Naming Workouts

Every so often a workout deserves or gets the distinct honor of being named after someone. There are the Yasso 800's named after Bart Yasso.  Almost everyone that does a marathon at some time or other does Yasso 800's during their training.  The Pre 30 / 40 workout named after Steve Prefontaine is one that we've done before and that is fun.  It involves doing 200m repeats continuously alternating between paces.  Pre did his in 30 seconds and 40 seconds but us mortals have to adapt it to our paces. 

 In my workouts, there are the Hannah 150's which I have written about before.  They are 150's that we do in our swim workouts named after a girl named Hannah.  This workout involves swimming 150 yd repeats with 50 yds of stroke in the middle of the interval.  I have met Hannah but have never swam with her yet even I call these intervals Hannah 150's. 

Another swimming partner has a 500 Ladder that is named in his honor.  It's his go to swim workout and usually part of our Thursday swim routine. 

I have been given the dubious honor of having a plyometric drill named after me called the Whitney skip.  When I first learned this skip from my track coach in Washington DC it was actually called Gum Check.  When I shared it with the Rush team it got named after me.  It's hard to describe but involves bringing the opposite hand to opposite foot. 

Check out my video demonstration.  This is a skipping drill but for the video I did it standing in place.  (Side note...I should definitely do my hair next time I want to do a video post! In my defense, I did at least change out of my pjs!)

Today, my friend Lori said that the swim workout we did could be named the Whitney 1K.  I'm working on doing more stroke swimming and devised this workout as I was walking into the gym today.  I wanted variety in the distances and also wanted to build up to longer sections of swimming each stroke.  The workout was 4 sets of 250m of each stroke however each 250m interval was actually three smaller intervals.  First was a 125m interval...the first 50m was always stroke then 75m of free.  Next was a 75m interval...with the middle 25m as stroke.  Last was a 50m interval that we swam as stroke/free.  We did the 250m sets in IM order so butterfly, back, breast, free.  It was a little confusing to one of my swim partners but once we got going he settled into it and seemed to enjoy the distance variety.  We'll have to see if it makes into the rotation for future swim workouts!

None of these are nearly as classic as the Yasso 800's or Pre's 30/40s but still kind of fun to honor your friends and training partners with naming a workout after them and even though it's a little embarrassing it is fun to have something named after you too!