Overcoming My Mental Hurdle

Gym Jones Women’s Foundation I

Week Two

The ingredients: Air Dyne, double kettlebell presses, goblet squats, burpees, sit-ups, push-ups, rowing, farmer’s carries, kettlebell swings.

The recipe: IWT (interval weight training)

This is a repeat of last week’s IWT workout, only this time there were more reps, longer interval times and shorter rest periods (of course.)

The magical and totally wonderful thing that happened is: even though it was harder than last week it was easier, know what I’m sayin’? I rowed faster, AirDyned longer, lifted more and it felt better than it did last time. I don’t know how to explain it, because it still hurt, but I didn’t mind the hurt as much. Or maybe a better way to state it is: I dealt with the discomfort in a better way.

A big part of the Gym Jones schtick is the mental side of physical exertion. Kind of like Mark Divine of SealFit, who says that we are all capable of 20 times more than we think we are. There is a certain mental aspect of, say, riding the AirDyne or rowing, where you reach a certain level of pain and you have to decide if you are going to give up or not. If you choose not to quit, you will realize that, yes it hurts, but you can endure it and it won’t get better, but neither will it get worse. Once you can overcome that mental hurdle many wonderful things are possible.

IWT, the Second

Gym Jones Women’s Foundation I

Day 6 – IWT

The Ingredients: Double kettlebell cleans and rack holds, ball slams, Air Dyne, rowing, trap bar deadlifts. Not necessarily in that order or combination.

The recipe: IWT (Interval Weight Training)

The result: Every inch of my body – except possibly my hair – was completely spent.

I did a little more research on the IWT’s. This is the explanation of them from back when the Gym Jones site was free:

Developed by Pat O’Shea in 1969 and refined during the two following decades. A complete paper on the subject was published in the NSCA journal in 1987. Typically an IWT session involves a set of 8-12 reps of an “athletic lift” immediately chased with two minutes of free aerobic exercise @ 90-95% of capacity, followed by two minutes of rest. This is repeated for a total of three sets after which the athlete is rewarded with a 5-minute break. The first phase is repeated though the lift and the free exercise are changed. Recovery periods are the same. Phase three involves a circuit of complementary movements, often using bodyweight, with 4-12 reps and 3-10 rounds. IWT workouts may be scaled toward a particular fitness characteristic. For an endurance emphasis we increase the duration of the free exercise period to three minutes and reduce the rest period, all lifts are done with lighter loads and higher reps. To focus on power development we increase loads for the athletic lifts and reduce the reps, scale back the chasing aerobic exercise period (sometimes) and increase the rest periods to ensure “full” recovery.

As someone else pointed out, they are essentially Litinovs. Google Dan John + Litinovs and you can spend a solid afternoon sliding down that rabbit hole. I guess there is some controversy surrounding them. Some people love them, some people hate them, so-and-so talked to Litinov himself and he says he never did them, so-and-so talked to his coach and he say he did do them.

Whatever. I can tell you, for sure, with 100% accuracy, that I did them twice this week in the form of IWT workouts and I lost two pounds. Mind you, that’s nice, but this also happened smack in the middle of my period (when I usually gain 3-4 pounds) and while eating copious amounts of dark chocolate and M&M’s.

So there.

IWT

Gym Jones Women’s Foundation Program I

Day 3

Ingredients: Kettlebell swings and push press, Air Dyne, pushups, burpees, situps, rowing, goblet squats, and farmer’s walks. Not necessarily in that order or combination.

The recipe: IWT

IWT, IWT… I kept seeing that term sprinkled throughout this program, and I had no idea what it meant. I Will Try? I Was Tired? I Was Terrified?

Turns out IWT means Interval Weight Training. Circuits. Stuff that makes you really tired. I made it through all but one set. I found it prudent to not do the last round of the circuit involving goblet squats, as my hip flexor sent me a couple of “I don’t think so!” suggestions periodically.

I will try, I was tired, and I was terrified are all apt descriptions of my experiences with this workout. I have no problem trying or being tired. Fatigue is just fatigue. It won’t kill you or hurt you, you just keep grinding it out until the end. I am however, terrified of injuring myself again. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, though. It will keep me honest about my abilities or lack thereof, and help me honestly assess how much I can or cannot do.

