Dirt in your skirt blog

Day 135… Block Head

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Margaret Schlachter

I saw a post once from a fellow Spartan Chick that proclaimed she was weak because she had hired a trainer. I remember responding back to her that having a trainer is anything but being weak, for we all get to a point where we need that extra push or direction. A trainer is also critical as they teach expand our horizon when we learn a new skill. Some of the best coaches and trainers I know have their own trainers. It is also nice when after agonizing about exactly what to do for a session you meet with your trainer and all you have to do it what they say, all the focus can be on perfecting each individual move. Today if you haven’t already guessed was with Steve my trainer.

 
Prior to our session going my friend and stellar photographer set off to take some pictures in the woods of Pine Hill Park. Now only did we laugh and have a good time but she got a lot of shots, which I am psyched when they come out. After a quick exit from the woods we headed to the climbing gym for this weeks installment of Steve’s power hour. 
 
As his workouts are always a favorite I will get right to it, today was a little different having a photographer following around the gym. We started with a boulder around the gym. I am happy to say I made it the furtherest and the longest I have to date without falling off. Technique I think is starting to improve or maybe I am just muscling through. After my warm up we went into carrying a lot of cinder blocks from outside the building into the building. As I picked up each block on the side of the building I did 5-10 presses overhead. Then carried the block into the building and used it to do either dips or push-ups, the goal being 10 reps or muscle failure. All in all I moved 11 cinder blocks. 
 
When we finished this part of the day we made two stacks of cinder blocks and I did four sets of dips to failure. Now we couldn’t leave cinder blocks all over the gym, so one in each hand I brought them back to their home on the side of the building. Ali, my friend taking pictures asked if this was the end, Steve just smiled and said, “Not Yet”. We moved back over to work on some pull-ups and more push-ups. At this point my muscles had failed several times and pushing out two or three push-ups was a task. Each negative pull-up was held to a count of five. 
 

Several times I felt my grip go and my feet hitting the crash pad below, muscle failure. Each time I picked myself back up did more push-ups and tried once again. As the gripped harder the skin started to shed off my hands. When I thought I didn’t have anymore to give we did one more set. Done, not yet. We finished out the day with three fairly technical climbs in the gym. The same route on repeat three times, no rest. As I came down that last time my arms were shaking, was barely able to write my name straight on the check for the session. Steve had succeeded once again and I left the gym tired, but exhilarated at the same time.