Strength Training Redux (11/27)

I will say right now that I didn’t take any pictures or videos today during practice, so if you are just here for that, you can go now.

The reason I didn’t get any media is because I was busy getting my butt kicked with some serious strength training and conditioning.  It was basically a repeat of Tuesday, but unlike Tuesday, this time around I actually participated in as many of the exercises as I could.

In fact, at the beginning of class I was feeling pretty good.  Probably because of the day of rest on Thursday.  I was raring to go.  We did our usual joint warm-up and running around (it is slowly starting to get a little easier) and then we did our stretching.  After that it was time to go in to the weight room.

Again we did work with the big bar and weights.  20kg to start (not including the bar, which i think is another 10kg or so).  I asked for a bit more clarification from Yuan Ming about how the exercise is done.  They focus not on the squat itself, or even on the rise from the squat, but mainly on the pop-up at the top where you’re supposed to use your quads and calves in unison to give you a slight explosive “push” upwards.  Similar to plyometrics, I guess.

We did 4 sets of those, each time increasing the weight by 10kg or so until we had gone up to around 50kg.  I could handle the weight okay, but some of those kids were having a rough time of it, given the fact that they coudn’t weight more than 50kg themselves.  After each set you were supposed to go sprint out of the room to get your legs moving.

Then they brought the weight down to around 15 kg and we did calf hops with the bar on our shoulders.  20 hops, 4 sets.  By the end of this I could start to feel it in my quads.

Then it was time for conditioning.   Coach Zhang devided us in to two groups: big (”da”) and small (”xiao”).  I was in the “big” group, but mainly because the small group goes first and sometimes I don’t know what the exercise is until I see people doing it.

First up was a 3 hop exercise.  You hop up 3 times, the first time with high knees, the second time with feet behind you and the third time with legs out to the sides.  You do 10 of those, so basically 30 hopes.  3 sets.

After that was incline pushups and a down-and-back wheelbarrow run.  3 sets.  I didn’t have a partner for this so I did incline pushups on the stretching bar by the window.

Then they did 3 sets of 20 lunge jumps.  I can’t do those so I did lunge walks along the carpet, 3 sets of 16 each.

After that we did 3 rounds of frog leaps down and back on the carpet. Or maybe it was 4.  Hard to remember.

After the frog leaps we did core work.  V-ups were done on the coach’s count up to 10 and then 5 quick ones followed by holding your legs and torso off the ground for 15 seconds.  Then turn over and do 30 fish flops followed by holding that position for 15 seconds.  4 rounds of all this.

Then they did some around-the-carpet single leg runs.  My knees wouldn’t let me do this one so I did calf-raises instead.  30 each leg.  3 sets for both them and I.

Then it was time for sprints.  We would walk down the length of 2 carpets and then sprint as fast as we could back.  My quads were pretty worn out by this point so slowing down from the sprint at the end of the room I almost fell, not realizing that my legs had weakened.

After 6 sprints we were told to stretch and relax.  And that was class.  It was a good workout and I’m glad I have the weekend to recover because it will really help.

One nice thing was that during the class Yue Xiao Yu came up to ask me a few questions about English.  Its nice that they feel comfortable enough with me to ask me questions.  I’m going to see if I can’t start up a little once-a-week English conversation practice for her and some of the other athletes that have expressed an interest in learning English.  Unfortunately they are trying to learn on their own, which I know is not easy.  So I figure I should let them take advantage of the opportunity presented by having a native English speaker training with them for the next year or ten.

This weekend should be a good one.  I’m meeting my Chinese tutor(s) tomorrow (Saturday) and doing my Chinese study over at the Village Cafe.  Then Sunday will be spent doing some work and getting things in order and organized at home.

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.  It came and went with narry a notice here at the Moran’s Xi’an household.  It was just a year ago that I was in Idhao celebrating the holiday wth my mom and Reid.  Here are some nice pictures of that in honor of the holiday.