Welcome to Week 4! Let’s get right into it!

EAT

You are now tasked to use the plate method for 6 days of lunch and dinner. We talked about food prep so a final tip would be to reach out to Nancy, RD to help round out your approach to this EAT category. Broad strokes here can certainly be helped with diet specific preferences and addressing micronutrient needs.

Your second task is to drink 1/2 body weight in ounces of water and you need to do this for 6 days of the week. This should be an easier routine if you start your day with a glass and drink consistently throughout the day.

SLEEP

Your first task this week is to get 7hr+ sleep a night for 6 nights of the week. Start with the end and work backward from there. What time do you need to wake up? Not wake up and hit snooze, what is that bottom line and subtract 8 from there (to give you some wiggle room). Once you have that “in bed” time, what do you need to do to make that happen? You’ll recognize there are choices to be made so be consistent

Your second task is to incorporate breath work for at least 4 days this week. Again, accumulate 20 cycles (+/- 5min) multiple times a day if you‘d like but at a minimum do it at least once on 4 different days. Not a requirement but, give yourself the task of doing your breath work nasal only – this will tie into the BONUS below.

NEAT

Your first task this week is to get 30 minutes of additional steady state monostructural activity for 4 days this week. If you need to, round up some fellow challenge peeps and row / bike with them at the gym so you can chat it up. If you can’t maintain an easy conversation, you are moving too fast for it to qualify as Non-Exercise. The (wal)KING can again simultaneously satisfy your second task of going for an outdoor walk.

TRAIN

Your first task this week stays consistent with 3 CrossFit group classes. The BONUS does not count toward this so just be mindful of your schedule. It is a lot to contend with especially with your NEAT requirement.

Your second task this week is 90 unbroken seconds of a cold shower or plunge (from the neck down) on 6 days this week. In addition, on one of those 90secs on one day, you have to get your face/head under. This is the easiest of the additive categories so I offer the following as a non-required task: end your shower on the cold exposure. Let your body naturally warm back up (toweling off during is fine). It’s really not that bad!

BONUS

Your extra bonus (at home) workout for the week is as follows:

20min AMRAP

Rogue Airbike Intervals

50sec easy / recovery. 10sec max effort

Hands do not leave the handles | Feet do not leave the pedals

Nasal breathing only

The 50sec is just barely enough time to recover if you truly attack the 10sec. The mental component here is to not open your mouth for 20 minutes. If you have been following along, we have been building toward this. Starting with some cycles of nasal breathwork in week 1, the walk in week 2, full nasal breathwork in week 3, and now incorporating that into your Bonus workout in week 4.

If you open your mouth – even just once – it does not count.

Pro tip: set up an interval on the Rogue Airbike and set the “Work” to 50 seconds and the “Rest” to 10 seconds but just do the opposite.

I anticipate that this will take some of you more than one attempt to do this. That’s okay because it’s not a failure. It’s not a failure because you learned something. On whatever attempt, be purposeful with your nasal breathing during the max effort and then pedal with hands and feet ever so slowly (without stopping) on the airbike to recover enough for the next max effort. Focus on your exhale. Get as much out as you can and make the exhale longer than your inhale.

Simple but not easy. Straightforward but consider what thoughts go through your head knowing you cannot lose contact with the handles or pedals and that you cannot. open. your. mouth.

As always, reach out with any questions!