Vibram shoes helps speed

I got some vibram fivefingers shoes. It’s near-barefoot running. It might sound painful but it’s not that bad running on pavement and asphalt. You have to learn to run right because the Nike foam platform is gone. Is it hard on the knees? No one knows yet. My knees don’t hurt but that’s just anecdotal.

Anyway. My goal of sub 06:05 mile came suddenly close when I ran a 06:35 after running a 07:00 flat. I think some more time at the gym doing squats and time at the track with the barefoot stuff will let me break 6 minutes. Just once. I just need to do one mile sub 06:00 to break my middle school and all-time fastest pace. Suddenly it seems very possible. In running shoes, I’d kill myself for 07:15 but barefoot forces you do concentrate on fast turnover (versus long stride). Your feet just can’t hurt themselves when you run barefoot, it’s too painful.

I could go on about general fitness stuff but there’s just too many resources and tips on youtube for free. You can get training tips just by watching a bunch of short videos. I found that a fixed routine isn’t that important but proper technique and insight from these videos is valuable.

So that’s the running bit, let me ramble on about the weight training.

The gym

For my own records, 2 weeks ago I was doing around 3 pull ups and yesterday I did 11. 4 days ago I did 10. These pullups are where my thumbs face me (halfway between a pullup and a chinup), it’s just the type of bar the gym has. It’s good to see the weight that I use go up too. Yay progress. My upper body routine goes something like this:

1. Do as many pullups as I can, last was 11
2. Two hand tricep cable pulldown (overhead leaned over, not in front) – 77 x 15 reps
3. Military pulldown – 90lbs x 10-12 reps (my forearms really burn here, I don’t think I’m doing it right)
4. Do as many pullups as I can again, usually 2 or 3, tired
5. Tricep cable again, 77lbs x 15 reps. Then another 15 with 60lbs keeping hands apart (harder)
6. Bicep curl with 30-35lbs (cable or dumbells)

After all this, I’m just doing repeats of all these in random order. I aim for 45min to 1 hour. Usually I do it too long and sometimes throw in a set of 10 squats @ 110lbs if the gym is busy or I’m getting bored. It’s probably bad to be mixing so many things together. If I’m really pumped and worked hard, I’ll have a protein shake at the end (usually have a protein shake 1 hour before working out). Some days I jog to the gym, on those days it’s really hard running home because my arms feel stiff. I don’t jog to the gym on lower body days.

A full-out lower body day goes something like this:

1. 10x squat rack @ 110lbs (I was using 70lbs to get my form right) These are great! So much energy to do these! Form is key here. Find youtube videos. Don’t hurt yourself. At the end I am very out of breath and hamstrings/quads are burning
2. 10-20 Calf raises @ 70lbs – dumbells or squat rack. Just started these because my calves give out first while running. Not sure yet, running form might be wrong and my routine isn’t solid on these.
3. Leg press. Nothing makes you feel stronger than moving a couple of tons. I do 2 or 3 sets of 10 reps @ 270-290+lbs. I try to explode up and lower slow. Then some calf raises with same weight.
4. Hamstring curl with machine. These are really good for running. It seems to give me more ass-kicking (literally) power during a sprint. I do 2 sets of 10x @ 90lbs.

So the other thing I’ve realized is that remembering my workout isn’t important. If it’s too light or too heavy you learn quick after going 7-10 times to the gym. Eventually you figure out what you should be working out with. I try to work with weight that I can do 3 sets with. If I can’t do 3 sets then I’m doing too much weight. Many times I do a subset of the workouts above. Someone told me that going past 1 hour in the gym is too much.

Rest is important. I wait a day in-between these routines to rest. If I went hard I won’t jog on the rest day. If I jogged on a rest day, I won’t go hard at the gym. Starting out, I was really sore. Now I usually am not sore the next day unless I started a new exercise. For example, playing tennis with a friend made me sore because it was new motions. I don’t know if the protein shakes help with the soreness, I’ve recently stopped drinking them to find out.

So if I do hit sub 06:00, I wonder if I’ll stop all of this crap? Hmm …