Got way Stronger last night.  That was awesome.  After a hard but short workout with Ken (really beat up my pecs, which was cool), I noticed one of his trainers walking towards the parquet with an agility ladder.  Now, Toad's got me brainwashed into loving the ladder, so I instantly wandered over to Ken and asked if she was about to do the Boot Camp class he's got set up.  He laughed and sent me over, comping me the class.  It was pretty cool of him and when I got there it was...odd.  I've never taken a class at a gym, and never particularly felt a need or desire to, but i'll give anything a shot if I might get to do agility work.

It turned out the ladder was only for a warmup, but I agility'd my ass off.  Of course, I was in a class with three girls, two of whom were not in shape and one of whom had just done a workout of her own (legs, even), so she wasn't really putting out the effort required either.  However, I felt good about how I did.  The format was a round robin: 2 sets of 4 rounds of plyo stations, 1 min./station, rest (30 to 60s if I had to guess), choose your weight with an intermission to change the stations.  The stations for the first round were thrusters with a body bar, chest press on a step and dumbbell open-ups from a pushup position.  I started at the open-ups with 5 pounders, which were easy enough but the exercise worked my abs and my obliques more than my shoulders and by the end of it, i was just trying to get one explosive pull to bring the weight up.  That moved into thrusters with a body bar which started out light and I was working the tempo nicely to start.  I was really happy with my pacing and REALLY happy with my form.  I got to check in the mirror a couple times and I was keeping my chest good and tall and my ass would go out, then I would triple-extend explosively back to a quick touch on the step and back down.  I powered through the first round and definitely got tired as i finished out.  I was feeling them (they're essentially deep box squats) for the entire rest of the day.  Those are killer.  The final thing was chest presses, which I just did with 30 on the bar (which might have been 45 total, if that) but for a minute with 0 rest, that's tough on the arms.  I found it easier to push through by counting out sets of 10, taking a quick breath and falling back into it.  After the final round, it was a quick break to get water and then back into the breach.

The next set of exercises was a DB weighted lunge with a tricep extend, raised leg twists (down to one side, up and down to the other), and frog jumps.  Frog jumps have always been my bane, since I never know where to jump and I never felt like i got the coordination down.  I nailed it last night though.  I was hitting good distances and, when my legs weren't tired, I was able to really get all my momentum from the previous jump into the next one by rolling my weight from heel to ball as i landed and prepared to jump again.  FJs were also the biggest source of tired that round.  The other two exercises were tough, but frog jumps have it all, eccentric contraction, coordination and explosive exertion.  Jumping's the best.  I love jumping.

That finished out and I headed home where I ate 6 slices of pizza and downed 2 large glasses of juice (not enough) after having pounded a protein shake at the gym.  Yesterday was a good day.  I'll feel the dividends shortly, I'm sure.  I gotta find something to eat now, but I'm gonna try to get another protein shake in me.  Free coffee at work makes it much easier to do all this.

Do Work.