(Part 21 of 36 in series, 10,000 Reps Project)

Not including a spreadsheet snapshot this week, because this nonsense (last week, this week) will only make sense to my crazy brain.

As I described in my last update, my right forearm is the gating issue. I’ve been doing about 30 pullups per day, as sets of 2… just going to the bar every 20 minutes or so and doing two pullups, without my right pinky on the bar (releases the part of the forearm that is sore.) After a week of this, my forearm feels better (not 100% though), and I’m going to see how I feel doing sets of 3 so the odometer goes a little faster towards 10k.

Squats feel better now that I’m going down only to the point where I’d have to unload my heels. Solidly below parallel though, but without the bottoming-out sort of cheat-stop at the bottom. So these are probably the best squats I’ve ever been doing. Fifteen is straightforward, but I’ve been doing 7s and 8s randomly, just because I’m constantly going to the pullup bar to do a lousy 2 or 3.

Pushups are easy/fun.

For handstands, I’m doing 15-second stands because it’s awesome kickup and balance (against the wall, working on free-standing) practice.

Bar-precisions I’ve a pause on (all last week) because I ripped all my scaf apart last week. I spent all day saturday building scaf variations for some blog posts I’m doing. Today (probably tomorrow) I’ll go build something for rail precisions so I can get back on track with those (I’m 3×75 behind from last week.) But these I can just crank out, so I’m not concerned.

This week, going by my now-usual 3-days rotating thing, I’d have three 80 rep workouts, (a +5 bump as I ramp up for the last few months of hauling the mail). Instead, I’m going to not plan specific workouts — since I’m just doing things randomly through the day. I’ll spreadsheet the actual daily numbers for my next check-in. I’m a little nervous about not having specific planned workouts — but I’ve already been NOT doing the plan (last week) so may as well make a real plan (to just do what I can through the day) and keep an eye on the pace.

Bigger picture: This year-long goal is hands-down the hardest thing I have ever tried to do. Harder than losing weight, because the weight loss translates immediately to other results/benefits. Cranking on these activity numbers is just like staring at an odometer. …well, the pullups led to noticable improvements, but now even they’re more like staring at an odometer. Big set-numbers would be cool, but not until my forearm heals.

Onward!

(shuffles to the other room, does 3 pull-ups and a 15-second handstand against the wall… :)

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Today I got a lot of numbers done. On the screengrab attached, I don’t have all of today’s numbers white… just a few more reps to do to finish today. But still totally slacking on the bar precisions. DAMMIT tomorrow I’m gonna get on it!!

The bar pre numbers for the rest of this week are gonzo… I know I can do them, just need to get in gear. Yellow blocks are “planned”, blue is “interesting mile post”, and red is “danger/training obstruction ahead”.

Saturday I’ll be away in upstate NY for some Parkour so I’ve cleared that day with zeros. But I suspect I’ll be tired Sunday — I’ll be driving home 3 hours, and there’s regular class in the afternoon. So I should clear Sunday as well. I’ll see if I can “bank” things. But “banking” 180 bar pre’s will not be easy.

Pushups are almost getting silly. We have this large group that converses each day with a Parkour friend who is currently in the army deployed to Afghanistan (in intelligence, not getting shot at.) Anyway, every day that he posts an “Afgan log entry”, we (most of us) do an increasing number of pushups. So you’ll see a hint of the 40, 41, 42, 43 etc in the pushups column. I just keep filling them in to make numbers, and I keep dropping/ignoring extra pushups done. So this Thursday would be 49, but I’m only recording the 45 I need to get to 4,000. Then Friday, Saturday and Sunday I’m likely to do another 50, 51 and 52 pushups. (Which I’ll ignore because I don’t need the numbers.) Anyway, weird numbers appearing in the pushups column. But it’s awesome to be like “meh. pushups. whatevs.” On Sunday, I did that 140 in 12 minutes and it was cake. Well, cake with nuts in it, but cake.  [ <– Deadpool reference :^]

Bigger picture, this means (if I can pull off this week) I only lost about 9 calendar days of slippage to my recent got-sick-and-then-became-a-slacker slide.

On the other hand, 720 bar precisions in the next 4 days… that’s probably a wee bit ambitious.

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No major changes…

Last week I did two good work days. Did the pull-ups in 5 trips to the pull-up bar over five hours, and still doing very small sets 4×3,4×2 to get me 20 reps without over-working my forearm. I’m going to stick with that plan this week. For the last workout of this week, the numbers-game will work better if I can go up to 120 reps — so that will probably be 6 trips to the pull-up bar.

Also last week, I did the 200 bar precisions in one session. It’s not physically demanding, but more of an aerobic, get-in-the-zone and work on the quality of each jump. I may do that on Wednesday, simply to move the bar precisions to be on a different day from the pull-ups.

There should have been a third workout in last week — but I was away in NYC/Brooklyn for several days (the red blocks). Huge amounts of training, and huge amounts of “hey that’s noticably better” as a result of all this body-weight work. (Also, very little sleep and scattered eating — and, hey look, I think I’m sick again :/

Anyway.

Next week there are way too many “120”s on the workbook. That’s just me moving numbers down without bothering to go farther out and reshuffle numbers (yet). I just passed the “4,000”s mile post last week, and now — FINALLY — with these sized workouts, the “5,000”s milepost is in sight. At a rate of “120”s workouts, on a work-rest-work-rest-rest pattern of days, I can still finish this all in sane fashion before the 365th day.

