Its me and it's her (the wife)

[Alex Burden]

Friday morning and feeling well rested, probably the best nights sleep during the past 2 weeks. So i came up with a plan the other day that i thought was good and then all of the sudden the wife wakes up and had an idea .
She wanted to do a partner workout and share the load which i was ok with as that was sort of my plan just a little different. So the wife's choice today.

Warm up
General stretch all over and then warm up with everything that was to come, plus some mobility in between.

Wife's choice: partner workout - between us complete the following:

5K row use 1 rower

at the same time complete the following:

10 rounds
10 med ground - over shoulder 10/20kgs
10 push ups
10 T2B/K2C
10 S2O - barbell 20/34kgs
10 Pull ups/Ring pulls

So last night i estimated that this would take us 30min to complete both parts, was very close in guessing but i actually thought the rowing was going to take longer than it did.

Times - Row 25:02, metcon 31:35

so the average time between them was below 30min which is good and based on the fact that it could take under 3min/round and the rotating it is about right. This was a really good workout and got the whole body going. It would be nice if they bought in a couple of heavier med balls, this would make things more interesting.

Cool Down
Clean up, sweat and stretch for 25min.

So that was the end of a great week... back Monday.

[Alex Burden]

Monday morning and a little tired. We didn't do that much over the weekend which was good for the body.. a little R&R is never wrong.Wife was in a good mood today and looking forward to what i had planned.

Warm up 2 rounds each
One of us on the rower, nice easy pace to wake the body up while the other did:

30/60 du/su's unbroken
8 lengths of gym jog
30/60 du/su's unbroken

on my final set of du's i messed up twice after 5 or 6 reps, so then i thought Fck it, go unbroken as far as i could... things were going really well and i thought i would hit 100 but only got to 88 unbroken... new PR on unbroken du's .

some general stretching of the muscles and joints of the focus areas to come.

Focus today - Lats, traps, rotator cuff, Scapulae, Rhomboids.

So focus was on the parts of the body we do not see and need to work on that are very important.

Alternate between:
6 x 10reps each shoulder - single are dumbbell rear delt fly, laying on side on a bench. 4/6/8/10kgs dumbells
6 x 10 reps - specialist mobility exercises using kettlebells for range of motion.

The combination of these exercises really activated the read delts, scapulae and rhomboids. rotating between them ensure we did not get much rest and once you got a pump it did not stop until we were done.

5 x 3 reps - strict pulls ups supinated and pronated
5 x 3 reps - strict pulls ups supinated and pronated weighted 10kgs/22lbs for me, wife lowered resistance band.
5 x 5 reps - 3 strict pulls ups supinated and pronated weighted and 2 without weight.

We all know what pull ups do to us. All of focus on the activation of the lats at the bottom, a clean smooth pull to the top position and the contraction of the back at the top. Nice and smooth on the way down.

5 x 15 reps - bench press with resistance bands.

So the set up is having the bands in the horizontal plane with wife applying the restistance load(bands are tied around collars so that they can rotate freely). After every 5 reps the wife would increase the load by pulling a little harder. Having resistance pulling towards your head meant you had to have a good starting position for your bench press as your lats, pecs, shoulders, triceps are all turned on at the same time just to keep the bar in the right position. This also reduced the pressure on the shoulder joint as the other activated muscles were also taking the load. One of the PT's at the gym saw what we were doing and tried it out for a set of 20 and he was very impressed with the feeling and the pump afterwards but also happily surprised.

Cool Down
A good stretch for 20min

It does not sound as if we did a lot today, but the muscle focus put into every rep really takes it out of you. Wife was really happy with everything today and she commented allot of the feeling and muscle response afterwards.

[Alex Burden]

Tuesaday morning and it is quite cold outside...-4 centigrade BBrrrrrrrrr. Both a little tired but looking forward to today. Focus on reps and squat today

Warm up
5min on the rower to get the body going

general allround warm up, stretch and some mobility. This then continued with the movments to come before we started.

