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This Post’s Author: James

We had the biggest turn out for a pain in the park yet this past Sunday and it was great.  There were three newcomers which is awesome!  One of them, Anne, even wrote about it on her Tumblr.  Thanks for coming out and for your support!

The group fully took advantage of each other’s creativity to form a pretty wonderful workout. After spending a short part of the night before sleeping in a car b/c I was too tired to walk ALL THE WAY from the garage to the house, I was less than enthusiastic about working out. When everyone agreed we should start with an Indian run, I kinda wanted to just stretch some more, but I went and got the old blood flowing and felt a bit better about what I was about to get myself into.

Upon Nick’s suggestion, we started with a couple rounds of the Madison warm up.

Madison Warm Up

• 10 Jumping Jacks
• 20 Mountain Climbers
• Downward Facing Dog (30 – 45 secs)
• 20 High Knees
• 20 Bird Dogs
• 10 Glute Bridges

Then Brooke wanted to revisit “animal instincts” from the week before, but I’m not one for repeating workouts too often so we changed up a lot of it. The group partnered up w/ similar height people.  Then the partners spread about 25yards or so apart from and facing one another. When some one let out a growl the circuit began.

Modified animal instincts circuit – ROAR!

• fast bear crawl to center meeting head-to-head with your partner in the middle
• “fight the bear” the two partner’s stand lock fingers and try to push the other over for ~30 secs (think old school WWF test of strength in fact check out this video starting at about the 6 min mark)
• then inchworm back to your starting point
• dead bugs 20 reps
• forward crab walk to middle
• high five each other
• 1st round acro push ups (which took too much time/threw off the rhythm of the workout) so we switched to high-five push ups alt-hands for the slaps on each set. this was great. (thanks Anne!)
• reverse crab walk back to start point

That was 1 round – we did three.

Next we decided to work with the playground equipment that the park afforded us and also to work w/ the creative mind that the group afforded us.  Each partnership from the last circuit wandered around the playground and came up with an exercise (or two) to add to the circuit then we all met up and showed each other.  Each group then started the circuit at the exercise they contributed.  If anyone caught up w/ the group ahead of them they had to shadow box and sing the Rocky theme song till the previous group was done.  This along w/ some grunts made for a great sound track.

Playground collabo circuit (I’m going to put the pair that came up w/ each exercise in parenthesis).

• “lean backs” basically stand on a gate and lean back then use your quads and core to lift yourself back up. harder than they look. X15reps? then ballet single leg squats X 10 per leg (Tracy and Amy)
• back extensions w/ legs on the slide X20reps (Joe and Ben)
• body weight rows holding the fence of the play ground X20reps (Andrea and Anne)
• run up the children’s climbing wall X10 reps then deeps squat row combo on the spiraled fireman’s pole (Carl and David)
• climb up the side of the swing set, monkey bar your way across then hold an iron cross for 15 secs on the other side.  If needed your partner could help hold you up during this exercise (Matt and James)
• swing extension planks X15 swing jackknifes X15 (Brooke and Nick)

We only did this circuit once but really enjoyed having everyone come up w/ something. I think more workouts need to be figured out in this fashion.

We did the same thing for a more core-orientated workout w/ the partners who came up w/ demonstrating in the middle of a circle.

Core callabo circuit

• back to back partner squats (Joe and Ben)
• supermans with alternation high-fives (Carl and David)
• modified mountain climbers – hold yourself in a push up position then draw your right knee to outside your right elbow then to inside your left elbow then back to the ground and do the same w/ you left leg (Anne and Andrea)
• side planks for ~ 30 secs each side (Tracy and Amy) and then Anne suggested adding some hip pumps (side to side) when you are in a plank. we did another plank round with hip pumping action.
• glute bridges w/ opposite side punches/kicks (Brooke and Nick)
• around the world planks-hold good form on a plank and move your feet around till you spin 360 degrees then reverse the direction for another 360 (Matt and James)

Ended with a suicide run which for some reason had overwhelming popular support this week. Overall great work, lots of fun.  Great to see new faces, I hope we have more next week and I also hope the inappropriate language doesn’t scare too many folks off.

Next Pain in the Park

Let’s meet at Hart Park this Sunday (Nov. 22) at 11am. At this point, the plan is to park and meet in the lot at the end of N 72nd St. by the park. If plans change, we’ll update this and Tweet about it before Sunday.

It sounds like there might be a carpool getting set up for Bayview folks, and possibly another for Riverwest area folks. Let us know if you need to jump in on a carpool, or if you can provide one: paininthepark@gmail.com

Let’s do this!

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