A Perfect Morning for the Perfect Pair

After spending the past few weeks concentrating on running (yet still plodding along like a three legged turtle crawling through peanut butter) it was nice to get back to kettlebell and gear workout. As is the case every time YHC has the Q at Olympus, the morning was a grey, dreary, rainy mess. Experience is a fine teacher however, so plans were created and preparations were made to maximize every square inch of the narrow canopy of shelter near the entrance to Elizabeth Lane Elementary. Six of the southland’s stalwarts gathered with aims of increasing strength and stamina while hopefully not getting too soaked.

We began with the perfect pair which consists of kettlebell swings and merkins. Starting with 20 of each exercise we did alternating sets of 19, 18, 17, 16….all the way down to 1. It was long and tedious, but also brutally effective. Following the perfect pair we did a few sprints with jog recoveries in order to keep in constant motion. We then moved on to gear stations which consisted of two minutes of work at the following:

Steel Mace – Barbadian squats, spear thrusts, grave diggers
Sandbag clean & press
Jump Rope
Battle Rope waves
70 lb Kettlebell deadlifts
Viking press (kettlebell clean into lunge into press)
Dumbbell Thrusters

After two rounds through the set of stations we did a 100 block which was 25 reps each of weighted crunches, goblet squats, hammer curls, and triceps extensions. Finding we were a bit ahead of schedule we had time to throw in a 60 block which repeated the circuit dropping the reps to 15.

Outsourced Mary: Since YHC still isn’t 100% comfortable leading Mary in cadence a page was taken from corporate America, shifting the more of the burden from management onto the PAX. Each PAX called a core exercise and led the count so we wound up with flutters with presses, LBCs, pullovers, Louganis, Freddie Mercury, and the one where you hold your legs straight out in front of you and pull them in and out.

Finding that we had three minutes to spare, we took advantage of the multitude of various weights of kettlebells present and performed swings until the clock struck 8, mixing in sets of heavy and light bells to keep things interesting.

Thank you to the regulars of Olympus, as well as welcome to site FNG Blazing Saddles for choosing to come put in some serious work on a morning where the fartsack could not have been more inviting. Next Saturday Olympus will be traveling to The Vet in the Mint Hill region at the request of Chum who used to post regularly with us on Saturdays before taking on a leadership role in growing Mint Hill. They could use some help in growing their numbers as well as working in more Qs so please consider making the trek next Saturday.