Tuesday 18.2: Outdoors metcon at Pirkkola

Tuesday. Pirkkola outdoors metcon, 4rds of: 250m run, 10 pull-ups, 15 thrusters. Wear a 9kg weighted vest for the entire workout.

I was supposed to meet a friend to do some workout outdoors. There were some schedule problems so we postponed it to another day. Pauliina was ready to jump aboard so I picked her up and went to Pirkkola. This is an awesome place to workout, you might remember this venue from HC Triplet II and HC Triplet III.

Metcon.

• 4 rounds of:
• 250m run
• 10 pull-ups
• 15 wooden thrusters
• Wear a 9kg weighted vest for the entire workout

The key of the day was variety. Have some fun and do the training somewhere else. Don't wanna hang around at the regular gym all day, every day. Yesterday was once again a day someone asked am I there every day. The answer is yes. But I love it. Enjoy doing it, otherwise I wouldn't do it. And luckily I have a woman who enjoys it too. It would be difficult to hang around at the gym in the evenings if she wouldn't attend.

Anyway, today we were supposed to go to Pirkkola with Marko but instead it turned out that Pauliina joined me. Not bad, it was great to do a workout outdoors for a while. Breathing was so different when having lots of fresh air to catch in the lungs.

My gear for today was sneakers, pull-up bar, 9kg weighted vest and a wooden bar for thrusters. I try to use my vest in outdoor metcons every now and then. The occasions have been too rare in my opinion. It makes the nature of the workout totally different. I felt like my heart was pumping with such strength and power every time it took a beat.

Catching air was easy and heart rate okay but the power with which the blood was conveyed from my heart to muscles was mad. It was like I felt every beat. Kind of like my heart would burst through my chest and the vest any second now =)

It's somehow very rewarding to sometimes go outside, make it old school and just move your own body or something you find from the nature. I love playing with heavy and semi-heavy barbells, no doubt about it. This is good variation though, and definitely worth doing occasionally.

This workout consisted of running, weighted pull-ups and thrusters with a wooden log that weighs couple of tens of kilos. Don't know, maybe the pressure was similar like doing 40kg thrusters with a bar. Running distance was somewhere around 250m and my vest was 9kg. I wore it all the time in the workout.

The pull-ups went nicely, unbroken each round. Haven't done weighted versions for a long time. Having a vest on instead of a plate hanging from waist was different so I was able to do kipping pull-ups.

Thrusters went also unbroken each round. The movement pattern is a bit different with regular thrusters. Hands do not go overhead in a perfect line where toes, hip and shoulders would be in line all the way. Anyway, naturally full squat was possible and then reaching as far up as possible. This metcon was a good smoker. Heart was doing a lot of work and definitely got strengthened once again. And I'm happy the movements went unbroken.

Now I realized there is a perfect place for wall ball throwing. Got to get me one. Maybe buy a basketball, empty it and fill with sand to make a homemade wall ball. In the picture above there were markings of 2.5m, 3.0m and 3.5m heights. Not bad!

Glimpse of the workout

Sunday 25.8: Hiking in the woods + handstand

Sunday. Hiking in the woods + handstand.

Together with my love and my in-laws we headed towards a forest where you can find kilometers worth of nature's beauty and a lot of hiking possibilities. Walking in the middle of the wild when nature shows its best with deep forest and ponds looming around the corner was simply beautiful. We found some toys to play with so we were able to do some workout as well. Once we came back to the house I practiced my handstand skills and some light kettlebell technique and sandbag cleans. Father-in-law did a metcon with burpees and kb presses =)

Active playing. Lot of playing in the woods

• 4.5km hike in the forest
• Pull-ups
• Muscle-ups
• Toes-to-bars
• Box jumps
• Pistol squats
• Overhead squats
• Wood thrusters
• Ground to shoulder with sand bag

Cool Sunday action to say the least! Enjoyed the activity tremendously and so did the others, I hope =) There were a few workout stations with pull-up bars and wood thruster possibilities. Plus the nature shared its own tools with big stones I was barely able to jump on top of them or over them.

And for some reason I love logs. Found some of them in the woods and did some running with them carrying them overhead and doing overhead squats. I bet there are plenty of good sized stones laying around as well in order to do some ground-to-shoulder type of training, just like you can do with atlas stones. Maybe some day I can get as creative that I'd just head to forest and find proper equipment to play around with. I've been thinking about the kind of workouts after following intensely at Blair Morrison's blog.

