A bit of catch up . . .

Monday after work I went for my usual run at the Toro Estates trail.  Legs were feeling tight still and just couldn't get into it.  But on the plus side, my time improved from the Saturday run . . . so I guess that's a good thing . . . ?

And yesterday . . . well yesterday was weird.

I went to my cousins place to help with being soccer mom.  She needed help shuttling kids back home after their dance practice for the daughters sweet sixteen celebration.  When I got back home, I didn't want to wait for my brother so I started my crossfit workover.  I should tell you that he had said that he wanted to try it out.  I agreed to help him with this.

My brother is 22 years old.  You see him and you would agree that he's built like a brick shit-house. He's 5' 6" and weighs about 200 lbs.  Most of it muscle.  He's blocky.  He's recently started to develop a gut.  He goes to the gym and works with MASS!  I don't do mass like he does, but I know how to move it without hurting myself if I have to.

He said he wanted to try doing Fran.  Dumbass.  Let me reintroduce Fran:

Fran, as I've explained before is using a 95 lb bar for Thrusters and kipping pull-ups.  I can't kip or do a real pull-up yet.  For the pull-up, I use a horizontal row making sure I engages the lats.

Anyway . . . I had already completed my warmup had started my modified Fran when I heard my brother arrive.  Looked in the backyard and saw me dying and went to change into his workout gear.  I was finishing my last set of thrusters when he and his friend came out and observed my workover.

I could barely speak when I finished and after about ten minutes, I finally started them on the warmup.  Neither of them are AT ALL flexible.  I had them trying the pass-throughs and even at the widest point on the bar (five foot bar) they could just get it behind their back without complaint.

Once those were done, they went through the warmup ok. Three sets of ten each of pvc bar overhead squats, push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups and good mornings. Oh, wait.  I had to teach them how to do a proper overhead squat.

When I showed them and asked them to do it, they kept coming up on the balls of their feet.  NO!  They found it difficult to stay on their heels when doing the squat.  I could already foresee a problem when it came time to do Fran.

They elected to do a straight chin-up instead of the row or the kip.  Because of the difficulty of them them learning to do a proper squat, they were working muscles that they weren't used to using so it took them some time to do it.  Isaiah, my brothers friend, I can understand why he had problems.  He doesn't work out and he's a mean ol' pot smoker.  But he's rail thin.  He's wiry! He's fairly strong and knows how to use his body.  He works at a home depot doing a lot of manual labor stuff, like moving A LOT of cement bags.  So he ain't exactly a wimp.

He was actually doing better with the squats than my brother.  He was going all the way down and staying on his heels.  Yeah, he would lift forward a bit, but for the most part he stayed where he was supposed to be at.

One thing I noticed is that my brother cheats.  When doing the chin-up, I kept having to tell him to get a FULL extension.  He wouldn't go all the way down.  The same thing with the squats.  He wouldn't or couldn't go all the way down.  I kept telling him, "Your ass has to break parallel!"

And when I think back, he's been doing that with a lot of his weight lifting.  When bench pressing, the bar doesn't go all the way to his chest.  In other words, he's working out for the shape of the muscle instead of the funtionality.  He looks big, but he walks around with bent arms.

If he keeps wanting to do this, I'm not sure how much he's going to like me.  I'm going to be on his ass to do everything properly.  I guess that'll help me out too.  You know what they say, Learn by Teaching.  This'll help me to keep these concepts fresh in my mind when I'm working out so I do them properly as well.

I think I'm running tonight after work.  Feeling good and looking forward to it.

GD

p.s.
my time on fran was a little over seven minutes.
theirs was around 20 minutes.

p.p.s.
i'm a badass

p.p.p.s.
too lazy to check. run smiley :)