Squat 6x6 reps
We both started squating and getting th feel for the movement and could take the weight as far as we wanted before we actually started. We were allowed to stay at the same weight at any time or increase it, but we were not allowed to lower it.

Wife - 30, 35, 40, 40, 43, 45kgs/99lbs (75% of 1RM)
Myself - 70, 80, 80, 90, 100, 105kgs/231lbs (75% of 1RM)

All of the lift were really solid today for both of us. We were in no rush to get things done.


OHS 6x6 reps
Same principle as above with the weight.

Wife - 10, 15, 18, 18, 18kgs/39lbs, 15 (70% of 1RM)
Myself - 45, 45, 50, 50, 55, 60kgs/132lbs (73% of 1RM)

Wife was getting a little tired towards the end so i let her lower the weight on the final round. Its really nice to see a smile on her face when her lifts are solid and she knows it. I was pleased with my lifts and could have taken it a little higher but why push it. Very solid through out all of the lifts.

Cool down
clean up our mess and stretch for 20min.

No stress today, very pleased will all of the results.

[Alex Burden]

Wednesday morning and raring to go.... conditioning. So i did not tell the wife what we were going to do today, this is something i normally tell her the night before. So this morning she tells me she has an idea for today.... "i am all ears i say". So she is trying not to laugh as she is telling me about her idea! she blurts out exactly the same plan i had planned for today and she is cracking up laughing while telling me. So i ask her .... "wow that was some idea, where and when did you come up with that"? She blurts out... "when i saw it in your writing block on the table" . She cracks me up sometimes... stealing whith pride you can say and this is 05.30 in the morning.

So we went with her stolen plan

Warm up
3 or 4 minutes on the bike (not AAB)
a general stretch of the legs. We could also stretch in between the first part of today.

Conditioning - the wife's stolen plan for today

20 min on the bike 1min on/1min off partner, 1 bike

Result - between us
10.89km
276 calories


4min rest


15 min run on treadmill 1 degree incline

Wife - 2.25km/175 calories
myself - 2.75km/320 calories


5min rest


15min row for meters Rower drag set to 125/130 and stroke rate is not to exceed 22/min

Wife - 3042m
Myself - 3660m

We were quite pleased with today and it seems we are not as bad as we thought. The mix up of things was good and gave a good indication of what we are capable to do.

Cool Down
4min on the rower, really slow just rid the muscles of the crap that built up over the 50min.
sweat, sweat, sweat and more sweat.
then a good stretch for 20min.

What we both noticed was that our recovery time was quite good which is a good indication we are doing something right.

That was that, back tomorrow

[Alex Burden]

Thursday morning and we are both a little tired. Nothing to fancy or complicated today.... GRIP & DB's was the focus for today.

Warm up
row, jog, Du's or Su's to get the body going.

Some PVC pipe work and then set up and warm up with waht was to come.

Grip

5 rounds of
5 reps DB bench press
5 reps DB cleans
5 reps DB shoulder press
5 lengths of gym DB farmers walk
10 T2B/K2C

All DB movements must be unbroken and DB's must never leave your hands until the T2B/K2C. If you drop the DB's you have to start that round again.

Wife used 7, 8, 8, 8, 9kg/20lb DB's
Myself - 16, 20, 20, 20, 24kgs/53lb DB's

Our forearms were on fire after that and it was good fun. For once my T2B went really well.

Wife's idea
Superman 20 rounds 10 sec on/10 sec off

and for some reason she wanted to kill us both today
Superman 5 rounds 15 sec on/10 sec off

So i took it a step further.

Back extentions - 8x8 reps

Cool down
wife stretched for 20min

I started static hand stand holds against the wall 5 x 15 seconds with a 6 second desent on the way down. I have not done these in a while as my shoulder has been giving me grief but now it is time to get back on it. I need to fix the HSPU before the open. Then i stretched for 15min.

all done for today

[Alex Burden]

Friday morning week is almost over. Today i had a zombie walking around the kitchen.... oh sorry! .. it was the wife , she was really tired this morning, pillow marks etched into the side of her face

So nothing special today, little alround movements.