Handstand. Few hours later I worked on my handstand skills at the back yard. As I've written earlier, this place is perfect for handstand skills training. I felt very confident being inverted and it was easy to find piece being upside down. The feeling of being able to balance yourself is awesome. I still remember the time when I collapsed each time I lost balance. Now I'm able to correct the position with my hands and continue stabilizing or even walking forward being inverted.

Thanks to you Maija and Kari for hosting us this weekend!

Tuesday 2.7: Sprints and pair wod

Tuesday. Sprints 4x400m with 90sec recovery. Pair wod with my bro. As a team, complete the following set of movements: 150 pull-ups, 150 burpees, 150 kb snatches (20kg). Time 23min.

Yes man! It was time for some outdoors training, one of the best shots of the week. I love these workouts. It's awesome to enjoy the summer weather and do some serious workouts with friends. Today Marko was not able to make it but Toni and my brother came along. We had some pair wod in front of us. Prior to that, we did sprints.

Sprints. Time 10.04

• Run 4x400m
• Rest 90sec between rounds

Time 10.04. On average this means 1.23.5 min per round. The first round was sick. It was clearly seen we are brothers with Sipa and the rivalry between us is fierce. Even though neither of us openly admits it before a metcon, it's obvious we both need to beat that other guy. Our first sprint was fast compared to our normal running pace. I led the round all the way to 250m, on the following 50m Sipa caught me and the final 100m we ran side by side to the goal line. Neither of us took an extreme sprint in the end because there were 3 rounds more to be completed. I thought the pace was not that fast but I stopped the clock at 1.10 so it definitely was faster than we would normally run.

It took some of the sharpest edge from both of us and pace got slower especially on the last two rounds.  Second round was around 1.20 and the last 2 rounds about 1.30. Toni's first round was 1.27, then pace also got a little slower, 1.30 plus minus 5 sec.

Bros

Pair wod. Time 23min

• As a team, complete the following set of movements
• 150 pull-ups
• 150 burpees
• 150 kettlebell snatches, 20kg

Our legs were pretty wasted at this moment. Without a proper warm-up they were smashed. It was time to move on the the pull-up bar. The workout we did with my bro included 2 bodyweight movements and one kettlebell move. First, 150 pull-ups in a row, then 150 burpees and finally 150 kb snatches. All pull-ups have to be completed before entering to burpees, and then snatches.

Pair wod, pull-ups and burpees, first 10min

Our strategy was to go in sets of 10 reps throughout the workout. It pretty much went like that. I did 10's in the pull-ups whereas Sipa changed it to 5's after 100 reps. No big difference there. Other than that, we both went as planned. Good job! And those kettlebell snatches were the first ones for bro, he's openly done dumbbell snatches. The movement is almost the same but the way you have to handle the bell in the up-position so that it doesn't destroy your wrists.

KB Snatches

In the pull-ups I had to concentrate to get all those reps unbroken. I could have managed the sets up to 200 reps, I believe. That would have meant 100 reps for me. Burpees got breathing going faster and the snatches were not that difficult for me. We wouldn't have a more suitable weight in the snatches. 32kg would have been too tough? This was a good workout and it was spectacular to do it as a pair wod!

The end of the metcon, kb snatches

Toni's workout.

• 400m run
• 2min burpees (40 reps)
• 400m run
• 2min double unders (70 reps)
• 400m run
• 2min kettlebell swings, 32kg (34 reps)
• 400m run
• 2min wood thrusters (34 reps)

Toni was supposed to do this as a pair wod with Marko. The other one runs 400m and the other one does certain movements. Once the first guy finishes his 400m run, they switch roles. However, Marko wasn't able to come today (bit of a flu) so Toni imagined Marko was running for exactly 2min. Works well. Those repetition numbers in brackets above are numbers Toni gave me afterwords. He said those are more like estimates.

Pony

Tuesday 11.6: Nicole

Tuesday. Benchmark workout Nicole. 8 rounds and 120 pull-ups.

I'm waiting forward to these outdoor training sessions! We have agreed with Marko to meet in Pirkkola, outdoors sports center where they also have track and field possibilities. It's also the venue for "HC Triplet II, in to the woods". This time we were going to include running and other bodyweight movements. A new benchmark was ahead of me, girl named Nicole.

Nicole. Result. 8 rounds, 120 pull-ups.

