AOS Providence, sort of

That was my workout for the day. I say "sort of" because I was too cheap to spring for the DVD so I got the mp3 version, which does a great job of cueing you through the exercises if you already know what they are and how to perform them, but is no help whatsoever if you don't. So, I had to improvise on a couple of the rounds.

The format of "Providence" is rather like that of Rachel Cosgrove's Get Metabolic workout, in that you work pretty intensely for 2 minutes, then take a 1 minute break. There are 14 rounds plus a 3 minute bonus round, so the entire workout is 45 minutes long.

Here's the exercise breakdown:

Round 1: 2-handed swing, one arm swing, hand-to-hand swing
Round 2: Cleans (5, 4, 3, 2, 1 per arm, repeated twice)
Round 3: Chest presses (5, 4, 3, 2, 1 per arm, repeated twice)
Round 4: Squats/sumo deadlifts--3o seconds 1 side, 30 sec. sumos, 30 sec other side, 30 sec. sumos
Round 5: One leg deadlift (5 per leg, lather rinse repeat until the 2 minutes is up)
Round 6: Windmills into an overhead squat, 1 minute per side
Round 7: clean and press (5, 4, 3, 2, 1 per arm, repeated twice)
Round 8: Flip and squat (I skipped the flip because it makes me nervous, and just squatted for the entire 2 minutes)
Round 9: Tactical lunges
Round 10: Triple crush (this is a curl to an overhead press to a 1-arm triceps overhead extension, and I had to modify because my triceps aren't strong enough to allow me to do very many reps with an 8 kg kettlebell)
Round 11: Sling shot into a figure 8 with a static hold (for some reason the figure 8 eludes me, so I simply repeated round 1)
Round 12: Seated press (5, 4, 3, 2, 1 per arm, repeated twice)
Round 13: One arm row (5, 4, 3, 2, 1 per arm, repeated twice)
Round 14: Pullovers, Russian twists, Sicilian crunch (I had no clue what a Sicilian crunch is, so I did heel touches instead. Turns out it's just your basic extended leg overhead crunch. I think people just come up with these names so they'll sound more badass. "Hey, I did Sicilian crunches with 24 kg today, so show me respect or I'll put a fish in your bulletproof vest. Now that's an offer you can't refuse.")

Bonus round: 3 minute snatch test--1 1/2 minutes per side

I liked it in spite of not knowing what the heck I'm doing on some of the exercises. I mean, I think I know enough that I'm not likely to hurt myself, and I also think that with practice my cleans will get, well, cleaner.

I also worked up enough of a sweat to realize that I absolutely cannot under any circumstances exert myself physically while wearing sunscreen that contains active ingredients other than zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, unless of course I want sore eyes and a bright red nose. Ugh.

The kettlebell drills were a nice change of pace after all the bodyweight stuff I've been doing. I like that too, but it's good to mix it up. In fact, I think I might tweak my workouts to make them more of a fusion of bodyweight and dumbbell/barbell/kettlebell exercises. That format works well at the gym because it doesn't tie up more than one piece of fixed equipment and/or set of dumbbells in any one superset, which is kind of an obnoxious thing to do in a gym as small as mine. I mean, there's this one guy who, every Friday for the last 2 years, has done the same alternating set of bench presses and barbell squats. A great pairing of exercises to be sure, but inconvenient as heck because there's only the one flat bench and squat rack, and he usually does 4-5 sets including his warmup, so it takes him a while to finish even when he keeps his rests short enough that working in isn't really feasible.