Monday Sledging! (With details!)

Happy New Sledging! First workout of 2010, and it was a doozy. Last week I slacked because of sickness, partying, and general laziness. I did get a mild workout from Monday and a round of sledging on Wednesday, but today it was back in force, and this plan is my new baseline. Raw numbers according to HRM were 30:34 time, 149 bpm average and 167 max. Since it’s the first one for 2010, I’ll go into the steps in detail.

My goal for sledging is to use it as a mostly strength training workout, but I also like to keep my heartrate up during the process. I use a Garmin Forerunner 305 and the accompanying software charts my heartrate over the workout and gives me the stats. It’s all based on a theoretical max heartrate of 190bpm. The 5 zones are warmup, easy workout, aerobic workout, anaerobic workout, and redline. With the cutoffs being 114, 133, 152, and 171 between the 5. I like to keep my heartrate up in zone 3: above 133 as a baseline.

My warmup starts with 25 swings with a 20lb kettlebell. Kettlebell swings are like squats but you hold a weight which swings due to the force of legs and hips. No arms should be involved-other than holding onto the weight so it doesn’t fly into something, of course! I then do 3 1-minute planks: forward, left, then right. Isometric exercises like these are great for the core and are my route to a six-pack. I do 50 jumping jacks mostly to get more legs involved and the heartrate up. Then I do burpees. If I could do no other workout I would do burpees. They are hard. I start from standing then it’s a quick transition to the top of a push up position by squating down, my hands hit the deck then I thrust my feet out. I do a pushup then I pull my feet back up underneath me and jump up swinging my hands over my head. Like I said. Hard. I somehow do 15 of these then I start counting for my sledging workout. By this point my heartrate is usually above 150, sometimes even 160 after about 10-15 minutes.

Sledging is the main motion that I modified after doing some workouts from a site called Shovelglove. The guy there advocates a 14 minute workout every day doing a cycle of motions (shoveling, hammering down, butter churn, etc) and a sledgehammer wrapped in an old sweater for safety. I have never hit anything (other than myself once) with the hammer unintentionally, so I do away with that. I only workout 3 times a week with sledging so I doubled the time rather than going every day. Also, it means my heartrate gets up a bit higher. I also think “sledging” sounds better than “shovelgloving” so I call it that. I use two sledgehammers: an 8lb and a 10lb. I have a 6lb which I’ve all but retired, but I keep it around in case I want to actually hit something. Apparently if a hammer is too heavy it’s harder to swing quickly in in the compromise of speed & mass, and it’s the momentum which makes the most difference in the case of actually hitting something with the hammer. Anyway, I digress. I should maybe round up an old tire because actually hitting something with the hammer might be very therapeutic. In the meantime, I like the sledging motions because, a. they’re hard, and b. they’re kinda fun when you make a dorky LOTR-influenced story out of it.

My motions are as follows: Shovel with a side toss, hammer downwards, hammer forwards, thrusting hammer out, raising hammer behind back, raising hammer in front, bicep curls, torso twists, transferring hammer from hand to hand in front (ideally at arms length, but in practice I bend), and squats while holding the hammer. First I’m digging a trench. Then I’m smiting orcs. Then I’m bashing at larger creatures (cave trolls?). Then I’m hitting them in the face. Then I’m pulling a sword from behind my back. Then I’m poking it through the ceiling. Then I’m bashing one-handed. Then I’m smashing to my left and to my right. Then I’m clearing the area, sweeping in front of me. Then I’m uhh… doing squats. There’s no good analogue there. That’s 10 motions total.

I do all the motions 10 times per side using the 8lb hammer, then I do a set of 5 burpees and that’s an interval. I then do everything 11 times with the 10lb hammer and 6 burpees. Then 12 times with 8lb and 7 burpees. See the pattern? I alternate the hammers and increase the interval sizes until I get to 15 times with the 10lb and 10 burpees. That makes 45 burpees during the workout, and 60 total including the warmup.

Just for fun, some silly math: Since it’s 10 motions, and I do them both on each side that’s 20 motions per interval. The reps increase from 10-15, so that’s 20*(10+11+12+13+14+15) reps. If I add the weight I lift in each motion there, that’s 20*((10*8lb)+(11*10lb)+(12*8lb)+(13*10lb)+(14*8lb)+(15*10lb))=200*8lb+220*10lb+240*8lb+260*10lb+280*8lb+300*10lb= (ready for this?) 13560lbs. I’m pretty sure I can’t equate my workout to lifting 6.78 tons, but like I said, math is sometimes just for fun.

Anyway, That’s my workout. This time I kept my workout solidly in zone 3 with some time in zone 4. That Is plenty fine for me, and I hope I can continue this through the year. I modify my workout occasionally, but I try to give any dip in my numbers one week (three workouts) to recover in case it was just a fluke. If I treat the above as my baseline for the year, it should be just the righteous level of hard.