World's Toughest Mudder Training - Day 8

Saturday, October 1, 2011

I started the day of with presses and pull ups.

5, 5, 5 Double 16kg KB presses

3, 3, 3 Double 16kg KB Bottoms Up Push Presses

1, 1, 1 24kg KB Jerk each side


Followed by

5, 5, 3, 3, 2, 2 Pull ups


This is the heaviest I've lifted overhead and most pull ups I've done in months due to a mild rotator cuff strain. All of the movements were pain free and felt good. The jerks with the 24kg bell actually felt way too easy. I've done jerks with a 36kg bell around this time last year at the RKC II, but expected to lose quite a bit of strength after mainly doing overhead lifts with 8kg bells. The toughest lift in this sequence was the BU push presses. I think this was the first time I've done this exercise. It forced me to engage my grip and mind all that much more to keep both the bells in a safe and stable pressing pattern.

I'd put my pull up max somewhere around 7 or 8 right now, which isn't too shabby considering I haven't been training pull ups at all, mainly using GTG TRX rows.

Later that afternoon I met up with a prospective Goruck Tough classmate and went for a run on the beach. The tide was in so the sand was a bit firmer for parts of it. Still, having a workout buddy made the run more enjoyable and pushed my pace a little bit faster than I normally run on sand.

We covered 2.4 miles in 32 minutes.

One of the best realizations about this run was that I didn't have any shin or foot pain like the last time I trained for the San Francisco Goruck challenge.