Catching up

There have been a lot of things on my mind besides training this week, but I'm getting my work in one way or another.

I've done the March strength routine on Monday, Wednesday, and today this week.  I haven't really described this month's routine yet, so here it is:

It starts with an exercise on the exercise ball that you can watch Chinese slalom racer Jing Jing Li demonstrate at the 2:54 mark of this video.  It's quite a bit harder than it looks.

Then I do a set of clap-pushups.  I'll increase the number of reps per set as the month goes along, but I want to keep that number low enough that I can do each pushup with maximum explosive power.

Then it's back to the exercise ball, with an exercise that Jing Jing Li demonstrates at the 3:11 mark of that video I linked to above.  This one is also much tougher than it looks, both in the distress it puts on the abdominals and in simply keeping one's balance.

Finally, I do a little rotation drill with my ten-pound medicine ball.  I tried to find a video of this exercise, but couldn't find one of somebody doing it exactly the way I do it.  This guy comes close, but what I do on each rep is let the ball roll behind my back, and twist around and retrieve it for the next rep.  I do sets in both directions (clockwise and counterclockwise).

In the boat today I paddled for 60 minutes, doing six 12-stroke sprints and some balance drills in beam waves driven by a strong south wind.  Tomorrow I'm hoping to do a lap of the entire harbor for time.