What a goofy August this will be

[cosmolinguist]

Like a lot of us, I have an exercise-nut colleague.

She's pretty cool though. Occasionally she tries to get people to join in with her "challenges." She's done 50 pull-ups/chin-ups every day in July! (I have done 0 in my whole life. I haven't tried since it was one of the things I sometimes had to fail to do in front of my whole grade-school class as part of the President's Physical Fitness Test.)

For August, she's doing 100 bodyweight movements every day, which seems much more manageable to me because some of those I have heard of and am physically capable of. And, between the instructor actually getting a holiday and me missing another week with my work trip, I've been my gym classes a lot lately and without external structure I never exercise. So I said I'd take up her challenge.

This morning I was looking at the list of exercises she sent for us to choose from, and thought I'm tired just reading the list.

• squats
• sit-ups
• press-ups [I still call these push-ups, same thing]
• crunches
• leg raises
• dorsal raises
• tricep press-ups
• burpees
• mountain climbers
• frog jumps
• jump squats
• pull-ups

There were a few she forgot and didn't add until today!

• star jumps [jumping jacks]
• squat jumps and double squat jumps [I don't know if sqaut jumps are the same as jump squats in the first list! I know about jump squats but I've never heard of a double squat jump]
• lunges
• "bodybuilder burpees - worth a google, I both love and hate these" [I have not bothered to google, ha!]

I know I can't do mountain climbers yet, and I can't do burpees if I have to put my hands on the floor, in the gym I can do a modified version with my hands on a bench or something low down but I just can't have my ankle bent quite enough yet to lean over to the ground like that (I have the same issue with walk-outs, which aren't even on this list so that's okay).

I like to focus on core exercises because that's easily where I'm weakest. And also stuff that's good for my ankle. Which is also stuff I hate!

Lunges are so good for my ankle my physio prescribed them, and I'm still so bad at them (we do walking lunges at circuits and my balance, between the weak ankle and weak core, is abysmal). Well I'm getting better at spider lunges; again my issue is that it's difficult and slow to get my feet in the right place (or as close as they'll get to the right place!).

I told my colleague I'm really going to struggle to do a hundred of anything because I get bored very easily (this is why I love circuits!) and also I never count (I didn't go into details for why but it's a way to fight off...uh...whatever you'd call orthorexia but for exercise). So she suggested "her favorite" circuits thing which is five rounds of doing an exercise for 30 seconds, resting for 30 seconds. It does mean thinking of five exercises I want to do in a day, or at least like three and repeating a couple.

I'm thinking sit-ups, dorsal raises (the one thing I had to google so far, I thought that would be good for me), lunges, bicycle crunches, and maybe push-ups. But there are easier things I can do, like squats and leg raises, if this is too ambitious.

Comments

[rmc28]

Hah. I am doing a summer training challenge with my hockey team, there's a whole schedule with rest days etc, but every day is some bodyweight movement, and some stickhandling (which I'm doing with a tennis ball on the driveway, not having a handy fake-ice-pad or whatever it is the serious players have). But what I like is it's generally "do this for x time and rest y time" rather than "count to z" because I always get distracted counting.

[jenett]

I really love Hampton and Hybrid Calisthenics for breaking stuff down with a ton of modifications. He's got a bunch of short videos, but also pretty decent written descriptions.

(Have I ever made it past the intro stuff? No. I have trouble with the do some/rest sequence. I really need to get in the habit of doing a cycle, going off and doing something else for an hour, and then doing another set.)

[azurelunatic]

My physical therapist has me doing an alternative to sit-ups since those were bothering my neck: a lying or sitting core tightening, hold for a count of three.

[otter]

That sounds like a good list you've chosen, especially since you have easier options.
I need external structure and miss going to see the physical therapist regularly.