New personal bests!

This morning is an exciting one because it marks my first workout using exercises from F2! 

I'm still mostly on F1 (6 out of 7 progressions), but for the single leg squat progression I've finally gained enough hip mobility to pass all the iM components of the first 5 progressions in F1.

This week I also had a few other things that I was thrilled with.  Mostly ... pushups.  This is one of the early progressions in the upper body workout and I have to get to 5 sets of 15 before I can achieve mastery.  I'm still stuck on 4 x 15 but inching closer towards finishing up that final 4th set with good form.

To progress a bit faster I figured I should workout the upper body more than the once per week allocated based on Coach's Schedule.  Recall that the recommended schedule is

Monday - Core,
Tuesday - Middle Split.
Wednesday - Lower body and Front Split
Thursday - Upper Body
Friday - Handstand and Thoracic Bridge.

I'm doing all of those, so once a week upper body isn't giving me progress in strength.  To solve this I added in ONE SET TO FAILURE a couple of extra times per week.  When I started this I could achieve about 26 full range pushups before I'd fail on the 27th rep.  I would hold that rep as long as possible before collapsing to the ground in a sobbing mess (ok, just kidding about the sobbing part).

This week I managed to do 30 full reps and failed on 31.  

This entire workout (one set to failure) takes UNDER 2 MINUTES, so it's really easy to do anywhere, anytime.  It takes everything in you to hold until total failure, but it seems to work.

Anyway, just wanted to share that today as I'm approaching my one year anniversary with GB courses, and I've been consistently doing these since I first invested in them. I still very much enjoy every workout and love making some progress towards mastery of each progression.  This is definitely getting me in the best shape of my life.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for sharing and awesome work

Your hard work and consistency have definitely payed off!

Feel free to share some videos of your progress  Keep it up!

6 hours ago, Chris Umiastowski said:

When I started this I could achieve about 26 full range pushups before I'd fail on the 27th rep.  I would hold that rep as long as possible before collapsing to the ground in a sobbing mess (ok, just kidding about the sobbing part).

If I could do 26 push-ups in a row, I would be also a sobbing mess—from happiness, though   ha ha… Seriously, congratulations on your 30!!! What a great work!

Suzanna - I remember when I moved to the push-up progression many months ago doing 10 was hard! The form was so new to me. 

Nice trick, Chris, have to try it myself. I'm in a littlebit similar position, where doing whole program twice a week would be too much, but doing once is not enough. Currently I'm doing Core and Upper Body on a different days. As Upper Body day already contains some core component (elbow plank), then I've added a few sets of easy push-ups and rows at the end of the Core day so that this is another way to get some more volume. But your suggestion seems to be more time-efficient.