Wednesday Aches and Pains

Maybe I should change my food and fitness posts to Wednesday nights. You may recall from previous posts that on Wednesdays, we have a personal trainer (a.k.a. PT Nazi) who leads us through a series of punishing interval training exercises. She always kicks our butts.

This morning was no exception. As it was, I never did recover from a killer session she led us through a couple of weeks ago, so let me take a step back and describe that workout before I describe this morning's workout.

We were supposed to be doing spinners, but one of the other trainers had the spinners room reserved. So instead, she took us into the Bloch Arena basketball court to lead us through her Combat Fitness course.

I'm sorry to report: I'm NOT fit for combat (at least by our trainer's standards).

Here's a quick summary of the Combat Fitness course she led us through:

- Wheel Barrow across the width of the basketball court
- "Half Lap" = run up the bleacher steps on one side, then run a half-lap around the top of the arena, then run down the bleacher steps on the other side.
- Wheel Barrow again (trade places with your partner)
- Half Lap
- REPEAT x 2 (each guy got to do two wheelbarrow runs as the wheelbarrow and two runs as the runner holding the other guy's ankles)
- Walking Lunges across the basketball court
- Half Lap
- REPEAT (second run of walking lunges and another half lap)
- Pushup Side-Steps. I don't know what else to call these. You get down in the pushup position, do a pushup, still holding the pushup position do a side step / shuffle sideways and do another pushup, sidestep sideways and do another pushup, etc... ALL... THE... WAY... ACROSS... THE ... BASKETBALL... COURT...
- Half Lap
- REPEAT (second run of pushup side steps)
- Crab-Walk forward (walking on all fours with your stomach facing up
- Half Lap
- Crab-Walk backward
- Half Lap
- Crawl-Scramble forward (hands and feet with your butt up in the air)
- Half Lap

By the end of that session, I had blisters on my palms from doing the wheelbarrows and the pushup side steps, and my lower back was killing me. My back was bad enough I had to bow out of Command PT the following week, taking lots of motrin and just doing the elliptical machine to burn some calories.

Today I went back for more punishment at Command PT with the trainer. This morning we met over at Quick Field instead of Bloch Arena. Quick Field has a very large field with a running track around the outside of several soccer fields. One lap around the running track is just under a half mile. In a previous session at Quick Field, she had us running half mile sprints with exercises in between. I did alright until like the fourth or fifth sprint we had to run BACKWARDS and my hips were in agony. She changed it up a little bit this morning. Here's a summary of what we did today:

- 2 minutes jump-rope
- Run half a lap around the track (About a quarter mile)
- Walking lunges across the soccer field
- 2 minutes jump-rope
- Run half a lap around the track
- Pushup Side Steps (see the combat fitness above) across half the soccer field
- Crab walk across the second half of the soccer field
- 2 minutes jump-rope
- Run half a lap around the track
- Walking lunges across the soccer field
- 100 crunches
- Run half a lap around the track

My palms had finally recovered from the previous session, but I got those blisters back on my palms again this morning from the pushup-sidesteps again.


For yesterday's workout, I took my family to visit the USS NIMITZ in town for a port call. After I got done with work, LW and the boys came and met me over by where the NIMITZ was parked.

I didn't go into it thinking it was going to be a workout, but we climbed a LOT of ladders like this in order to get up to the bridge and back down to the flight deck and the hanger.

View from the Bridge. I'm sorry, but I just find it very bizarre that the officer of the deck can't actually SEE the pier as he moors the ship and sends over the lines.

Captain ES? I hope the CO of the NIMITZ doesn't read my blog and get our tour guide in trouble for ES climbing up in the CO's chair.

Of course, if there's dirt or grease or grime to be found... little boys will find it.

On the flightdeck, I took a self portrait by the flagstaff.

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Hi-yah!

This afternoon I was introduced to the latest craze in martial arts. ES has invented his own version of martial arts. As opposed to judo, he calls it [ES]-oh. (So, if his name was Kevin, he would call it "Kevin-o"). When I told him it was time to stop playing outside and come inside for dinner, he threatened to annihilate me with his new karate-chop-like moves.

New Dance

After dinner tonight, I got to see something almost as funny as the weenie dance. I got the boys ready for their bath, and they said they wanted a shower instead. Okay, so I start the shower and close the shower curtain. YB got in the shower while ES was still getting undressed, and YB started singing one of those funny songs he makes up on the fly. I poked my head in the shower curtain to see what he was doing.

Like the weenie dance, I wish I could post a video for you to see without getting arrested for it. He was standing with his legs straight, shoulder width apart, bent all the way over at the waist so he was grabbing his ankles and his butt was sticking up into the spray from the shower nozzle. He was wiggling his butt back and forth and singing, "rainy butt dance, rainy butt dance, rainy butt dance..." Sorry. Maybe you just had to be there. It was pretty funny to see.