July 20th Training Session

Tonight was all about the ropes! Kim attended our last group class, and was still feeling it in her legs, so we decided to go primarily with upper body work tonight. Along for the ride was her friend Suzanne. Always great to have new people come check out a workout. Here's how it went down:
Tabatas with the Battling Ropes
- Moody and I worked with the 50 ft. rope, and the ladies worked with the 16.5 ft.
- We alternated rounds, meaning that for every 20 seconds of work you got a 30 second break. This was done so as to ease Kim and Suzanne into the world of battling ropes.
- We worked multiple sets of rope waves with two different grips. We did alternating waves, as well as both arms working together to really put some stress on the core.
- In between sets of waves, the ladies performed Tabatas with medicine ball twists. Every round they changed direction to make sure the punishment was evenly distributed.
- After the waves we did two 2 minute rounds of shadow boxing, just to loosen up our upper bodies and get rid of some lactic acid. The rope work tends to give you a tremendous upper body pump, and we wanted to ensure that wouldn't affect their mobility.
- We then moved onto shoulder raises with the 16.5 ft. rope. This exercise may look easy, but do not kid yourself, it is tough. We each did two sets of 12 reps.
- We then leaned back on the ropes and worked on rowing ourselves back to an upright position. This exercise was specifically introduced to the ladies' routine to strengthen all of the muscles necessary for pull-ups. Kim really wants to be able to do pull-ups, and this is a fantastic way to get her prepared for it. These rope drills, combined with the 'greasing the groove' technique should have these ladies doing killer sets of pull-ups in no time!
- Since we had built up that lactic acid upstairs again, we decided to finish off the night with two more 2 minute rounds of shadow boxing. We threw punches at a variety of speeds, just to really work out the kinks in the upper back/shoulders/biceps/triceps. As you can imagine, the rope made us all very sore! But who wants a workout where you get home and feel like you didn't do anything?! Your body's supposed to feel a little sore afterwards. It means we're doing our jobs right!