Warm up
Hit the rower for 2½min, jog for 2½ min, PVC for 2½min x 2

The a general stretch, some mobility and warm up with what was to come. Probably did 5 or 6 rounds of the EMOM during the warm up.

Nothing special

EMOM 10 wife 25kgs/myself 50kgs
1 Dead lift
1 Power clean
1 Hang power clean
1 Shoulder to overhead
1 Burpee o bar

This was a no rush EMOM. We had a 1 second pause after each movement. Allot of rest on this one but it was a good allrounder, it really warmed us up.

AMRAP 3 - 1,1/2,2/3,3/4,4/5,5........
Dead lift 35/60kgs
Kb swings 12/20kgs

Wife - 57 reps
Myself - 65 reps

Wife got same result as last time but i was 10 short. I kept a good flow and did not stress out. The wife was still pleased with her result even if she was tired in her lower back.

AMRAP 3 - 5,10/10,20/15,30/20,40.....
Wall balls 4/10kgs (I used 9kg previous time)
Du/Su (wife did double the amount so to equal the same total reps)

Wife - 101 reps
Myself - 104 reps

Wife was 9 short of last time but she also messed up her Su's 3-4 times which she lost allot of time on. I got 2 more reps than last time with a heavier WB and tripped on my round of 30 du's so i lost a few seconds.

Cool down
1k row for me and then a good stretch for 15-20 min.

Wife stretched for 20-25min

On a whole today was quite good and based on the whole week i think we have done quite well. Now that we increased from 4 to 5 days a week i think we are starting to see small improvements across the board. So give it a month or so i we will go back and test a few things to see where we can see the difference.

All done, back Monday

[Alex Burden]

Monday morning and had a new character walking around the kitchen this morning... scareface... that was some pillow mark on the wifes face this morning so of course i had to make fun of her... Not as tired this morning and maybe this was due to the fact that we did not do that much over the weekend. We had a good chance to rest our bodies. We did not eat allot of candy at all, just a couple of pieces which i also think made a difference.

So the plan for today was C&J technique for 30min which turned out to be 50min and something to finish it all off at the end.

Warm up
PVC pipe stretching but not taking it to far. Then allot of other small movements building up mobility and stability in the upper body. Some light deadlifts, hang power cleans, front squats, S2O and other barbell work to make sure we were ready. In all we spent 20min just on this part.

C&J Technique
There was a limitation on the weight to be used today, 60kg for myself and 25kgs for the wife. Now the reason for this was that the weight is not too light nor to heavy to be able to repeat the lifts and make them all comparable. It also meant that we did not get tired during the whole time.

We started to lift and get the feeling for it and then we started to focus on the technique and look at what was actually going on. During the 50min we completed at most 25 lifts..

So once we were comfortable we filmed each other then we took a look at the films. prior to actually looking we had to say weather the lift felt good on not and what what not good. So that analysis was used vs the video. We use the Iron Path app to see what happened.

So the wife from the start - the path of the bar was not that vertical from the start and she was slow during the jerk. What we noticed was that she leaned back a touch as if to deadlift which also pulled her shoulders behind the bar which in the end gave her a wonky barbell path.
Fix - l told her to lift her backside a little, her shoulders moved over the bar and bingo, the lift was so much better. During the split jerk she worked on really getting under the bar and not overdoing it when driving her legs apart.
Reaction - she thought everything went in slow motion even if the lift was good, but when i showed her the video she then realised that she was really fast and so stable. Then she just kept trying to repeat the lift. Her final 2 or 3 lifts were really good and i was able to film the last lift which she felt was one of the best today.

For myself - my problem has been getting under the bar during the jerk. I have not been consistant which is slowing my progression down. I notiticed i was leaning a little backwards and not driving my head through my arms. this may also be a safety thing in the back of my head, making my escape plan easier if i need to bail out.
Fix - I really concentrated on my start position and first pull. I got under the bar very easy, not due to the fact that it was only 60kgs, but that i worked on speed under the bar. At the top i made sure that i kept my chest up and head up and really worked on getting under the bar. An explosive jerk, drive the feet out and get under the bar in that stable position.
Reaction - really pleased with the progression. Clear difference in between the first video and the last 2 we filmed. The path of the barbell was great from start to finish and my head was through my arms. 60kgs has never felt so light before.

