Reporter Paul Tenorio works through a dry-land set, the newest addition to workouts that helped drop him to 177 pounds and 11.6 percent body fat. (Photo by Jeff King/Curl-Burke)
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I thought that maybe the weekend would provide enough recovery from last week’s brutal lineup of workouts that I’d feel nice and refreshed this morning at practice.
I was wrong…but I wasn’t the only one who thought that.
“Ohh, I am still so sore from Friday,” said one swimmer, who will remain anonymous to avoid teasing from Coach Jeff King.
“I thought the weekend would help…it didn’t,” said another early in warm-ups.
This, my friends, is a good thing. We are getting our butts kicked and it’s paying off.
We started off the morning with more dry-land, which I agree is both a positive and also somewhat troublesome if you look at it in one way. Jeff pointed out that we technically are not getting as much work because we are spending less time in the pool, and that means that our competitors are out-swimming us every week.
I guess so, but I think the dry-land is working well, and it definitely showed this week when I stepped on the scale. I dropped two more pounds after last week and, most importantly, I hit a new low in my body-fat percentage: 11.6 percent, a drop of 2.4-percent from two weeks ago.
It was a nice boost after going up in that category last time I measured, though I believe I said in that post that I expected a big drop this week and I was right.
This morning we did more race-type stuff that kind of worked on stamina, though I was depressed at how tired I was getting and how slow I was at the back end of the 100 swims.
Then again, by the fourth and fifth 100 if you weren’t pretty tired and working hard just to finish then you probably weren’t going hard enough on the first three.
After our dry-land set that consisted mostly of medicine ball work, we hopped into the pool for 10 150s, rotating 100 swim/50 kick, 100 kick/50 swim.
Then we moved to a new set: 100 butterfly kick sprint, 20 seconds rest, 100 swim sprint. Six 25s perfect. We repeated the set, decreasing our rest from 20 to 15 to 10 to 5 to a straight 200. You also had to do increasing butterfly kicks under water (5, 6, 7, 8, 4) on the kick portions on each wall.
It was a great workout and also a very tiring one. After last week’s kick workouts and dry-land stuff, plus this morning’s leg stuff, the kick turned into a much more tiring experience than I think anyone anticipated.
“My legs are giving up on me,” one swimmer said. Took the words right out of my mouth.
I weirdly love it though, the failure feeling. I was explaining to my roommate that I had walked away from several practices last week feeling as though I had done max-out squat sets and had trouble with recovery but how much I felt like my legs were getting stronger and more toned as a result. That’s probably where the two pounds came from.
I get to sleep in tomorrow morning because of my late night covering Monday Night Football tonight. As Jeff said, and repeated and repeated again to me today: “DON’T COME!” Basically going in on one and a half to two hours of sleep would put me in a situation where I was trying to recover the rest of the week and would hurt me more than help me in the long run, but I’ll post a blog after a workout in which I will feature Jeff’s favorite dry-land workouts: pull-ups, dips and jump rope.
Here’s my updated chart, just one pound off of my goal weight:
July 20: Weight- 193, Waistline- 36, BMI- 27.6, Body Fat Percentage- 17.7
July 27: Weight- 189, Waistline- 36, BMI- 27.1, Body Fat Percentage- 16.6
Aug. 03: Weight- 185, Waistline- 36, BMI- 26.5, Body Fat Percentage- 15.6
Aug. 10: Weight- 184, Waistline- 36, BMI- 26.4, Body Fat Percentage- N/A
Aug. 17: Weight- 186, Waistline- 35, BMI- 26.7, Body Fat Percentage- 14.5
Aug. 24: Weight- 185, Waistline- 35, BMI- 26.5, Body Fat Percentage- N/A
Aug. 31: Weight- 184, Waistline- 34, BMI- 26.4, Body Fat Percentage- N/A
Sept. 8: Weight- 184, Waistline- 34, BMI- 26.4, Body Fat Percentage- N/A
Sept. 15: Weight- 181, Waistline- 34, BMI- 26.0, Body Fat Percentage- 13.1
Sept. 21: Weight- 181, Waistline- 34, BMI- 26.0, Body Fat Percentage- N/A
Sept. 28: Weight- 180, Waistline- 34, BMI- 25.8, Body Fat Percentage- N/A
Oct. 5: Weight- 179, Waistline- 33, BMI- 25.7, Body Fat Percentage- 14.0
Oct. 19: Weight- 179, Waistline- 33, BMI- 25.7, Body Fat Percentage- N/A
Oct. 26: Weight- 177, Waistline- 33, BMI- 25.4, Body Fat Percentage- 11.6
Washington Post reporter Paul Tenorio will train with a swim club over the next few months and chronicle his journey as he attempts to transform from regular guy/sports reporter to competitive swimmer — everything from his waistline to his best times.
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