NerdStrong Gym - Aliens

Today is Sunday.. one of my favorite workout days because they are always themed. Today's theme was Aliens (see previous blog post as we watched the movie last night).

You know it's going to be a good workout when you see the warm up and it looks like the workout itself. Needless to say lots of stretching happened before we began the workout. And at the end of the warm up we had to do 3 rounds of 30x Jumping Jacks, 20x Mountain Climbers and 10x Squats. I was already exhausted when we finished warming up.

Now on to the actual workout and it was a good one. 

Coach Andrew was playing douchebag Burke, while Seely played both Sergeant Apone and Ripley.

We start by "Awakening from HyperSleep" and doing TABATA (8 rounds, 20 seconds of workout, 10 seconds of rest) We were doing Hollow Holds and then Push Ups. So you'd start with a Hollow Hold (which is laying on your back and lifting your feet and legs a few inches off the ground and also lifting your head and shoulders a few inches off the ground and then holding that positions. It's only 20 seconds but man it feels like a lifetime. We then had a 10 second break which gives you just enough time to turn over and get into a Push Up position and then do 20 seconds worth of Push Ups. We did this eight times while Sergeant Apone (Seely) "encouraged" us to do better.

For the next part of the workout we had to team up ( My partner was Lauren). We then started what would be a total of 16 minutes of workout. The first section "Crash Site to Operational" This consisted of running two laps around the parking lot.. not only are you running but Burke (Coach Andrew) has requested that you take one of the Alien Pods (aka Medicine Ball) and bring it to him so we had to run with a 14lbs medicine ball. Lauren and I began our run and about 1/4 way through I passed the "Alien Pod" to her and she run with it for a bit and we'd switch back and forth for the two laps.

The next section was "Building Barriers and Surviving Attacks" This workout consisted of 1x Farm Walk (which meant one partner would carry the "Alien Pod" while the other had to carry a weight in each hand but you had to hold it in the crease of your thumb and pointer finger, you couldn't hold it with you actual finger tips.) Luckily we didn't have to walk to far but it was still tough.

We then came back in and did 50x Medicine Ball Sit Ups, we'd split these up 25 each. We did another Farm Walk before doing 50x Medicine Ball Push Ups. Again we split this between the two of us and it was tough as you had to do a push up while on the medicine ball. We then did another Farm Walk and came back inside and did 100x Medicine Ball Mountain Climbers. Again this was like the push up as you are doing mountain climbers while balancing on the medicine ball. And like with the other workouts we split this up and did 50 each. Another Farm Walk before doing our final workout for this section 100 Wall Balls. Unfortunately or fortunately our time ran out and Lauren and I only manage to do 5 Wall Balls each, but we were both extremely happy as we didn't think we'd get that far.

Oh I forgot to mention during this workout, very four minutes.. Andrew (Burke) would roll a three sided die while Seely (Riply) would also roll a 3 sided die. If the numbers matched then Burke did not release any Facehuggers into the room.. if the numbers didn't match we'd have to do Wall Ball Burpees for the number that Burke rolled. Needless to say the odds were not in our favor and in the end we had to defeat seven Facehuggers by doing seven Wall Ball Burpees.

And for our final event was titled "Airlock" Which of course gets it's name for the end battle of Ripley and the Alien Queen. This was a Max Hang. All you had to do was hang from a bar as long as you could. And if you wanted to make it more authentic you could add a dumbbell and hold it between your feet like when the Alien Queen was pulling on Riply's foot. I opted for that as I wanted to make it as real as possible. Unfortunately I didn't even make it to one minute. I was disappointed in myself as I thought I'd be able to hold on for a while but it wasn't meant to be.

This was an extremely tough workout but also very fun. Thanks to Lauren my workout partner.. she did an amazing job and I want to thank coach Andrew for creating it.  Themed workouts are the best.