

I can complete bar muscle-ups without problems, have been able for a longer time already. But there are technicalities I need to fix. It's not balanced at all. My lower body does not do the work correctly. My right leg does some sort of kipping whereas left leg just hangs there. That results in landing unbalanced over the pull-up bar. That's not a good thing.

I was trying to fix this issue today with the help of my bro. As you see in the video I can do some sort of kipping movement with my legs but once I need to start pulling myself up I kind of forget the leg work totally. This is another issue that can be fixed here in Pirkkola. Once that's taken care of I aim to learn do the bar muscle-ups without that much of a kip so that I can do them also at my home gym where the pull-up bar is close to the wall. Currently that disturbs me too much so it's difficult to practice this skill there.

Metcon. Time 15.30

• 4 rounds of:
• 350m trail run
• 20 pull-ups
• 8/8 kettlebell shoulder-to-overhead, 32kg

This looks easier than it was. Huh, my hands got ripped even though I had proper rock tapes on both hands. My palms looked bloody messy after the workout. We completed this so that we ran the distance together my bro. As we came back to the spot I jumped on the pull-up bar and completed 20 pull-ups. At the same time Sipa was doing 2-pood kettlebell swings.

After those sets we changed roles. I did 8 right hand push jerks with the bell, then immediately after 8 left hand jerks. Sipa has some issues with his fingers, some sort of fraction, so he did strict pull-ups. That's also the reason why he did swings instead of jerks. Then we went to run together the same trail run again. Total of four rounds. Pull-ups turned out to be rather tough and jerks sealed the deal. Got the jerks unbroken and pull-ups went 15+5 for the first 3 rounds, and 10+5+5 on the final round.

We were both done after the workout. It took 15.30 to finish this one. Couple of photos, and then back home to spend quality time with my baby. It was awesome to come home to a ready dinner table, prepared by my love one. Power nap and some more eating =)