• Complete as many rounds in 20min as you can of:
• 400m run
• Max rep pull-ups

How simple can a workout be? Run and do pull-ups, period. The location of the pull-up bar is not close to the track so we ran in the middle of the forest. I've enjoyed these running metcons, at least this far ;) My brother was doing Murph at the same time in another place, that's deep. It took about 32min from him. Got to try it some day.

Back to Nicole. Run 400 meters, then complete as many pull-ups as possible without dropping from the pull-up bar. Have no idea how fast I was running each round, my timer was on the ground. Even though my upper back was kinda jammed I still hoping to break that old 33-rep record of mine.

On the first round the pull-ups started to feel heavier than normally at about 15 reps. Shouldn't feel like that at this stage. However, I was able to force more reps, little by little I reached 35 reps and a new PR! Didn't come easy though. This gave me more confidence as I felt I wasn't at my best because the pull-ups started to feel heavy earlier than they should have.

For the net 3 rounds the number of pull-ups was 15 each round, and on the last rounds a bit less. Total of 120 reps and it was time. My lats were smashed already after the first round of 35 so I had some difficult thoughts about how to perform pull-ups with style. Here's the number of pull-ups each round:

• 1st round. 35 reps
• 2nd round. 15 reps
• 3rd round. 15 reps
• 4th round. 15 reps
• 5th round. 10 reps
• 6th round. 10 reps
• 7th round. 12 reps
• 8th rounds. 8 reps
• Total of 120 reps

Marko's workout.

• 800m run
• 50 wood thrusters
• 50 burpees
• 50 lunges
• 800m run

Good amount of reps for this fellow! A lot of sweat was shed and muscles will hurt tomorrow, and the day after. The only thing he subbed was the amount of burpees, dropped from 50 to 30. And the last sprint of his was phenomenal. It was cool to see him give his everything and sprint like a mad man!

Sunday 5.5: Bench, bench/row metcon

Sunday. Bench singles (max PR 97.5kg). Metcon, 3 rounds of 1.000m row, bench 15x70kg.

For some reason that workout I did the day before yesterday still takes its toll on my legs. I tried to stretch them but still my walking is not pretty =) Anyway, that's only a good feeling as I know a lot of work has been done. This muscle pain had a lot of effect on today's programming. Bench press singles was what I started with and then the metcon included 3k row and semi-heavy bench presses. Tony didn't show up in the morning, we'll have to see if he's doing his training in the evening. Pauliina joined the workout.

Strength. Bench press 1-1-1-1-1-1 (70, 80, 85, 90, 95, PR 97.5kg). Also tried 100kg, didn't come up this time. I had not planned to do singles but I changed my mind as I entered the gym. It turned out to be a good decision as I hit a new personal record, adding 2.5kg to previous one, now it's 97.5kg.

I took some high-rep sets with only the bar, then 40 and 60kg before moving on to singles. The only purpose was to find that one rep max load at the moment. It seems to be quite close to 3-digit numbers, I'm getting there some day.

Bench press, PR 97.5kg

Metcon. Time 20.40

• 3 rounds of:
• 1.000m row
• 15 bench press, 70kg

Following the strength training I did a rather long metcon with rowing and bench press. I was thinking about the amount of rounds and the bench reps. Decided on the above except that I had planned to do only 10 bench presses. On the first round I continued to 15 and stayed with that rep scheme till the end. My rowing times per rounds were 3.30, 3.37 and 3.41.

On the bench first round was 6+5+4, on the second it was 6+5+2+2 and it was 6 reps on the first try, then a triple and maybe singles from then on, it started to get heavy all of a sudden. I didn't mind about the clock running so I took some time in the transition. That bench press seemed to suck my time as I couldn't do them unbroken. I still consider the weight was ideal for me. It was as heavy as I wanted it to be. Had I done it with 60kg, it would have been too light.

This proved to me it's possible to find some good workouts with bench press as well. I'm not going to add bench in to my schedule a lot more but I'll try to do it once in a while to add strength in chest, shoulders and triceps.

Did some mobility and stretching with Pauliina in the end.

Toni's workouts. Time 8.36

• 200m run
• 10 pull-ups
• 200m run
• 10 wood thrusters
• 200m run
• 25 weighted lunges
• 200m run
• 50 double unders
• 200m run

Pony went outdoors in the evening to do a metcon. Got some pictures from it below.

Pull-ups

"thrusters"

Front squat =)