Gymnasty Goals

Sometimes, I don't think it's entirely realistic to think that I might be able to work on gymnastics and gain more skills as an adult. Especially without having a childhood background in gymnastics or really any sport at all. It seems like I might have gotten as far as I'm going to get, so what's the point of trying to gain more? With my body-weight strength where it is, not being able to do a set of 5 chin over the bar pull ups, or a single chest to bar pull up, it doesn't make as much sense to work on those higher level gymnastic skills, like muscle ups. Right? I'm not strong enough so why bother?

And then I consider that it took me over 11 months of focused, extra-curricular effort to get my first pull up. Months more effort until I could hit 5. And even though I'm down to 3 (4 on a good day) at the moment, that's in part because of focused effort on other areas (namely, the Spartan Race). I got stronger so I could do Spartan monkey bars, and wasn't as focused on pulling.

If I want to do a muscle up, then I need to put focus on that goal. And I need to work on my strength in specific ways, over a long period of time. That's how things work for me.

One of the accessory skills we worked on in the muscle up course was strict toes to bar. I cannot do that movement. I can do a toes to bar, even string 5 or 6 together - as long as I can kip. But without a kip, I can barely lift straight legs higher than my waist.

With that in mind, as well as the fact that the hollow and arch are foundational movements for gymnastics, led me to choose a slightly different strategy for strength than what I've done before. I'm not ready, right now, to commit to a longer strength workout like I did for pull ups. I might do that in the future, but I'm going to start with something a little simpler. Start with three to four days a week, doing two tabatas. Less than 10 minutes. One focuses on the arch and the hollow, the other on hip flexors with seated leg lifts.

I was actually planning on doing it every day, but then I discovered how very sore the movements made me. It's not super complicated, okay, maybe it's a little complicated, but it's straightforward. I do a hollow hold, then an arch hold, then flutter kicks while in hollow, then swimmers while in arch and repeat for the first one, then playing around with seated leg lift variations, alternating between legs together and legs apart. My abs were feeling it after two days in a row, so I scaled it back - to start.

The best part is, if this really helps me increase strength, I'll see it in more than just the gymnastics movements.

Rest and Recovery

After taking the muscle up course, for a mere two weeks, I was feeling run down. I decided against doing a class on handstand push ups because of that feeling. But even without doing an extra workout class in the evening, I found myself dragging in the mornings and struggling to stay awake in the afternoon. Combine that with a touch of a cold, and I ended up making a choice to take a break from working out.

Not just a one day rest day, or a two day rest weekend. No, I did nothing more strenuous than walking from Wednesday all the way through Monday. Six full days of rest and recovery. I even slept until I woke up naturally on Saturday, Sunday and Monday (yay, holiday).

It was weird not working out. My days didn't have the same structure. But I was falling asleep pretty well at night, even going to bed early most of those nights. I did stay up a bit on Sunday night, because I had Monday off work and I was actually feeling pretty good - like the rest and recovery was working!

I did consider going to work out on Monday, since I seemed to be doing so much better on Sunday. But I decided that one more day of rest would be best. After all, I wouldn't often be taking so many days off in a row, so better to have that one extra day in the chunk than have another single day off midweek.

So, I guess I'm learning to listen when my body tells me it's too tired - a task that takes its own particular brand of discipline.

Scaling Back

When I decided to do the muscle up class, I chose not to reduce the number of regular CrossFit classes that I attended. This, in retrospect, was a mistake. I typically go to CrossFit at 5 am, and the muscle up class was at 6:30, and went past 7:30 each time. Although I took my regular Wednesdays off, that still left me going to a 5 am class on Friday after staying up too late on Thursday for the class.

In short, I've been really tired lately.

That influenced my decision not to do the handstand push up class that started this week. Even though I really want to get a strict handstand push up and be able to do kipping again, now is not the time for me to be staying up late for extra workouts. I need to let my body recover a bit, which means going a little lighter during the 5 am classes. And - to an extent - taking it easy.

So, when we did deadlifts last week, I chose not to push the weight too high. Instead, I decided to focus on my lats while I lifted, to try and make my form better. It was pretty easy to do, because the muscle up course had been challenging my lats significantly. They were oh-so-sore. I didn't end up hitting a 5 rep PR, but I felt good about the lifting. We were doing sets of 5, and my last one, I just did one rep and then called it.

I'm still learning how to listen to my body. I know that I can push myself harder physically than I ever believed, but I don't want to push so hard that I injure myself. Ambrose and I are headed to the coast again this summer, and I need to be ready for hard pushes followed by tide-locked rests. That might mean being tired if we have to hike late into the night and then get up early the next morning. So, this is good.

But it also sucks.

Getting Stir Crazy

It might not be an exaggeration to say that I am addicted to backpacking.

I haven't spent a night outside since late August, and I am starting to feel utterly deprived of the ineffable experience of being out in the woods. I haven't even been in the woods or gone on a hike. I mean, I've done some running on the Greenbelt, but that's not the kind of nature I need to recharge myself. And, actually, I usually start getting the jitters in December, but this off season, I've managed to make it all the way to February without jonesing for the outdoors.

I personally think it's due to the fact that I've been using my old sleeping bag as a blanket for sleeping at night. It has never been washed, so it retains a good amount of outdoorsy smells, and probably fooled my body into thinking I was maybe getting outside overnight.

But I'm not.

And if I had a real backyard, I would totally be planning an outside overnighter some weekend soon. But while there is some lawn at my apartment complex, there isn't enough flat space to comfortably pitch a tent. And for some reason, I'd feel a bit unsafe sleeping out in plain sight of the street with a flimsy plastic fence as the only barrier between me and randos wandering the night (not that it's warm enough for many people to be wandering around at night). And that's kind of funny, because every time I tell people about the fact that I do solo hikes, someone seems to bring up how scary it must be to be all alone in the wilderness, but I don't feel scared out there anymore. 

So I'm going to hope that the weather holds cold enough to let me go on a hike this weekend. January was actually pretty warm here, and wet, so the foothills trails were largely unusable due to mud. Okay, and I didn't make much of an effort to find one that was usable.

All I know is I've got to do something to get my backpacking fix before I drive my husband completely over the edge!