Thursday 29.5: Pause squats, Pistol metcon, Burpees and Rowing

Thursday. Strength, pause back squat 4x5 (across, 100kg). Metcon, 10min amrap of: 10 pistols, 10 deads (100kg), 10 ring dips. Result, 5 rounds. Metcon, 10min emom. Odd min 15cal row, even min 12 burpees.

Huh, its's tough after a break. Squats were the name of the game. Pause squats to be exact. Added more posterior chain movements in the workout following squats. Finally I did the rowing / burpee workout together with Juuso, changing stations after every minute, alternating with partner.

Strength. Pause squats

• Pause back squats 4x5 (100kg)

My upper back is smacked from yesterday's cleans. There were only 30+ hang power cleans with 60kg but because of a break on cleans my traps are killing me. They are very sore and it felt nasty to lower the barbell on my back. I did air squats and lunges but it's a different game to have real weight on and carry that up and down compared to bodyweight.

80kg pause squats for warm-up

I couldn't make up my mind on what kind of squats I would do. I was thinking about normal squat triples and 5's, pause squats and front squats too. Ended up doing pause squat 5's with couple of seconds pause in the bottom position. Warm-up included 60kg and 80kg sets. On the latter one I bounced a little from the bottom in the last reps. But this is not the case in real pause squats. The whole point is to go down, sit in the hole and come directly up. That's how I completed the working sets.

My hip flexors were burning after 2 sets. The sets were definitely heavy-ish but there was no doubt of completing them as planned. All sets were across (100kg). My lower body took some hit on this strength portion and I'm sure I'll feel it tomorrow as well.

Metcon. Result, 5 rounds sharp

• 10min amrap of:
• 10 pistols, alternating
• 10 deadlift, 100kg
• 10 ring dips

10 min amrap and result was exactly 5 rounds. There was simply no seconds left for any more pistols. There were 2 movements that I got to get better at. Pistols are something that I need to get better at eventually. I can knock them pretty well but I'm looking to get more balanced. My left leg works much better than my right one. I seem to have no issues with left one whereas right one is more shaky.

Deadlifts went unbroken each round. Wasn't nice to hold on to the bar but it was tolerable. It felt good to do deadlifts even though it got heavy towards the end. Ring dips is a weakness of mine and needs to be focused. On the first round I went unbroken, then 2 rounds of 7+3, one set of 6+4 and the last was something like 4 reps and then 3x2 to finish the workout.

The working time itself was not that time-consuming but the transitions took me some time to catch my breath. After not having breathed that heavily it feels a bit on the heavy side. It probably takes a week or two to get back on track. Hopefully sooner!

Metcon. Bodyweight

• Every minute on the minute, for 10min
• Odd min, 15 calories row
• Even min, 12 burpees

In the end I talked Juuso into this one. Alternating the 2 elements every minute. Starting with rowing for 15 calories, took me maybe 40 seconds, I'm not sure, I didn't have a timer right next to me. Rowing was the easier part of this workout. It was a total of 5 rounds both movements 75 calories. Not sure how far that is in distance, I only checked that my pace on the last set was 1.38 /500m.

Burpees took me close to 35 seconds every round. That was a solid effort but it felt horrible. Already the first set didn't feel great. I sucked it up and focused on the next rep. Always the next rep. This was a good quick metcon. Could have continued for longer. Not today, definitely not today after the work done prior to this one. But on another day focusing solely on these 2 elements it could have been double the time. I saw something like this on competitorstraining.com where they did it for half an hour. That's beasty.

Couple of more photos from our California trip =) Playing around.

By the way we got engaged with Pauliina while in Los Angeles. We found a perfect and beautiful place called Palos Verdes, known for it's awesome scenery. Had to pop the question in the sunset, she answered yes and so we're getting married in the summer of 2015, boom! She's awesome! Love you so much baby!

Will you marry me?