Monday, April 18, 2011

Turkish Get-Ups


Friday night's workout included Turkish Get Ups, an exercise I knew about but had never done before. They were quite challenging.

After our warm-up, we did 5x5 of clean-pulls, fairly heavy, for our strength work. This is a component of Olympic lifting, especially needed for the Clean and Jerk. My form on them is still rough, but at the higher weights, around 200 pounds or so, I was starting to get the movement down.

Then, came the main workout:

Three rounds, as quickly as possible:
5 TGUs, left side
5 TGUs, right side
10 burpees
10 pull-ups

I was the last one done, and the coach was in my face, pushing me through my last two sets. As I started the pull-ups, I took a brief rest and he jumped on me to push it and finish up. I told him I was going to throw up if I did that. His response was "let it happen" or something like that. So, while already pretty gassed, I cranked out ten (band-assisted) pull-ups. Ten seconds later, I was outside puking in the bushes.

I might not be the fastest guy there, but no one can claim that I don't work hard.

After the workout, I headed home for the weekend. My son and I went skiing for a while on Saturday, but with cloudy conditions and cool temperatures, the snow was pretty firm and not a lot of fun. We skied a double-black diamond bump run that was pretty much frozen solid and scary. But we survived.

After skiing, we went shopping to look at bass guitars for my son. In the past, he's had a saxophone phase, a keyboard phase, and now he wants to learn the bass. We got him a used bass and he will have to live with my amp for a while, rather than a bass amp, until he proves he's serious about playing the bass.

My wife and daughter were out of town for the weekend, a trip for my daughter's 13 birthday, so my son and I just hung out all weekend. On Sunday, I hoped to run, but I was coughing like crazy from the cold I've had. So, I took a rest day, did some reading, watched some baseball, and generally goofed off.

The cold is still dragging me down a bit, but I hope to get in some sort of workout after work today.

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