Tuesday 13.1: Gymnastics day

Tuesday. Gymnastics. Muscle-ups, strict hspu's, and double unders.

This has been part of my 2015 programming that there will be days where I will not touch a barbell nor do a metcon as such. Just concentrate on some gymnastics movements or skills to build on those. Muscle-ups are something I strongly feel I have more potential to shine on. Today I paid effort on those, then did emom-style handstand push-up strength, and finally jump rope action. Good stuff!

Muscle-ups.

• 20 singles of ring muscle-ups

These delight me a lot. These twenty reps were probably the best I have ever done. Ever. I took them as singles. Had thought about how to develop my skills on the muscle-ups. Not just trying to rep one at a time but what would the suitable progressions be to get better at this skill? I talked with Toni and we both thought my swing needs some work.

So my plan was to hit some muscle-ups and then finally do lots of swings without even trying to finish the entire movement. That was the plan but the reality was those muscle-ups felt good from the very beginning so I changed it so that I got one muscle-up and continued by doing 2-4 big swings right after that in the same set.

This turned out to be a good strategy. At least it felt natural and my muscle-ups got better by the rep. I believe it was because I got lots of those swings done and the movement pattern becomes more clear all the time. I thought about doing 10 reps but because those rocked pretty well, I kept on doing them. Next goal was at 15 reps, then finally at 20 reps. Feeling stoked!

Hspu.

• Every 90 seconds, perform max set of strict handstand push-ups
• Total of 6 sets
• Result, 10-5-6-6-5-5 reps

Strict hspu's or strict pull-ups are something that I rarely do. On metcons I don't see the point of doing them as strict versions because the goal is intensity. But on a day like this it felt like a good plan. So it was one unbroken set every 90 seconds, then recover the rest of the time period, and complete another one. Repeat for a total of 6 sets.

This was a good one. I took no warm-up on being inverted against the wall. First set went on for 10 reps. Probably the most I've ever done as strict. Then it was 5's and 6's on the remaining sets. I'm very happy on the way I was able to carry on through these sets.

Du's.

• Double unders 20-30-40-50-40-30-20 reps

This was more like a cool down section. Took some time between sets. It's been a while since I've hopped around for jump rope purposes so I wanted to get a feeling of them back in my mind. These went okay have had better but still pretty okay. I'm still pumped up on those muscle-ups. Really feels like some progress was made today. Let's see, I have one buddy at work who can link about ten mu's in a row so I'll have to get a training session with him to absorb some good technique from him.