Boot Camp

Today, I attended a boot camp workout hosted by the new Sports Basement near the Presidio YMCA. It's usually a fee program but today's workout was a complementary recruitment session.

After completing a 4-page questionnaire, we all jogged to the beach. Shannon led the stretching session while the other coach, Stevan, explained what boot camp was all about. We split up into two groups. I stayed with Shannon. Here are the exercises we did:

• Alternating lunges across the beach
• Push-ups against a concrete block:
  • 10 with right leg raised, 10 with left leg raised
  • 10 tricep pushups
  • 10 with hands wide apart (lats)
• Step-ups on a bench. 10-15 on each leg, similar to the ones in The Firm workout videos
• Three person step-ups: one person would stand on a concrete block and do squats while holding the hands of two people on either side facing the opposite direction. Those two people would do step-ups with their inside leg (the leg that was closest to the person doing squats), and then lift the knee of their outside leg at the top of the step-up. We rotated clockwise after ten squats/step-ups. We did this a second time with lateral leg raises instead of knee raises
• Push-ups against a picnic table. We did regular push-ups, push-ups with a clap in between, and push-ups with two claps in between
• Isometric hamstring curls: one person would lie on top of a picnic table with their legs curled. The other person would put gentle pressure to pull their heels back. We did this for one minute
• "Schwarzeneggars": We held each end of a piece of tubing in our hands while stepping in the middle. We would perform a squat, stand up, and then raise our hands to do a shoulder press. The tubing provided resistance for the shoulder press
• Two-person situps while we passed a weighted ball (15-18 pounds) back and forth between us
• Lower ab workout: lift both feet in the air in a reverse curl as though we were making footprints in the sky, followed by extending our legs out horizontally
• Bicycles with hands reaching towards the ankles
• "One Hundreds": first we did this with feet flat on the ground, then we did it with legs extended and lowered at around a 45 degree angle

It was a great workout and contained a lot of familiar exercises. I may take some and incorporate them in the muscle conditioning/abs section of my step classes.