Hey hey!
This weekend went by way too quickly. Anyone else feeling the same?
I could've definitely needed another day off, because I was working both Saturday and Sunday, even though we got a little bit of outdoor time in the weekend too.
Saturday Morning Bootcamp XIV
The Saturday Morning bootcamp was Cardio Challenge. We used kettlebells and bodyweight to do a full body cardio workout.
I've been teaching bootcamps at the same place for almost a year now, but it wasn't until last Saturday when I found a nice long flight of stairs close to the place where we workout. I couldn't believe I had never seen it before. We had wasted too much time by not putting them in use, so that mistake had to get fixed!
I know I must sound like a broken record but outdoor workouts really are the best. Take those stairs–what a simple way to make any workout even more versatile and fun. You can use them for various runs, jumps and other bodyweight exercises.
On Saturday, after a warm-up, we did a ladder workout that consisted of four exercises:
- Explosive Push Ups
- Kettlebell Swings
- Sumo Squat Jumps
- Stair Run
The exercises were put together in the following way:
- 10 Explosive Push Ups, 15 Kettlebell Swings, 20 Sumo Squat Jumps
- 15 Explosive Push Ups, 20 Kettlebell Swings, 25 Sumo Squat Jumps
- 20 Explosive Push Ups, 25 Kettlebell Swings, 30 Sumo Squat Jumps
- 15 Explosive Push Ups, 20 Kettlebell Swings, 25 Sumo Squat Jumps
- 10 Explosive Push Ups, 15 Kettlebell Swings, 20 Sumo Squat Jumps
This is a ladder workout, where the number of reps first increases, then decreases again. So your hardest round will be the third one.
See the video for exercises below. If you don't have stairs nearby, you can do step ups, as I'm doing in this video.
Here's how to do the exercises:
Explosive Push Ups: Find a bench, a chair or other elevated surface. Get in a nice plank position, just like you do when starting push ups. The higher the surface, the easier the push ups will be, so if you're getting tired by the third or fourth round, you can put your hands on something higher, for example, a table.
Lower your chest close to the bench or table, then powerfully push yourself up and release your hands for a short moment. Immediately do the next push up.
Kettlebell Swings: Gently bend your knees and swing the kettlebell back between your legs. Powerfully push the hips forward as you swing the bell up to your eye level–no need to go any higher than that.
Sumo Squat Jumps: Take a wide stance, quite a bit wider than your regular squats or squat jumps. Turn your toes out. Bend your knees just enough to be able to touch the ground with your fingers, then jump up explosively. Do next squat as soon as you land.
Stair Run: Run up the stairs as fast as you can! We had about 25 steps.
OR
Bench Step Ups: Stand in front of a bench that is about knee height. Step up and down, alternating legs.
As always, if you did the workout, let me know how you liked it!
After teaching a bootcamp, doing my own workout and meeting up with a few friends from the running club where I used to a member, I worked pretty much all afternoon and evening and didn't close my laptop until 9pm. Wild weekend, I know!
Sunday
However, we made up for it on Sunday. We planned to leave the house pretty early to go to San Francisco. Before we headed out, I was up 7am to do my morning workout. I workout almost always in the morning, for several reasons:
- I feel better in the morning.
- My body feels rested.
- I don't have any or have only a little bit food in my stomach, which works for me better when I'm working out.
- Life happens in the evening! Work may take longer, I may want to go out, etc.
- I'm tired by the evening.
- If it's the weekend, we usually go out and walk a ton, and no workout is going to happen after that.
- I may want to drink wine later on the day. 🙂 No workout happens after that either.
Archery and Grounding on Sunday
So, once I finished my sandbag workout, we headed to San Francisco. My husband is into archery and we went to the Golden Gate Park Archery Fields to spend a few hours shooting arrows.
The field is first arrive, first served, and there were a lot of people waiting for lanes to open up already before us. We ended up waiting about an hour, but since we pretty much ran out from the door and didn't have a chance to have a breakfast at home, we swung by Whole Foods and and enjoyed our salads there in the sunshine while we were waiting.
I didn't shoot a lot but mostly lied down and almost fell asleep. It just felt so good. I've written about earthing before, and I can totally tell that it really, really works. Every time I lie down on the ground or sleep on the ground, I feel amazing (except for when it's freezing cold, pf course).
When we were in Hawaii last winter, we slept 10 nights in a tent, and these were probably some of the best nights after my sleeping problems started. It's been on and off, but I had horrible sleep issues about 5-6 years ago. Things are much better but not perfect now.
So, there is something to grounding. I have to get back to barefoot walking again–I used to do it a lot, but haven't done it lately. The few hours that I spent in fresh air yesterday, lying down on the ground, were so relaxing and refreshing and made me feel like a new person.
When we got home, I finished up the weekend with more work, so I could start my Monday with a tiny bit shorter list of to-do's…
Conclusion
There it was, my weekend in the nutshell! I'm glad I got quite a bit of work done, because I was behind my schedule a lot. But weekend is not complete if there's no outdoor time, and I got good amount of that as well.
Have you tried grounding? If so, does it make a difference in how you sleep? Or maybe you can focus better? I'd really like to know!
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