W00t!

Snow gone, wind dropped a bit - at least the flagpoles along Seafield Road weren't bent double this morning and the sea was staying where it was supposed to be instead of being up and over Newhaven Road! It's still sleeting and horrible but since it's currently not lying I can live with that.

Today's training

On the plus side, I at least made it to spin class today.

It's been a while - probably 3 weeks, if not more - since I last did spin, so I kept the resistance lower than I normally would but kept my speed up. Class was good and I'm glad I went. I always miss spin when I don't go regularly.

Since I didn't make it the hospital, I broke out the home training again tonight.

I started with general mobility work to loosen off a bit, then went straight into some kettlebell swings. I cranked out an easy 25 on the 8kg just to warm up, then another 25 on the 12kg and finished off with a working set of 50 on the 16kg. I also did 100 bodyweight squats to keep up with the 100 reps challenge.

I finished off with some chi kung exercises and a bit of kung fu stance training.

Today was one of those very difficult days at work, and I wasn't particularly inclined to train tonight, but I'm glad I got stuck in. I certainly felt better afterwards.

In other news ....

I got a phone call from the hospital earlier tonight to tell me that my mother is being moved to a different ward. This is the 4th or 5th different ward that she's been in in 2 weeks. By all accounts they're still no closer to finding out what's actually wrong. And thanks to the lovely weather that we're having, I wasn't able to go visit her tonight :=(

Not happy

It is snowing. I am not happy.

I *hate* driving in the snow.

personal training

Finally got back to my personal training on Saturday there.

I started off with chi kung exercises and some kung fu stance training. Then I went on to mobility work before getting stuck into 100 reps:

25 star jumps
25 bodyweight squats
25 press ups
25 crunches


On Sunday after I did my chi kung and stance training and mobility work, I finally picked up a kettlebell for the first time in a while.

I went for 100 swings along with 100 reps which were the same as Saturday's, ie:

25 star jumps
25 bodyweight squats
25 push ups
25 crunches


Once these were done I did some kb presses, first with the 8kg then with the 12kg and then with the 16kb. Then I cleaned two 12kgs to the rack position and did a couple of sets of squats. I then finished off with a set of swings with the 16kg. I did a little bit of stretching and then hit the shower.

challenge update

Challenge no 1 - kettlebell swings
Long since finished - thankfully!

No 2 - 'Lent'
Surprisingly, still going strong. Nearly caved last week though. Was v late leaving work and was absolutely starving. Managed to only lick the vending machine instead of buying any rubbish from it.

No 3 - chi kung and mobility exercises
Unfortunately largely went the way of my other classes and training over the past couple of weeks. Pretty disappointed with that actually, although I got back into the swing of it over the weekend.

No 4 - 100 reps
See above.

Last night's krav

UTP was MIA due to having hurt her ankle. We missed her :=(

We were a small but select bunch who were really put through our paces last night. The warm up consisted of a series of races, done in pairs:

Whilst one of the pair did star jumps the other sprinted out and did either - punch bag, squats or pressups. You then sprinted back and your partner sprinted out and did the same whilst you did star jumps. We did two each of the three exercises for a total of 6 races. My partner duly informed me that I was a nice shade of pink at the end - I think he meant puce actually!

We then went on to our pad work, moving quickly through our combatives. Then we looked at getting up from the floor in a hurry, in case we fell or were taken down by an opponent. That was interesting - I was fine right up until the bit where I had to bend or push off from ma poor wee tootsies.

From there, we went on to defending what I suppose would best be described as 'rear naked chokes'. Somehow I don't think the krav defence for this would be entirely legal in the MMA world!

We then had a quick trot through checking and parrying an outside hooking attack before the lovely Lee lined us all up and had a swing at us all - all in the interests of verifying that we knew how to defend this attack, of course. Then we split into pairs and practised attacking each other. Cue loud sounds of flesh on flesh impact! Sincere apologies to the poor guy that I think I kind of really dunted at one point - hope it wasn't as bad as it sounded :=(

Overall, a good class. Definitely a good workout anyway.