Wednesday, August 11, 2010

A new physical quest

Two years ago, I decided that an interesting goal was to do 100 push ups. In hind sight, that was a painful goal and not terribly realistic for me. I got up to about 50, which isn't bad, but is a long damn way from 100.

Now it is time to set another fun, unrealistic goal. At CrossFit, we occasionally do double unders, which is simply jump roping, but you have to spin the rope around twice for every jump. I have always been able to do one of these, but the monster jump required meant that there was no way in hell I was going to quickly get back in the air for a second one. I am learning that the trick isn't to jump terribly high, but to jump a little high, land so that you can instantly jump again, and to spin the rope at the speed of light. If you can see the rope at all, you aren't even close. You just hear it whistling by your head. All wrist, no arms or shoulders.

I have recently made a breakthrough and am starting to be able to do several in a row. Today I got up to 14. Of course, going from 2 or 3 to 14 convinces me that I must be able to get to 100, so that's my new goal. Part of it is technique, which I am slowly starting to get. The rest is completely anaerobic, blow your heart out of your chest exercise.

Hoping to do better at this than I did at push ups.

Bored, grab a jump rope and try a few....

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