About a month ago I wrote a mid-year review of my 2021 intentions. In that time I have made some changes to my workouts and running goals. As I said in that post, I have a strategy for improving my daily run distance to 6 miles a day. I am officially running that distance. Granted it’s not quite 6.2 (i.e. a 10k), however adding two-tenths of a mile is a very minor adjustment.
I have not run 9 miles on my push day, yet. I am still calculating how I can achieve that distance given the geography of my location. My hope is to try to hit that goal by mid-to-late August.
Beast Mode Engaged
So this brings me to the pre-workout. There are two areas I focus on as part of my pre-workout; core and strength training. Three days a week my pre-workout focuses on strengthening my core. I tried a few exercises while attempting to keep the reps and sets within 15-30 minutes.
Core Strengthening Exercises
This is the pre-workout Core exercise routine that is working well for me:
- 30 sec planks x 3
- 10 squats x 3
- 10 doorway rows x 3
- 1 minute farmer’s carry x 2
- 10 kettle bell swings (with a dumb bell) x 2
Strength Training Exercises
Then, two days a week, I focus on strength training. This is where I get a little intense. I initially started with doing push-ups, which I hate doing. Then I saw my sister and her husband doing burpees and I thought, well if they can do burpees then so can I. So I changed my push-ups to burpees.
Burpees suck as much as everyone says they do. They. Are. Hard. I changed my push-ups to burpees and I was doing that for about a week. Then someone told me about a similar exercise called the devils press, which is aptly named. It’s basically a burpee with dumbbells. Watch this short video to see how to do this exercise.
I changed my burpee to this exercise starting at 15 lb. dumbbells because my upper body is still a little weak. So this is my strength training routine:
- 6 Devils Press (burpee) x 3
- 10 Dumbbell Dead Lift x 3
- 10 Dumbbell Row x 3
- 8 Dumbbell Standing Curls x 2
- 8 Seated Dumbbell Tricep Extensions x 2
By the end of the week, assuming I complete all of these routines and my 6 miles each day, I feel pretty good. My body feels like I’ve had a decent workout and I’m not too sore or too tired. My goal is to stick to this routine for a couple months and see how I’m feeling by the fall.
/cheers
I could accomplish so much more if I only had minions!