site banner

Friday Fun Thread for October 6, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

2
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Well, I'll kick things off.

I finally achieved a long term fitness goal I've had for a few years. With my 40th birthday coming up, it lit a fire under my ass to more seriously commit to achieving it. So for the last 4 or 5 months I've been pushing hard to do 5 sets of 5, 40 kg turkish get ups. On each side. So 50 total.

Not me in that video BTW.

It's been a journey. The school year starting got everyone in the house sick for a spell which derailed me. Then I started having some pretty debilitating stomach pain out of seemingly nowhere. Couldn't eat, could barely sleep. Spent a day in the ER where they ruled out anything that would kill me that day, then spent a month waiting on the gastro to scope me, who found nothing. Had been on Prilosec the entire time which I suspect seriously fucked up my workouts, because I was failing a full rep before my previous max, and couldn't even do a 5th set on it. As soon as I got off that and moved to Pepcid AC I was good to go again, with a bit less than 2 months to go, and getting a single set of 5 in on a good day.

At first I was worried I'd lost too much time to illness. But at some point I punched through, and pretty quickly went from a set of 5 on a good day being impressive, to rather reliably getting in 2 or 3 sets of five. Then a 4th set of five with an extra long rest period. But getting that one last rep in proved elusive for about 2 weeks. Until yesterday. So I finally pulled it off, with about 18 days to spare.

So yay. Carved out some new strength headroom coming up on 40. Think I'm gonna try to maintain this, and work towards a 5x5 40kg clean and press.

Not me in that video again.

Congratulations! That's a serious demonstration of strength.

Yeah, I don't have a personal trainer, or goto the gym, or watch workout videos. I just like the turkish get up, heard 5 sets of 5 was a good goal years ago, and held it out as something I wanted to do. I strongly suspect doing a workout regimen like that is not really a thing people do. I've kind of done a bit of looking around now that I've pulled it off, and I mostly see videos or blogs talking about using them as warm ups or mobility exercises. A few talking about doing 10 sets of 1 when you go that heavy.

But, I don't think I did anything that destroyed my body, especially my joints. My shoulders, wrists, knees and hips feel better than ever.

I love fun personal challenges like that. The Bulgarian Lite joke/system is this idea semi formalized.

Maybe I'll finally follow you at a junior level with my 36kg

Do it! I highly recommend lots of heavy turkish get ups.