Wednesday 27.11: Hspu and rowing / bodyweight metcon

Wednesday. Strength, 4 sets of handstand push-ups. Metcon, 3rds of: 500m row, 10 hspu, 20 pull-ups, 30 du. Time 15.39

Last two days were plenty of work to be done. Hero workout to start the week and yesterday was a bar complex and lots of cleans were done to get upper back activated properly. Today's strength work was handstand push-ups and I wanted to get that movement involved in the metcon as well so it turned out to be quite a bodyweight workout indeed.

Strength. 4 sets of handstand push-ups (8+8+8+7). The point of this one was to do strict handstand push-ups. On the first set I did 8 strict hspu's, that seemed to be the limit. The movement is totally different from a kipping hspu. Same as with strict pull-ups and kipping pull-ups. Strict version is way more taxing on the upper body. I was thinking about doing 4 sets of strict reps. However, on the second round I got 6 reps in a row and decided to do 2 kipping to reach the same total amount of reps as on the first attempt.

On the third set I got 5 strict reps and as the last one was so tough I decided to kip the rest of them to reach 8 total reps. The last set was 4 strict reps and there I made a focus mistake and dropped from the wall after a total of 7 reps. So this was mostly a strict handstand push-up workout for shoulder strength added with some kipping reps.


Metcon. Time 15.39

• 3 rounds of:
• 500m row
• 10 handstand push-ups
• 20 pull-ups
• 30 double unders

After strength portion - that really put some pressure on my shoulders in a good way - I was ready to start working on my metabolic condition. Didn't rest more than a minute as I sat on the rower and began pulling the strokes. The rounds were quite long in nature so there were only 3 rounds in the metcon. As you see from below in the picture, the rounds were about between 4:30 and 5:40. The total time was @ 15.39, it just took me some seconds to stop the clock running.

Took me couple of seconds to pause the clock, checked the time at 15.39.

On the rower I kept a pace at 1:50 on average for those 3 rounds. Went a bit faster on the first one though. Hspu's went unbroken on the first round, the last 2 rounds were 7+3reps. Total of 60+ reps today really had its effect on my upper body. Later on Pauliina knew I had been doing this movement because my eyes were slightly reddish… You know those small blood veins or something. It sometimes happens when handstand walking or doing lots of hspu's. Basically the reality that you're inverted and have to struggle to catch a breath at the same time. Still, I love that!

Pull-ups went unbroken, nice! Had no doubts about doing it for the first round. Slightly skeptical for the second round going ub but as it did, I decided I'll do the same trick on the last round. Last reps were burning my wings but I didn't let that bother me, just keep on moving mister. Double unders have evolved to a level where I like what I see. My torso is upright, legs are together and it's not that taxing anymore. I'm gonna further put some more work on this skill to master it even better. Good workout!