Finish it all off
AMRAP 10
1 length of gym (15m), KB Farmers walk - one arm OH 12/24kgs
2 Burpees
1 length of gym (15m),
2 Push ups
2 Sit ups

After each round we increase the burpees, push ups and sit-ups by 2 reps.

Wife - 108 reps
Myself - 113 reps

Cool down
a good stretch for 20min and a lot of talking.

A good start to the week

[Alex Burden]

Tuesday morning and thought i was going to have a heart attack this morning i forgot to put the volume on my phone to the lowest level. So when it rang it **** the life out of me. Apart from that a little tired as usual but both of us are in a good mood.

Plan for today - Tabata

Warm up
One of us on the rower at a comfortable pace while the other completes

2 rounds of
jog 4 lengths of gym
5 slow air squats

Some PVC work for 1min. rotate and do it all again. Then some general stretching.

Tabata
So i put 12 different movments on the wipe board then i told the wife to choose one to start with. Once the we completed the first one i chose the second one and so on and so on. 4min rest between each tabata.

DU/SU
wife - 392 su
myself - 238 du

Air squats
Wife - 86
Myself - 95

Row
Wife - 755
Myself - 855

Push ups
Wife - 66
Myself - 59

Wall balls 4/9kgs + T2B/K2C alternate
Wife - 78
Myself - 58 (unsure as i lost count, could have been 62)

So i started strong and the wife finished strong. The start was tough with the rope and they sent the tone for the rest of the workout. Apart from that a good general workout. I was totally fckd on the final one and also lost cost in the middle.

Cool down
talk and stretch for around 20min.

[Alex Burden]

So it was Tuesday night and i came up with a plan for Wednesday. Gave the wife a blank piece of paper and she looked at me all funny . Rest day darling, rest day tomorrow.

I just think we need an extra day as we have worked out 17 of the last 23 days.

[Alex Burden]

So back to business today. Rest day yesterday was really nice and i think it paid off as both of us were quite fresh this morning.

Plan for today was yesterdays plan - low intensity cardio.

Warm up
20min warm up in preperation to run including stretch.
This felt quite good and then it was time to go..

Low intensity cardio
In total 4km on the treadmill. So it worked like this.

800m - moderate pace that feels comfortable
200m - walk
400m - moderate pace as above
400m - faster pace than moderate
200m - walk
800m - moderate pace that is faster than your previous moderate pace
200m - walk
400m - moderate pace as above
400m - faster pace than new moderate pace.
200m - walk

So the first km you get the feel of things and in the flow. This is where we had our basic km times and during the second 800m we could increase the km time because our moderate pace felt so much easier. On the walk we could go as slow or as fast as we wanted, both of us were about 12min/KM

So it looked like this for the wife:
800m - 6.54/km
200m - walk
400m - 6.54/km
400m - 6.15/km
200m - walk
800m - 6.15/km
200m - walk
400m - 6.15/km
400m - 5.20/km
200m - walk

Total time: 28.25 and 282 calories


For myself:
800m - 6.00/km
200m - walk
400m - 6.00/km
400m - 5.00/km
200m - walk
800m - 5.27/km
200m - walk
400m - 5.27/km
400m - 4.36/km
200m - walk

Total time: 26.29 and 406 calories

10min Rower
Wife - drag setting to between 90-100, max 22 pulls/min
Myself - drag setting 100-110, max 22 pulls/min

Wife = 2km
Myself 2.5km

Now the funny thing is that our rowers are crap and have still not been serviced. So even with the low drag setting and pull rate i still hit 500m in 2min. This really irritates us because we know we could lower our times a lot per 500m if they just ran a little smoother. One thing is for sure, we are really efficient.

Cool down
20min stretch

all in all a good day.