I'm in Stage 6 of NROL/W. This stage is optional, and is designed to help you increase your strength relative to body size. There is only one "big lift," that being the chin-up - sort of. The "A" workout calls for negative chins with a slow descent (20 seconds), and call for you to add weight when that becomes too easy. You go from that to 10 sets of 2 pulldowns (yes, you read that right) with a 0-1-4 tempo, and decreasing rest period through the series of workouts. The idea is, presumably, to get you strong enough to do chins, but it does not seem that you are in fact ever expected to succeed, as it's never even suggested that you try one. (Thanks for the vote of confidence, Alwyn.) Well, I've already added weight to the negatives, and I definitely plan to start working the actual chin sooner rather than later. I was previously able to do a few short sets (2 - 4 reps) of pullups, but that was when I was doing the ETK (Enter the Kettlebell) program and was doing them 3 days a week. I stopped practising them when I finished the program and surprise! lost that strength. A dumb mistake I don't want to make again.
The rest of the exercises in both workouts are normal enough (by NR standards) - pushups, squat and lunge variations, push presses, rows, etc., and the workouts should all be doable in under 45 minutes, which makes them winners in my book. The A workouts are even faster, around half an hour (but it's a hard half an hour). I have the A workout scheduled for tomorrow, and am planning to add my first Monday run to the schedule. It will be a shortie, NTE 2 miles, a very weird distance for me; I can't remember the last time I ran anything less than 3.
The running has been going very well. I've been doing 4 - 4.25 miles Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 5+ on Saturday. Yesterday I did 5.6 miles on a pretty hilly (for south Jersey) course and came off it feeling good, which made me very happy. Karate is also going well; sensei is on a real fighting kick lately, and we've been doing a ton of sparring-type drills, focusing on combos and distances, speed, power, deception. He's also taking jiu jitsu again, and is downloading what he learns to me, and I in turn get to help him teach it. Granted it's not a "real" jitz class and I have no delusions about my skills in that department, but we have fun with it. It's where I intend to go next in martial arts and he knows that, so it's a good fit for me. Hopefully in a few years I'll have an actual ranking in BJJ and will be able to bring that stuff back for real on my own.
And how can I NOT give a shout out to my Flyers, for coming back from a 0-3 game deficit to win their playoff series vs. Boston? I think it was only the 4th time in professional sports history that's been done. And this, from a team that needed a freaking shoot-out to get in the playoffs to begin with. I was so damned excited afterwards I could hardly sleep. And speaking of sleep:
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