I’m A Rambler

First, before I tell you about the gym, let me tell you about my kettlebell. It came in the mail yesterday. It’s smaller and a lighter than I thought but it is decieving. You heft it a few times and find that it secretly stashes it’s weight away somewhere dark. It only calls upon it when it feels threatened, like in the middle of your 8th of 10 snatches. It’s a sneak, smooth, dark, little bastard and I love it.
So in the spirit of my usual restraint I have played with it yesterday and today and probably tomorrow and so on. It certainly took a toll on my lifting today. It doesn’t help that I have been typing a lot more than usual the last two days. I taught myself some basic Javascripting and wrote, what I think is, a really nice script for a friend. It allows him to have a random quote of up to 1000 loaded whenever someone loads his page. Then I got all interested in web programing again and got crazy on some stye sheets for my own neglected website. Eventually I ended up pulling out all my old books and reviewing them.
So my grip is crap.
Then I got to playing with the kettlebell which puts some dynamic pressure on your grip. My favorite and probably the least dynamic is the “bottoms up military press”. You have to squeeze thehandle real hard as you hold the kettlebell upside down. The grip is smooth and slippery. The press is easy but I findit reallyhard to hold it upside down that way. It’s a good time.

Anyway off to the gym. I was especially weird today.
Deadlifts, got of to a rockin’ start but notice hand weakness right away. Sure enough, at 315 my double overhand grip had seen enough. I stayed with the same weight and went mixed grip. It took ten more reps before that was toast too. It was a crap bar but I should have been able to pull that easily.
For fun I went to Clean press with 135, a good time and getting me the dirty looks I enjoy. Some overhead squat action with just the bar rounded out the general opinion on me. I went on to knock out three rapid fire sets of decline bench twelve reps each: narrow, normal and wide grip, no rest. Off to do some overhand curls with whatever was on the bar. Dumbel rows for three sets of eight with the eighties. Then squat into walkout: 5 reps 135, 5 reps 225, 3 reps 315, 1/2 rep 405, walkout, 495, walkout 585.
Weighed out again 270.
Then home and here I be.

It’s All Uphill From Here

Did another conditioning workout yesterday. I ran on the treadmill again, this time on the hills setting. I’m not sure I had ever run on hills before. I wasn’t thinking and set it for 35 minutes at level 2 (didn’t know what to expect). So when I got started I decided I would just leave it at 35 and try to carry it through. At about 15 minutes I was feeling good. The hills weren’t terribly chalenging and I thought I had it totally handled. Then the hills really set in. One minute no incline, then one minute 6%, one minute none, one minute 5%, then none then six. As I progressed into the low twenty minute range I found myself not quite recovering from the hills like I had hoped. Each new hill I would drift further back on the machine. Finally at 25 minutes I found myself grabbing the console occasionally to try to get back up on the machine. I decided it was officially dangerous. I knocked it down to a walk and walked it out until I passed the 2 mile mark and 500 calories. I don’t really trust the calorie counters on those machines but it was a goal.
I also did something else out of order yesterday. Usually when I want to get my weight, I try to get the least favorable weight I can. I want to make sure I really am below 265 for this up coming strongman. I don’t want there to be any doubt that I will make weight even with a healthy meal. So usually I weigh in at the gym, not weigh out. I weighed out instead, I came in at 270 1/2. I hope I really am running that light but considering how much I sweat doing that hill thing, it could have easily been water weight.
The other weight issue I have is which scale is right. I tend to trust the gym scale more than my home scale. When I balance the gym scale out it tends to be about two pounds off. My homescale on the other hand seems to run way light. I have been coming in at 260. All of a sudden today I’m down at 250. I hate that scale.
In good news, my kettlebell has arrive. I did a few experimental snatches with it last night: two sets of ten with two hands and five with one hand. I have to admit that even that little workout got me breathing a little. I can’t wait to really try to destroy myself with it. I need to watch my DVD again so I can be reminded of some more exercises.