During this morning's workout, I got the urge to cheat, after a fashion. As I'm on a three-day (MWF, this cycle) split with two days recovery time between the third workout of one week and the first of the following, I'm technically not supposed to lift weights on Saturday or Sunday.
"Well fuck that noise!" as my buddies at the Benedictine Monastery used to say during their Friday night poker games.
Being a fairly creative mentaller, I quickly fashioned a compromise of sorts.
I removed the plates from a 6' Bollinger Starlock™ bar, and used it to practice bo and quarterstaff techniques.
Wow! That was a workout! I found that I could only perform them at half or less the usual speed, lest I risk yet another set of injuries. Five minutes into the routine (ten reps of each basic technique, followed by combinations), I was sweating like the proverbial lady of the evening in the house of the Lord, and I was feeling "the burn" in muscles of whose existence I was only half-aware before I began the workout.
If you'd like to try this yourself, go very slowly at first, and emphasize proper form rather than speed or power.
This is hardly an original idea, by the way. Roman gladiators routinely practiced with double-weight weapons, as did legionary recruits under the reforms foisted upon the army by one of the "warhorse" strongmen of the late Republic or early Empire. (I'm thinking it was either Marius or Octavian/Augustus, but don't quote me on that.)
And yes, I watch gladiator movies all the time. You mean you don't?
Why, just the other day, my comrade-in-arms, John, and I, were halfway through a pile of Steeve Reeves flicks we'd rented for inspiration. John is one of the few friends I have who's acquired something approaching a genuine, classical education, so we have quite a bit in common. (As a matter of fact, when my wife called him "Jeff" by accident a few weeks ago, I responded with "This, too, is Alexander." She then suspected that we had entirely too much "in common" and slapped both of us in the face.)
That, incidentally, is just one glaring symptom of the benightedness of our age. For all the facade of "tolerance" and open-mindedness we put up, any bond of genuine cameraderie between two men is automatically suspect. John and I were lamenting this very fact after the film-fest, as we rubbed each other down with olive oil as a prelude to two hours of intensive, nude jujutsu and pancration.
Yeah, fine. I'm going way over the top again, ain't I? You got me.
I just wanna see how John and Maggie react when and if they read this.
As you were.