Thursday, January 12, 2012

Brutality in the Gym

It was one hell of a night at the gym.  I re-jiggered my workout circuit this evening and focused on speed.  I moved rapidly from exercise to exercise not allowing any rest-time between exercises in the circuit.  I chained together a sequence of eight (8) exercises in this circuit.

It went like this:

  1. Kettlebell halo
  2. Kettlebell clean and press
  3. Kettlebell swings
  4. Kettlebell sumo chins
  5. Bar-dips
  6. Knees to chest
  7. Pull-ups
  8. Inclined perfect push-ups
I repeated the circuit with 12kg, 16kg, 20kg, 24kg kettlebells.  I intended to continue with the 60 pounder, but I was just flat-busted after the fourth rep of this circuit.  I mean I was totally busted.  The best I could do was just one more set of 60 pound swings.  I also did one set of 10 reverse ab-crawls with The Rack.  

The total workout from entry to exit was less than 40 minutes.  That includes setup and breakdown.  I was really fast tonight.  It paid dividends.  I can feel the effects of the overload.  This was the best workout in sometime.

The one bad thing about this workout lay in recovery:  I forgot to bring a protein drink with me.  I raced home to make sure I didn't miss my window.  I was fairly blurry-eyed and delirious as I mixed my drink.  I could feel myself gradually coming back to life over the 10 or 12 minutes after downing that mixture.

I look forward to many more of these kinds of workouts.  Rapid circuit training is much better at producing massive system-overload and triggering an adaptive response.  This particular combination of Kettlebells and body-weight exercises seems fantastic for building a functional body, not mirror-muscles.

With that said, the muscles are looking pretty good in the mirror.