"Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even." -Muhammad Ali

Spartan Shape-Up, Day 173:

Someday, BlogLand, I'm going to learn to keep my big mouth shut. Today, was not that day.
... as a result, I have new rug burns on both my elbows, a developing ache through my shoulders, and my water glass feels REAL heavy. Perhaps I should explain.

Today was supposed to be a CrossFit day. Alarm goes off, I groan, turn it off and slowly (reluctantly) I swing my feet to the floor. As I go to stand up, I feel it. The lingering ouchy tweak in my knee from yesterday. DAMN. I test-walk around the house a bit. There is definitely still lingering not-right-ness. Not like, "this is serious" ouchiness, but decided "you did something wrong" ouchiness, and since I have an issue with my knee (lots of old horseback riding injuries), I may be a little more careful, sometimes. I also didn't want to ignore it today, run on it, then really make it angry for the next few days of training. (Only 117 days until my first Spartan! No time for injuries!)
Still pondering hitting up CrossFit, I checked out the WOD for the day online... It was a metric ton of squats, wall balls and other knee-related things. Yeaahh... probably not.

So, What is a girl to do, when she finds herself without a WOD, and with some specific restrictions (no. knee. bending.)? Texts the ever-creative GT... who happened to be unavailable.
Not to be thwarted, I did the next best thing (so I thought...), I polled the hive-mind of my FB friends-list. There's a lot of knowledgeable folks there, with fitness experience, I thought for sure there'd be some excellent suggestions (and there were).

The problem was, I posted then went off to work, leaving my FB all sorts of unattended. What this resulted in was the GT collecting suggestions from the masses, and slowly adding them onto the list of new kinds of torture for me when I got home. Yes. I should've thought about that, before I posted on FB. LOL. By the time I realized what was happening.... it was too late.

The FB No-Knee-Bend Death WOD was born.

First, like every good sweat-session, we begin with a Warm-Up:
3x: Inchworm down - 60 sec plank - inchworm up
20 Glute Bridges

Alright. Not SO bad, right? I mean, well, planks are not awesome, but I got through those, more or less (it was not pretty, but I tucked my pelvis and payed attention to form..).... So, I moved onto the main part of the WOD:
Tabata (8x 20 sec work/10 sec rest) Dead Lifts. I happened to use my 2, 25# DB's, as it's what I have at home.
Then, 3x:
- 20 Bent Rows (25# DBs)
- 10 Bicep Curl to Overhead Press (25# DBs)
- 5 Pull Ups (or negatives, in my case, because my t-rex arms can't do it!!)

Ahhh.... The hurt was on. Round 3 of that bad boy began to make itself known... mostly because Pull ups make my back die, for some reason. Oddly, I found I didn't even think about the fact that I was curl to pressing 25# Db's. That wasn't an issue. I was even watching my form, to be sure. I find it slightly annoying that I can beast through some things... but ONE PULLUP eludes me. ONE pullup. Ah well. Soon enough.

ANYWAY, then we moved onto what I'm calling the "After Party":
- 2 x 60 sec planks (with arm extend to tap floor in front)
- 3 Sun Salutations (for good measure).

The After Party was definitely where the fun began. More Planks. And by "planks", I mean shaking, quivering Aja, fighting with every muscle to stay in appropriate form, not die, and just 10 more seconds...... oh WAIT. Extend arm (whole body shaking) tap floor. Extend other arm (continue the Jello posture), tap floor.

Starfish pose. (face down. arms out. panting. LOL.)

Then, we finished with some Yoga. Blog, I don't know if I've ever mentioned how little I enjoy yoga. Mostly, I think it's not because Yoga is not enjoyable, but I'm very, very bad at Yoga. I find things that I'm very bad at, very frustrating. You see, I'm not bendy. I have super-tight hamstrings and in general, would not call myself flexible. Which is probably why I SHOULD do Yoga... but.
I am considering incorporating some more regular stretchy-out type stuff into my routine......

So, after absolutely no-knee bending to speak of, I find myself at my kitchen table, feeling very aware of my midsection (I'm thinking that's going to hurt tomorrow), discovering a slight soreness in my shoulder blades (hello, pull ups), and a distinct fatigue in other areas.... I'm feeling a little bit... discouraged? disappointed? that that workout was hard for me in a many ways... but, I guess that's why we do it, right? Conquer the hard things, so they become easier?
Overall, though, I powered through it. No big breaks, no long rests, did something, even when I could've made an excuse... so, a successful day.
My knee is feeling much better, so I think a run after work tomorrow is in order, as long as it stays on track...

Incidentally, here's my random ponderence for the evening:
I have/am getting a distinct callous-ridge on my hands from lifting weights/working on pull ups, etc. I was not unhappy about that. I almost felt proud of it... Look! I've done enough to develop a callous.

Now, If I could just learn to plank....