John’s Ramblings

Last night was our weekly workout with Luka Hocevar at Hocevar Performance Gym.  Normally a 7 o’clock affair, Luka sent Lee and I a text message that he had an appointment cancellation so we could start 1/2 hour earlier.  We confirmed the early arrival time, at which point Lee sent me a text:

R u bringing a fan?

please?!?

It was about 95 degrees at that point-in-time, so I loaded my big Costco fan into the back of my car, and headed up to Renton.

Warmups didn’t appear to take long, since I was sweating profusely just putting on my shoes.  We actually spent a lot of time at the top of the session doing active stretching routines, especially hips and hamstrings.  I was extremely tight in both areas, I assume a residual effect of my Mt. Rainier climb, the Litvinov intervals on Monday, and the fact that I never seem to make enough time to stretch during the day.  The best/worst of the lot was:

Stand 2.5 to 3 feet from wall

bend at waist, reaching hands out to touch the wall

extend one leg straight back, so that your arms are in line with the leg

my loaded hip, being as tight as it was, forced my unloaded hip up so that my pelvis was at about a 30-40 degree angle.

Luka corrected this angle so that the pelvis was somewhat level

extreme stretching sensation of hip and hamstring ensues.

me: “Ouch!”

Luka: “Feel that?  That’s how you know you’re doing it right!”

After the passsive torture of stretching was out of the way, we moved on to the active torture of doing some heavy lifting.  We did a trap-bar complex, consisting of 5 sets of the following:

• 6 x Trap Bar Deadlifts
• 6 x Trap Bar Romanian Deadlifts
• 6 x Trap Bar bent-over rows
• 6 x Trap Bar shrugs
• 6 x Trap Bar somthingerothers (still holding the bar, force the elbows back engaging rear deltoids, I think…)

Here’s Lee, getting acquainted with the Trap Bar for the first time.  She did great, by the way!

4 sets of:

• 10 x pushup-to-side plank (5 each side)
• 10 x front lunges (10 each side)
• 10 kettlebell swings (hard-style, Luka pushes the bell back down at the top of the arc).

The finisher was some band work to work on core strength.  Band attached to chin bar, face away from bar holding band in both hands, overhead.  Lock arms, tighten core, and bring arms forward a foot or so, then back to straight up.  Do these very rapidly in 30-40 second intervals.

Tags: exercise, hocevar performance, kettlebell, workout

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