Monday 10-12-07 – Urgh

I said I would do a workout today, and I’ve kept my word.  But…It really didn’t go as well as planned.

When I went out, it was 3°C – The coldest I’ve ever worked out in.  Even though the parlour was open, , after a few minutes I didn’t notice it and I was down to the tracksuit trowsers and sleeveless tee only.  This was the first time I listened to rap-style music while working out (Rage Against The Machine) which seemed to work fairly well, surprisingly.

I started with some sprinting up and down the barn with some jumping jacks.  Then I did some basic stretching.  Nothing unusual there.

Next was my normal warmup, rope jumping.  However, it went TERRIBLY.  Firstly, my Gymboss kept failing on me (I don’t think I was clicking the start button hard enough).  That was soon solved, and my first round was simply bounce-step jumping.  It didn’t go as well as planned – I kept catching the rope, more than before.  In the next round I tried alternate-foot step, which pre-illness I was starting to be able to do well.  But I could barely do any at all without catching the rope!  Literally, I think my max was between 5 and 10.  This really didn’t make me feel optimistic, as you can probably expect.  The next round, I tried again, and it still didn’t go well.  I also tried arm crossovers (crossing the rope in front of you) and I couldn’t do them at all (admittedly I’ve never tried before).  I ended the round with simple bounce-step jumping, but was feeling pretty negative about the whole thing.

After that it was on to the heavy bag.  It was then I realised I’d forgotten my wraps, but I didn’t bother going back inside to get them.  So, I just shoved on my gloves and got going.  I went for six 2 minute rounds with 1 minute rest between rounds.  I was mainly practising the speed of my jabs and straight rights, but I ended up just doing whatever.  As with the rope jumping, I was amazed how bad I had got after not practising for about 2 weeks.  I wasn’t doing too badly though, although a couple of times I temporarily hurt my hand from a dodgy right cross and left hook (which I’ve only just learnt).  Not wearing my wraps probably didn’t help with this .  Soon the pain was gone though, and by the end of the six rounds I was tired, but not in pain.

I finished off with pushups and squats to a couple reps before failure.  I ended up with 22 pushup and 44 squats (pathetic, I know).  I decided to call it a day, so walked and stretched, and then came in to write this!

I also set myself a target today.  On my next birthday, my 16th, in June, I will take a picture of me in my boxing gear, topless, and use it as my MSN picture.  Now, I don’t want to put a picture of me looking ugly and flabby do I? So I want to shift as much of this weight as possible and try and improve my beach muscles (without training for hypertrophy though).  I’m dreading it already.