The instruments of my torture. A sled, a prowler and a big ‘ole tire.

We’ve been doing strongman and prison workouts lately and it. has. been. ROUGH. Here’s Friday, Aug. 24th’s workout:

What is AMRAP, you ask? Well it means “As Many Rounds As Possible” and it is a grueling, painful way to do a circuit workout.

You basically pit you against you and keep going until you can’t go anymore. By the time it’s all over you like to melt into a puddle on the floor. On Friday we a did four-minute AMRAP circuit and it was a ton of fun (not). Here are the exercises Blaine put me through (note the maniacal grin on his face):

1. Battling rope into vertical jumps (5).

2. MD hip thrust throw (right & left) into middle clean into press.

3. Jump rope variety.

4. Lunge matrix.

5. Kettlebell deadlift varieties.

6. Pull up/chin up varieties.

7. Box jump/step up varieties.

8. Push up into tuck jump.

9. Prone/side/supine plank varieties.

I went for as many reps of these exercises as I could for four minutes each. In total it was about 40 minutes of non-stop cardio, strength and mobility work. And I’m not going to lie – I needed a nap later.

Tonight’s dinner (sigh). I confess, I have a weakness for wings. Some people like chocolate. Some people like steak. I. ADORE. wings.

At Washington State University, where I went to college, (Go Cougs!) they have this thing called “Wing Wednesday” in which every bar in Pullman competes for the title of “best wing in town” every week. I didn’t miss one Wednesday during the entirety of my tenure.

That’s how much I love wings. 

Which brings up the issue of my diet. During the infancy of this blog I wrote about my eating habits much more often than I do now. And truthfully I curbed that habit because of my lack of success in improving my gutter palate. But all things considered, I’ve made great strides in this area as of late…

Garbage food like chicken wings and frozen pizza used to be staples of my (atrocious) eating habits. And while I can’t claim to be a raw vegan or paleo rockstar, these days I have been steadily improving on my dietary choices. There are many more salads in my life than I once thought (or wanted, for that matter).

But every once in a while I like to splurge and tonight was one of those times. So thank you, Joe’s Log Cabin of Wenatchee, Wash. for making some awesome baby chicken flappers!

I’ve still got weight to lose and my body is not as responsive as it was when I was playing college soccer as a fresh-faced 21-year-old (plus the fact that I’ve had my left quad sliced open twice now and hardware installed in my femur does not help). But the loss of muscle tissue in that leg is a minor inconvience and the weight will continue to melt away. The point is that I feel fast and strong and fit. And I should because I am.

I’ve also been feeling a new level of focus during workouts and that’s good because a lot of these complexes with compound athletic movements require a certain presence of mind and force-of-will to complete – especially when you’re down to the next-to-last set of a complex, I always find that set to be the worst for me mentally and form-wise.

Anyway here’s what we did on Friday, June 22 – I was pooped afterward:

This took a while because we were walking all over the floor of the gym with those kettle bells for the suitcase carries.

These are a real pain – 45 pushups and 14 “ninja” tuck jumps in all, without stopping.

And finally 10 rounds of 30-second sprints with eight-second rests. I can’t recall exactly but I think I covered about 3000 m.

After the four-day-a-week Four-Month Total Transformation course with Blaine we transitioned into a twice-weekly schedule that I thought would be easier. I thought wrong.

Here’s today’s workout, we started with a barbell complex consisting of these exercises followed by this:

A dumbbell and kettle bell complex that included an inclined chest press and a kettle bell single leg Romanian dead lift that required massive amounts of balance from already fatigued leg muscles and then for a little breather we transitioned into this:

A Physio Ball reverse hyper-extension where you lay tummy-down on the ball and raise your straightened legs backward as far as you can. We did two sets of max reps and then went to this high-intensity finisher:

That really makes the ‘ole butt burn…

And last but not least, this was what Blaine put on the board to top it all off:

Usually we do this portion of the workout on our own later in the day and (full-disclosure) sometimes I don’t get around to it…

Don’t judge! Also FYI, I usually post these photos through the Knife Challenge Twitter feed and you can find that here.

If you want to know what it feels like to workout at The Inner Circle, this is a good example:

But don’t worry, it’s not all balls-to-the-wall (which may not mean what you might think it does) guts-and-glory action. The great thing about these circuits is that you can really go at your own pace. Yet many times we’re capable of a faster pace and that’s why mixing in a couple circuits a week is just the thing to give your workouts the nice shot in the arm you may need to reach that next level or fitness.

I’d like to throw the GoPro on Adam for one of these circuits so stay tuned for a little “Adam Cam” video in the near future (though it doesn’t have the same ring to it does it?)