I've a bunch of fitness posts over that last week that I've wanted to put up, but something else kept interfering like a heroic 6-year old or rodeo cowboy, so I'll just throw them all into one compound, full-body, functional fitness post. It all started last Tuesday when Dwight asked me to cover his fitness class since he was stuck at work. The Stairs and Sandbags workout from two weeks ago has gotten my nostalgia hormones acting up, so I decided to break out another dreaded blast from the past: Sandbag Burpees. These are exactly what they sound like: You grab and sandbag and do a burpee. The original workout was to do 100 sandbag burpees as quickly as possible: Matt Raffa, one of our former instructors, managed to get them in under 11 minutes at his best. This time we did an actual proper warm up and then 10 minutes of as many reps as possible. I ended up covering Dwight's Thursday class as well. He said he was busy at work, but I actually think he's noticed that I'm putting on weight and is trying to trick me into getting back in shape. In that workout we worked mainly on hip strength and mobility, using a lot of squats with focus on proper form. When you squat and really work to put your butt back and keep your chest up, you get a huge hip stretch in addition the strength work.
I was training with Craig all during the week too, so by the time Saturday rolled around I was desperately ready for the stretching seminar. Going into it I suspected that the seminar would be more physically challenging than the name implied, and I was right. It was taught by gymnast/contortionist/dancer Annalise Bowman, who took us through a long series of exercises that ranged from advanced to octopus. [caption id="attachment_2156" align="alignnone" width="320"]