Thursday 9.4: Overhead strength, Intervals + Recovery

Thursday. AM: Overhead strength, press / jerk (up to 90kg). Intervals, every 4:00min, for 20min, complete 300m row + 10 burpee. PM: Long recovery walk.

In the morning it was time to stuff a monster breakfast in my face before heading to the gym. It was presses and jerks for a while and then finishing it with nasty interval work in the form of Concept2 and burpees. In the evening we were supposed to go squatting but Pauliina suggested we'd take a long work to downtown Helsinki. The weather was perfect and the upcoming spring inspired us to go for this long recovery walk.

Machine straight from hell

Overhead.

• Shoulder press, 5x40, 3x50, 1x60, 65kg
• Push press, 1x70, 3x70, 1x75, 80, 85kg
• Jerk with a pause, 1x85, 85, 90, 90, 90kg

This went totally by feeling. Haven't done shoulder presses pretty much at all in ages. Only in warm-ups when I'm doing overhead strength. Usually the heaviest strict presses are 40-50kg on those warm-up sets. This time I built up to a heavy single which turned out to be 65kg. Next lift at 70kg didn't come all the way up so I push pressed it up.

Push presses were my thing today. This wider grip thing really seems to work. The light pain in left shoulder is not there anymore. I guess my shoulders are just too tight for a narrow grip. Built up to a heavy single of 85kg. My heaviest push press is 90kg so this was pretty close. Didn't go heavier today.

Lastly I took couple of singles of jerks. Mostly with a pause in the dip position. This seems to be a very good drill to find an explosive burst from the hole. I don't say it looks fast and furious but I'm aiming towards that goal.

Recap of presses / jerks

Intervals.

• Every 4:00 for a total of 20 minutes, complete:
• 300m row + 10 burpee
• Time each round: (1.21-1.23min)

These were awful! Looks very easy and light on paper but the reasoning behind intervals is that you go 100% from the very first second until you've completed the last rep of each set. That means to say I pulled my ass off on the rower for 300 meters, then hit my chest to deck.

This rower is from another planet than the one at my previous gym. No matter how hard I pulled there, the pace didn't go that fast. Here the rower is identical but an updated version of Concept2. I believe I was able to move it much faster than normally. Pace was around 1.30-1.33 in each interval. That last 100 meter of the sprint was not pleasant.

Intervals

Burpees were as horrible as they can be. Or actually I moved up and down without thinking about it at all. But the second I stopped after 10 reps it hit me like a wall. It was a disgusting feeling =) Had to walk the pain away for a minute. First interval was okay, second one made me think if I want to continue this workout. After third I was in big pain, and the rest was just "think about a happy place" kind of battle in my mind.

Cheat of the day