Carlos Ibarra: Week 1 of the New Program

3/25/2015

I have known Ken for almost 5 years and he has never lead me down the wrong path. For the better part of three years I have asked for his guidance and advice on various things pertaining to physical or athletic activity, always with good results. I couldn’t have become a professional soccer player without him supervising the majority of my diets and workout plans over the years. My name is Carlos Ibarra and this is my daily workout.

After coming off of injury and taking some time off to let my body recover, I once again found myself starting a new program written by Ken. Since I don’t leave for Europe for 12 more weeks, I have time to go through a proper prehab process and slowly reach peak performance over time. Today started with 5 minutes on the elliptical machine follwed by a warmup circuit consisting of 4 rounds with 20 reps of glute bridges, resistance band squats, and a band resistance shuffle.  This usually shouldn’t take as long as it did, but I was dragging ass until my preworkout kicked in. Thnkfully I then turned into he-man. Or whatever the hispanic version would be. Maybe el-hombre? Whatever. That’s not the point.

After getting a good warmup sweat I felt loose and ready to rock. The next circuit however,was a little more demanding. It consisted of dumb bell lunges (35’s in each hand), Goblet squats with a 40 lb kettlebell, and swiss ball situps each with 20 reps 4 rounds with as minimal rest as possible. As I went through my reps I kept a lot of important things in mind since it was a high rep circuit and fatigue could set in. The first was that i did good deep quality lunges on each rep and good hip rotation. The second was to make sure that I paused at the top during my situps. Lastly I focused on getting good squats because if you aren’t careful as soon as you get slightly tired the first thing to go out the window is your form and then you just look like a dipshit practicing granny shots. The first few rounds weren’t bad, but that last round caught up to me pretty quickly and I had to dig to finish it off.

The next circuit consisted of elevated deadlifts for speed, hanging leg raises, and db row.  On all of these I tried to always keep in mind how important it is to keep good form, especially on deadlift. I say that because like i mentioned earlier when you’re fatigued the first thing to go out the window is your form if you aren’t careful. You don’t want to end up like some of those idiot crossfitters that get injured and end up having to post on instagram a hastag “Throw Back-Out Thursday” rather than your typical #TBT. Some of you reading this probably won’t get that reference and that’s probably because you shouldn’t be on social media anyway.

After concluding my weight session I then got to the best part, the cardio based excercise. Of course I’m being slightly sarcastic, nobody likes to just run. Part of me wants to get one of those shirts that have the american flag with “I don’t do cardio because these colors don’t run” written on the front, but I play a cardio dominant sport. Overall it wasn’t a horrible first day. It was a minute of planks followed by a hit-the-ground-come-up-sprinting pushup to the soccer ball and went on a full speed sprint of 20 yards dribbling with a brisk walk back to the start and repeat. 5 rounds of that. After that, another 5 rounds of planks with z cone drills with the ball for 20 yards with emphasis on acceleration and deceleration in and out of the cuts.

It was a good first day back into fire and I hope it turns out to be a pattern. Hopefully this helps some of you that are looking for motivation or maybe just laughing at some of my pain helps you find a little meaning in yours and helps you get through the day. Either way good luck!

Carlos Ibarra