Day 9 - Pain Don't Hurt

Suuuuuure Patrick... sure... I'll keep that in mind when jumping rope.

Today
Digging my breakfast routine so far but I'm going to need to get more creative there to keep it interesting. Fingers crossed for a dissertation on avocados, the mystery fruit, from Patrick tomorrow (or in a few hours for most PCPers). If we get the "green" light on that, so to speak, I'm thinking that guacamole, salsa, grilled chicken strips and whole wheat tortillas might be in my future. Yum! Planning to look up mustard recipes over the weekend as well to see if I can make my own and have a light spread for the bread carbs. Also, forgot to pick up eggplant when I was at the store but it feels like a nice "meaty" vegetable with a lot of flavor that is awesome grilled or made into a nice baba ganoush. Which is perfect because I think "Ganoush!" is the sound I make when I exhale on a particularly difficult set...


Workout
Jump rope travails continue to plague. Roadhouse quotes aside, my right shin is so painful it feels like its going to snap and I've ended up limping around for half the day. Probably doesn't help that I worked out last night and switched to a morning routine today so I didn't have quite as long of a recovery period. So that continues to be a struggle, but most of the other workouts, while difficult, haven't been too too bad:

1. Lunges: These are hard, especially with the extra set. I have a tendency to get wobbly towards the end and I have to consciously be thinking about the form each time (which is hard to do as my mind naturally is nomadic)
2. Rowing: again, my form wasn't great. I may have placed the anchor too high before reading Patrick's recommendation that you should have a slight uphill motion on the draw inward. Mine was pretty parallel to the floor.
3. Standing Ovation: again, pretty sure I must be doing something wrong as these seemed pretty easy. Some shoulder and tricep burn towards the end but not nearly as difficult as the other exercises. Not sure if its a form issue or if I need a greater resistance band...
4. Tricep dips: interestingly not too bad. Definite burn towards the end, but felt clean and right, if that makes sense, whereas for some of the exercises I'm pretty sure my body is telling me that something is amiss...
5. Forward shoulder raise: not great. I don't know if this is related to having done the previous standing ovation wrong (too much shoulder), but it felt burnt out almost all the way through. In fact I ended up switching to a lower resistance band just to make it through. Let me know if that is a no no.
6. Leg ups: ab workouts are always hard for me. This was definitely one of the cleaner sets though. Still, when my mind wanders I know my form slips and that's dangerous given the back history.
7. Jump ropes: these were pretty disastrous. Not a clean set in there. Probably tripped up 3-12 times per set. Actually much worse than yesterday both in form and pain. Many a loud expletive and I almost threw the rope across the room. Hopefully the deeply religious neighbors were out as I had the house open since its a little cooler today. I am definitely exhausted very quickly by these, sweating and heavy breathing by 200-300 count. I've been doing them inside on carpet (tried briefly skipping on the mat on the carpet but it kept scooting too much). I had been doing it without shoes as I'm indoors but going to do tomorrow's sets with shoes to see if that helps. So many questions/potential problems with how I am doing these... If I try to do the sets jumping with both feet together I can only do half as many before I am totally winded. So I've been alternating between skipping with the left foot leading for 100, then the right foot leading for the next 100 and so forth. Its possible that I am leaning too heavily for the launches on my right leg and don't realize it and as a result its doing all the work and getting worn out. I'm trying to stay positive about these and maybe it was partially due to the smaller refraction period between working out late yesterday and early today that has aggravated things, but the jump rope continuous to be a major struggle. I feel like I am behind the curve that I see coming, both in terms of what how many I can do comfortably before becoming exhausted and the basic form without tripping numerous times. I'm doing them all, I just suck at them...

Alexander, to your question on the previous post, here is the resistance band set I am using: http://www.aylio.com/Aylio-Basic-Resistance-Bands-Exercise-Set/M/B0018QY22C.htm

I've been using the black one (25 lbs) for almost all of the sets. For most of them it appears to be more than ample (possibly too much for the forward shoulder raise as noted above). It does say in the product description, 

"Unlike regular exercise bands, the unique metal clipping system allows users to adjust resistance levels from 7 to 60 lbs and match the workout intensity to their own level of fitness." 

but I haven't figured out how to do that just yet (only just discovered it).