Get Up

Gym Jones Women’s Foundation Program

Day 2

Ingredients: Turkish get-ups

Recipe: Do lots

And by lots, I mean lots. The first rep of the second set was already more than I had ever done at one time in a workout. I had to break them up into sets because I can only count so high before I mentally wander off into a field of poppies.

I only completed half of the prescribed reps before my hip flexors started to hurt. After last summer’s nightmarish hip flexor incident, the last thing I want to do is hurt myself like that again.

Yesterday’s pain on the rower was completely different than today’s pain. You aren’t going to injure yourself on the rower, you just need to learn to accept the hurt and deal with it. For me, today’s workout was more a test of my brain than my heart, methinks.

Into the Fire

Gym Jones Women’s Foundation program

Day 1

The ingredients: one Concept 2 rower

The recipe: intervals.

I went to bed early last night and got up an hour earlier this morning, ready to jump into the fire and start this new program. As I was laying in bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I realized that I had a date with the rower looming. Looming ominously. (Does a rower loom any other way? I think not.)

Oh, how I wanted to just roll over and pull the covers over my head.

But, I didn’t. I got up. I dilly-dallied. I killed time. I hemmed. I hawed.

Finally, I just went and started the darn workout, despite of the butterflies in my stomach. You know what? It was that bad. See, you thought I was going to say it wasn’t that bad, but it was – it was that bad.

Rowing hurts, there’s just no way around it. I considered doing fewer intervals. I considered doing shorter intervals, but in the end I just sucked it up and did what was written. Gym Jones workouts are often as much about toughening up mentally as they are about toughening up physically. Time under tension, metaphorically speaking.

Ending Radio Silence

The last few months have been pretty crazy around this place. Large numbers of bovines have needed to be fed and watered every day. LIttle tiny, impossibly cute bovines have needed to be picked up out of snow banks and creek bottoms where their mothers inexplicably decided to give birth to them. Chickens need to be hand fed – literally, fed out of my hand – because getting down on the floor to eat with the other evolved dinosaurs is just too hard. Eh, whatever. She’s a good listener while she’s eating, and I don’t get to town much, and I need someone to tell all my problems to. And so on, and so forth…

The Lean Eating program is going fairly well. Basically, it’s just a series of habits. Every two weeks they give us a new habit to practice (eat five servings of vegetables per day, for example.) Each habit builds on the one before. I must say, it is a highly effective method of reaching a goal. It’s much more achievable than saying “I’m going to eat ultra strict Paleo for the next 90 days,” and before three days are out you are standing in front of the pantry scarfing down chocolate chips out of the bag.

OK, maybe that’s just me.

What I’m trying to say is that taking lots of little baby steps and forming a pattern and a habit seems to me to be more effective than taking one giant leap at once.

The Lean Eating program also includes an optional workout routine (optional, but they really try to push you into doing it.) I did it for the first week, but I found it incredibly boring. Split squats, stability ball leg curls, band pull-downs, etc. Not my cup of tea.

Calving was coming up, and I needed to build some raw strength fast, so I did a Dan John 40 day program, which took me up to about the last week of March. I’ll go into detail with my results and thoughts on that in a future post.

Once calving season started all semblance of a schedule flew out the window, so I basically did some quick kettlebell complexes or swing workouts whenever I had a spare moment. Fun stuff. More on calving + kettlebells in a future post as well.

Now, with calving winding down (two heifers left – push ‘em out, girls!) I’m up for a new challenge. I have been fascinated with Gym Jones for a long time, and I anted up the money to subscribe to their site. I have access to all their online training programs, articles and videos. Starting this week I am (fingers crossed) going to start their Women’s Foundation program. I’ll try to post every day what I’m doing. I won’t be able to be specific, of course. If you want one of their programs, pony up the money and subscribe.

It’s not easy to find an honest, unbiased account of an extremely average woman doing a Gym Jones program, so maybe this next month’s blog account will be of interest or use to someone.

Let the adventure begin!

The Clymb

I’ve been busy, busy, busy picking up baby calves from the pasture for the past month or so and haven’t had time to post, but I wanted to let everyone know about my new favorite gear site, The Clymb.

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Membership is free, so head on over to The Clymb and start salivating over the great deals.