12/12/12 came and went...

My second week of December is uneventful, with just the normal routines of work and home. We had a short blackout yesterday evening and while I liked the candle filled house, it wasn't bright enough. So I whipped out my flashlights, and lo and behold, the whole house was bright.

Being an active scouts back in the day (from early primary school to end of high school), certain principles stick on to you throughout your life. Always be helpful, think of others before yourself, and always be prepared for the unexpected.

The last one is what my training and flashlights have in common. My training evolves the idea of being physically fit to do daily chore, while still having energy to do other things. The idea is also to ensure that I am capable of doing physical feats at unexpected situations, be it holding on a bulky item from falling from an overhead storage, or pulling a door of a car wreckage, or even fighting off and surviving a zombie apocalypse.

Same thing for my every day carry items (EDC) and flashlights. I carry with me at all times a pocket knife and a small Fenix Flashlight to prepare myself should the need arises to use them. Being a QS requires me to open packages and documents on a weekly basis, thus the knife is handy. The flashlight is a must in Kuching; the place isn't as bright as Singapore so there's a lot of dark corners, inside and out of the house.

Anyways my training over the past few days hasn't been impressive. I find myself lacking the energy to complete my workouts in it's intended level, but I guess its mainly due to the fact I performed them at 10pm at night, due to the increased level of activities at home.

Workouts were based on classic 5x5 routines. What I wasn't impressed was the weight I utilised, but it was already forewarned that using sandbags is totally different from traditional weights, and therefore you will drop the level of weight you are used to.

10/12/12
Pull ups - 5x5
Shouldering - 6x4
Push jerks - 5x5
Zercher Squats - 5x5
Weight - 36kg

12/12/12
Bear hug Squats - 5x5
Extended dips - 5x5
Shouldering - 5x5
Weights - 56kg for first 2 rounds, then dropped to 36kg.

It was my first time trying a 56kg sandbag, which is the max the sandbag can handle, and more than I can personally handle. That's good to know, since it means it will take quite some time before I will need to utilise a larger sandbag.

Owh, as predicted, I got smaller sandbag for these workouts. Although big blue 300lbs sandbag is nice to have, it'll take a while before I can utilise it's full potential (for that size of a bag, it should only be filled with a minimum of 40kg, or else the extra space in the sandbag makes it unusable). I was given a Brute Force sandbag by my brother as a thank you gift (since I got him a heat rate monitor and a TRX kit previously).

4 words, I love this bag! The handles are nice to have (while I mainly use 4 of them), and it can handle quite a fair bit of weight. The dimensions are perfect for all kind of exercises, from shouldering to rotating high-pulls.

Its a lot larger than expected, but I still like it since it can handle up to 58~68kg of sand (depends how you pack it). I just hope the seams of the bag can handle the abuse I'm gonna trash onto the bag.