Alright- I think I've done it. After being home for approximately 22 days now, I have finally decided and settled on the kind of workouts that are working for me in this summer time away from my gym hiatus. As some of you may remember, the garage was too buggy, my bedroom farrrrrrrr too small and hot, and the whole traveling to a gym thing would end up costing me more financially than the calories it would burn. My grandma's pool across the street however? Well that seems to be juuuuuust right :)
Over the past few weeks I've been experimenting with my swim WODs, going for yardage swam vs rounds 5-10-15 of various body weight exercises on the concrete beside it. The only real hiccup I've encountered has been the onslaught of green flies that come to attack as soon as my wet body hits the humid air, causing me to have to interrupt my pushups or squats to jump into the pool for safety. Also, and most obviously, a lack of equipment means I can't do much besides body weight movements- not a bad thing by any sense of the imagination but it can get to be a bit repetitive after awhile.
On Sunday morning, a few hours before our much anticipated evening with Bob Dylan in Saratoga, I once again recruited Molly to do a workout with me. "We have to look our best for Dylan and give ourselves an excuse to drink a bottle of whiskey," I reasoned, and with that sort of justification, who could really say no?
5 Rounds:
6 laps (100 yards)
20 pool muscle ups
15 sqats
10 pushups
I'm pretty sure it took us about 25 minutes, but I quickly gave up timing these water-based WODs after almost water clogging my ipod touch while simultaneously drying out the marker for my grandmas portable white board....note to self and everyone else, chlorine dries out markers.
As you can imagine, these workouts kick my ass! Not only in testing my physical toughness, but this isn't like doing burpees on a dry mat. In undertaking these calorie crushers there is a serious risk that I will swallow enough chlorinated water to either kill myself or, perhaps more likely, drown. Because of these added hazards and my anti-athlete- rather be safe than sorry attitude, I realize that I may be making these workouts too easy for myself. Until today I wasn't exactly sure what to do about that.
But this morning when I woke up, I realized that it had been a fortnight since I did a good Kettle Bell swing, and I gotta tell ya, as weird as it may be, I missed them! So, with book and bathing suit in hand, I walked the 500 meters across the street to my grandmother's house with my 16 kg KB swinging at my side. This was a workout in itself. I planted it on the lawn at the side of the pool and when my 87 year old grandma came down, doing her sweep for bugs or any other abnormalities, I watched from my lawn chair as she tried to pick up that KB to move it to a more aesthetically pleasing area. "What is this thing?!" she asked, about to blame the lawn mower men or my mother.
"It's a KB, I'm going to use it for my workout."
"It's heavy!"
"I'll put it away when I'm finished, I promise," I said, though to be honest I was not looking forward to picking that baby back up and walking it across the street again, this time in a post-workout coma.
Anyway, after doing some simple math (and then asking Chad to make sure I had the right figures, which I didn't) I found that with a 50 ft pool, I'd have to do 105 laps to swim a mile. That seemed like quite an undertaking for a day such as this one, so I again went with my 5 round program, a number that for some reason seems not only doable but adequate.
5 Rounds:
10 laps (500 ft)
15 KB swings
Then a 5 lap cool down just to make sure I'd actually swam half a mile.
It was tough, but I mixed up my swim styles, using flippers and a kickboard for a couple rounds to keep my glutes in working order and alternating between free style and the breast stroke to keep myself from getting bored. And the biggest fear I always have when using a KB (that it will fly out of my hands and do irreversible damage to anyone or thing in its trajectory) didn't prove to be an issue at all! Chlorinated water it seems, does not only dry out your markers, but keeps your hands from being slippery as well!
Which leads me to my final question: do you actually sweat while you're swimming? I know I'm getting a good workout- my heart is pounding, my muscles are tired- but it's not the same kind of exhaustion I feel after working out at the gym. And because of that, it's not the same feeling of accomplishment. I'm not dying of heat exhaustion, my face is not red and nearly unrecognizable, so is the workout as effective?
Before the week ends I want to do a mile swim, but I'm not sure whether I should try and do it for time or keep working in my pool side moves. And if any of you fine people out there have any suggestions for my inbetweeners it'd be greatly appreciated. Best part? My grandma let me store the KB in the shed for daily use! It really is the little things....
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