Fun Workout Weekend

For any of you who haven't met Mark Daugherty (purple 2 from our dojo) he has started his own crossfit training facility here in Bend. What is crossfit, you ask? Well, there is much to know about crossfit, and you can find all of your answers and more at www.crossfit.com. Go to the "start here" button and begin an incredible journey of physical fitness discovery.

On a basic level, crossfit training is broad and inclusive fitness, meaning you will be performing constantly varied functional movements at high intensity. Whether you're a swimmer, rock climber, couch potato, or olympic athlete, it's a phenomenal training theory and system, and I recommend it to everyone.

My crossfit workout on Saturday consisted of squats, lunges, pushups, and situps. Mark had a deck of cards, hearts being lunges, spades being squats, diamonds being pushups, and clubs being situps. When the 8 of spades came up, we had to do 8 squats, etc. We didn't really get to rest, the cards just kept coming and we went through the whole deck. With face cards being worth 11, 12, 13, and 15 reps, that works out to 105 repetitions of each exercise. Yikes, but fun.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the two jokers. When those came up we got to do 13 burpees. WE LOVE BURPEES!!!

The workout was great, and after we were done I still felt ok, not totally blitzed. So I decided to stay and take the 11 am class, as well. So on Saturday from 10:15 to 11:30, I performed 210 pushups, 210 situps, 210 squats, 210 lunges, and 52 Burpess. It was awesome. Mark was laughing hysterically. He was giving us the commands while holding and rocking one of the trainee's babies to sleep. It was great.

Had I got up and saw a list like the one I had to perform, I might not have decided to do it. But breaking it up into smaller chunks makes all the difference. So set those numbers high, everyone. Set them higher than you think you can do and go for it, one step at a time. But definite numbers are great, they keep us on track. Whether you feel good that day, horrible, tired and sore, fresh and ready, the numbers will keep you on task and will also give you specific improvement numbers, and knowing your progress is crucial for mental and emotional health. We like to know our hard work is paying off.

Set your numbers high and go for it.