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Quick check in…

Time to start ramping up to larger numbers. Need to be doing 120 pull-ups in a day if I’m going to be able to do work-rest-work-rest-rest the rest of the way to 10K before the deadline. So Monday I’m going to try doing 4 trips to the bar with 25 pullups (rather than 5 trips of 20), then I can add a fifth trip in coming days to move above 100 reps for the day. We’ll shall see. :P

200+ bar precisions is doable, so I think I’ll plan for a while to double up (two days’ reps, in one bar precision workout) since it’s easier to just go out less often and crank out numbers.

The ladder push-ups thing is still going. I think we’re within a week of it ending though (when the guy rotates home from deployment) so I’ll shift to something less weird-looking at that point.

Also planning ahead to keep Saturday and Sunday open this coming weekend.

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The more I work on this stuff, the more I’m certain I’ll never be done; I’ll finish this challenge, but, “move, exercise” is just an infinitely deep rabbit hole.

The past two weeks, I’ve been working on trying to increase daily numbers. Pull-ups remain the limiting exercise, so it’s a game of how many pull-ups can I do in a day. Last week, every day, I did anywhere from 1 to 4 separate workouts. I did circuits with small pull-up sets to a total of 24 or 25 pull-ups in each workout. (Circuits of pushups, squats, handstands and seated/resting squatted. But that’s all easy stuff.) So the number of pull-ups on each day last week ranges oddly from 24 to 96.

My forearm continues to feel better. It’s now a sort of “remember to be careful about that”, rather than a feeling of impending doom if I do one pull-up incorrectly. I’m continuing to generally push hard with training, but I’ve no qualms about pulling up short if the arm bothers me at all.

I’ll pass 5,000 reps of everything this week!

I’m planning only 2 workouts this week. They will both be the largest number of pull-ups I’ve every attempted in a day. I’m aiming for 120 reps spread into four workouts. This week would still be a slightly “light” week since it’s only 2 out of seven days with workouts. The following week, I’m tentatively thinking of trying two days with 125 pull-ups in each day. I’ve never managed more than about 70 pull-ups in a single workout, so I’m tempted to try to do one big workout to see if I can do 120 pull-ups in something silly like 40 sets of 3.

If I can do 120 reps on workout days, I can still finish this whole challenge in time (but with literally just a few days to spare.) That seems too finely-planned, so I’m hoping to get up to 125 reps on the work days. This is definitely going to be physically challenging to make it by the end of 365 days.

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woo-HOO, it feels great to be back in the saddle!

I did this week’s workouts as planned. I’ve 80 bar precisions to squeeze in on Saturday. It’s a busy day, but it won’t be a problem. Monday and Wednesday I did the 80 pullups in sets of 3, WITH an assistance band. Today I did ten sets of 5 with the band, then 10 sets of 3 without any band. I think next week I should be good to go without any assistance band on the pullups.

This week I added 240 to the odometers. That’s WAY too slow to make the 10k-in-a-year goal. I’d have to rack up 500 per week to make it. I’m not ruling out some crazy miraculous rabbit-out-of-hat finish… but I expect I’m going to run over the one-year date.

Next week, I’m going to repeat the same plan (80 reps on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). Just to make Saturday and Sunday completely free (from this stuff, I do other things ;) I’ll do all the bar precisions on Tuesday and Thursday. 6 sets of 20 is a nice workout. Next week I’ll be just shy of 6,000 reps of everything, so maybe I’ll squeeze in a few extra sets to ring that bell too.

Spreadsheet snapshot as usual. This week filled in. “Planned workouts” in yellow cells:

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Two weeks ago I started back into putting some numbers on the board. But this just-past-week I hurt my back. Tuesday I did 80 bar precisions (an easy number), but my back was feeling tired. Then Wednesday, I was really pushing it. No, actually, all I did was stand up from my desk chair. *bam* So the brunt of last week was rest, and recovery. Again. :/

On Saturday, I was feeling much better so I eased back into some normal activity. Ran for 20 minutes (with someone who is a faster runner) then did 45 minutes of QM on a tennis court — managed to go 45 minutes without standing up and with only hands and/or feet on the ground. Then I had firewood delivered about 9:30, and spent four hours of hard labor stacking it all. (I clearly don’t understand what “ease” means.)

Today, my back still feels good; it’s still recovering but on the mend.

We’re going to our regular parkour class today from 3-5. Should be beautiful weather – for heat stroke. After that, we’re heading over to the pool for some lounge time in the shade.

Monday I’ll start back into putting some numbers back up. But THIS time, I’m staying on the resistance bands longer to make sure my back is ok.

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This past week counts as MAXIMUM EFFORT.

This past week I rearranged my entire life around the workouts. M/W/F were each 5+ hours of just grueling slogging away at it. It was horrid. However, no accute injuries. My forearms seem to be holding up because of the assistance band, but also because I’m managing more/most of the pullups barehanded giving a better grip. (So less forearm pulling. With gloves, the grip slips on the fat bars and you get that hard pull at the elbow from using a different part of the grip muscles.)

The goal was 200 reps [of everything] on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday (today.) Instead I absolutely crushed it M/W/F, and today was an easy 70 reps of everything with some friends (after our usual short run and 45 minutes of QM.) Resting the remainder of today… by the pool in the A/C etc.

Here’s the numbers for this week. Next week, I’ll do the 250 reps again Mon/Wed, and then I’m off to Boston so no 10k workouts Thursday through Monday (only a huge Parkour event all day Saturday/Sunday :) If I can keep up these 250s M/W/F, then the places where there has to be a back-to-back workout (basically every Saturday), it can be simplay a 50-reps workout, and that’s like a “limbering up” sessions compared to 250 reps.

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