Session 3 of ASA's June Class.

We started off with ladder drills, but didn't do too many of them because we were going to come back to them later in the workout.

Today was the day of Festivus. Festivus is a workout designed to completely exhaust you, so that you have to be mentally tough to finish. Or, in G's words, "We don't let Festivus get the best of us."

Festivus for us consists of four to six stations: I-of-pain shuttles, hurdle jumps, circle shuffles, box sprints, rope jumping and box jumps. We did each station twice.

I-of-pain shuttles are forward-backward shuttles with cones 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 cones apart. I can usually keep up with Kris on the first 3 or 4 cones, but he gets me on the last 1 or 2. He's much faster than I am running backward.

Next was the 6" to 12" hurdles. We hopped over with both feet facing forward on the first run, hopping facing to the left on the second run, facing right on the third run. The next run was running with high knees, one foot between each hurdle. The next run was facing left, with both feet between each hurdle. The final run was facing right. Ugh.

Next, we had a circle of twelve cones set out in a circle with a radius of a good one step sideways shuffle. We went around shuffling center to outside cone, around clockwise the first run, counter clockwise the second run. Our rest period was basically when the other person shuffled.

We did two small box sprints next. The box sprints are the forward sprint, shuffle along the back side, sprint diagonally to the opposite cone, shuffle across the front edge of the box, sprint backwards to the back cone, then fowards to the opposite diagonal cone. My first time was like 11.2, the second was 10.5. My times for the second set we did were much worse: 12.2 and 11.5. Ugh.

Jumping rope came next. The first round through Festivus, the first set of 30 seconds was just jump two feet normal. The second set was one foot double step (switching feet, of course). I couldn't get the rhythm, so I jumped both feet both times. Each round had two sets of 30 - 45 seconds of jumping.

Box jumping came next. We jumped 2 sets of 10 jumps onto a 24" box. The first round was land both feet each time. The second round had one set landing on the right foot, the second set landing on the left foot. I struggled to do this jumps.

We had a 1-2 minute rest after each round of Festivus, before we started with the next round.

We had the Festivus of abs next. Instead of ramping down from a long time (say 1 minute or 90 seconds) to a short time (say, 45 seconds to 30 seconds), we ramped up from 20 seconds to 90 seconds for each ab exercise. We started with bicycles, then V ups, then Russian crunches, then alternating V ups. That was round one. Round two was longer, and had no pause between.

Turns out, I was doing the abs wrong. Instead of just doing the situps, I was supposed to be squeezing my abs tight with each contraction. Unfortunately, I didn't know I was supposed to be doing that, so I've been cheating myself. I'll do better next time.