Finally, after 2-ish months, the gym is finally open! Good thing we’ve all been staying diligent with all of the at-home programming, so there doesn’t need to be any transition time between now and achieving elite fitness.
Let’s not kid ourselves here, many of us lost a step because of life. And that’s okay, but now everyone is excited to get back to pre-corona fitness levels. Here are 3 techniques you can use to ramp yourself back up in a sensible manner.
For context, I’ll explain the concepts based on yesterdays training session, which was:
Strength
10:00 Alternating EMOM
Even: 6/6 SA KB front rack step back lunge
Odd: 10/10 kelso shrug
Conditioning
12:00 AMRAP
4x burpees
8/8 SA KB Push Press
16x SA alternating KB swings
Nasal Breathing
This is my go to technique for most things. Nasal breathing is just breathing in through the nose and exhaling through the mouth. It is a good constraint that helps you to stay in control of what you are doing, also known as “being present.” You can experiment on what part of the movement you are doing the inhale versus the exhale. There are some rules on when to inhale versus exhale, but in general, I like to inhale when I want my body to be the most stable. For something like a lunge, that would be on the way down. Push press, on the dip before driving the weight up. On pulling movements (like a kelso shrug), when the resistance is going away from my body. You will have to play with it to see what works best for you.
Unbroken Movements (versus Rounds)
With this technique, you rest as much as you need to in order to not mess up the next movement. So you’d do your 4x burpees, and regain control of your breathing (nasal) before moving to the KB push press. If you need to stop to regain control of your breathing before switching arms, that is perfectly fine. Continue this technique until the 12 minutes expires. In this scenario, the 12 minutes is purely an administrative tool for class management, not a specific time domain you are training for. The # of rounds you get will be a direct result of doing the same thing over and over again.
Go so hard that you can’t finish.
This is something new I’ve been playing around with but I think it can be an effective strategy. On 3-2-1 go, you would do the 4x burpees soooooo fast, it would take the rest of the 12 minutes for you to catch your breath and continue. If possible, you would continue each movement in this fashion. It sounds crazy, but it is actually a really good way to self regulate your effort. You won’t see improvement doing this all the time, so I’d save this technique for maybe 1x/week. At most 2, but that depends on what the rest of your life looks like for things like sleep, nutrition, and how well you manage stress.
So three effective techniques for easing your way back into fitnessing. The good thing about these techniques is that they are good ALL THE TIME. As you get in better shape, you’ll be able to maintain nasal breathing for longer, you’ll be able to do unbroken rounds as well as reps, and you’ll be able to push intensity for longer.
3FN 