Happy New Year, may your year be filled with new discoveries and things of high value that continue to set you on a path that is exciting and makes you want to get out of bed in the morning.
Build - Negatives or slow eccentrics are a fantastic way to work on strength for a particular muscle group when the concentric may be too challenging. If it does not challenge you, then it does not change you. When performing this movement, we want to find a delicate balance of control and difficulty. Use gravity the way it was intended, but fight it like your life depends on it. Of course, this would be easier if we worked different muscle groups than being used to slowly lower ourselves to the ground, but where is the fun in that? Make those noodles work, recruit attention to the fact that our meat hooks spend too much time being abused and neglected, constantly doing menial tasks, and not given the opportunity to shine.
Build 1, 2, 3, & 4 - There are two days of this glorious new block that follow a similar format. They are supersets, so you will be going from one exercise right to the next, and the rest is also somewhat accounted for, so as you progress through, you may find that muscle fatigue becomes a limiting factor in how much weight can be moved. This is a feature, not a bug. We still want to go as heavy as possible, just realize that will be dictated by how you are able to recover between rounds. As long as the weights you are using are difficult by the end of the set, as in, only leaving a couple of reps in the tank, then the loading is correct for you and you are in the sweet spot for stimulating muscular growth.
Grind - Sprinting is one of the best tools out there for getting better at anything. Doing it under tight time restrictions makes it not only more potent but increases its effectiveness to increase cardiovascular health and increase mental fitness. It is fairly easy to cruise and not push yourself…Try to avoid this pitfall and make each effort one you can be proud of.
Sustain - Longer effort. With any long effort, realizing that the intensity needs to be lower from the beginning will save you a world of hurt later. Not easy, just paced for the duration of the event. We will be asking each individual to track their split times throughout the workout. This will help shed a light on each person's ability to make sustainable repeat efforts. As the length of exertion extends out, the pace that one must acquire slows down, this is the nature in which we reside. The difficulty becomes different, with more discipline in continuous movements, smooth transitions, and constant diligence and delving into one's soul to determine if you are sandbagging or actually going at a hard effort for the limits imposed by the workout.
Sustain 1, 2, & 3 - Short fast intervals. Everything from above applies here. But the intervals are shorter and broken up by short rest periods. We still would like to see consistent turnover per round within each AMRAP. There is always a way to measure and track your output for the conscious exerciser.
Cool Down - Stretching and Thoracic mobility.
Coach