Riviera's Ninja Training, Chapter 1

[Riviera16]

Well, here we are! I'm officially in the Assassins now!  This is my second challenge and I'm really looking forward to it. Last time, I had a lot of successes, a few failures, and at least one major milestone. I worked on some pretty simple, straightforward goals, kind of building a foundation for later adventures. This time I'm going for something bigger and more exciting. I'm going to do my best to continue my goals from last challenge but my main focus is different. I've wanted to become skilled at parkour ever since I first tried it several years ago, but then my wrist troubles started and I couldn't work on it for ages. Now that my wrists are a bit better and I'm much stronger than I was before I think it's high-time I get back in the game.

 

Overall Goal: In a nutshell, I want to be a ninja IRL. That is easier said than done, especially when you have an ongoing wrist tendinitis/tendinosis situation. I want to take direct steps toward that goal, including building strength, improving flexibility, finding ways of dealing with boredom, and getting bionic wrists. No, seriously, if anyone knows where one can get bionic wrist replacements please let me know. 

 

My specific challenge goals are:

Goal #1: Practice a parkour technique at least once per strength workout (which I will be doing 3x per week), and work on at least two different techniques per week.

Goal #2: Do eccentric exercise for my wrists 4-7 times per week and continue learning about tendon injuries and how to help them heal, hopefully to see some improvement by the end of the challenge.

Goal #3: Do light exercise at least once per week on an off day, including either parkour practice or flexibility/mobility exercises for my notoriously tight hamstrings.

 

I will also be working on some more general goals, such as:

• Getting back into cooking and making more veggie-based meals, especially from interesting recipes from unusual cuisines I don't often get to have.
• Continuing to learn new exercises for my workouts and find activities to help myself deal with boredom so I won't feel like I have to resort to snacking.
• Reboot the creative part of my brain which has basically gone into hibernation since my wrists went bad to avoid the awful experience of having a huge inspiration and being unable to pursue it or do anything with it. I'm still fairly limited in the amount of drawing/writing/typing I can do so I'm not sure exactly how I'll do this or how successful I can expect it to be, but I do have a little more freedom than I used to and I would really like to start feeling more like myself again.

 

So, there you have it. The next chapter in my quest to become an action-hero ninja begins here and now! ⚔️

[PaulG]

Following for all things ninja- and hamstring-related!

[WhiteGhost]

9 hours ago, Riviera16 said:

Practice a parkour technique at least once per strength workout (which I will be doing 3x per week), and work on at least two different techniques per week.

@DoubleTrouble is our resident parkour expect (at least the most active in doing parkour stuff these days).  If you are looking for cool ideas to try, you should follow his thread

 

9 hours ago, Riviera16 said:

Getting back into cooking and making more veggie-based meals, especially from interesting recipes from unusual cuisines I don't often get to have.

@PaulG's threads are a veritable cornucopia of recipe and food ideas for cuisines you probably don't often eat.  If you are not following him, I highly recommend it.

 

9 hours ago, Riviera16 said:

Continuing to learn new exercises for my workouts and find activities to help myself deal with boredom so I won't feel like I have to resort to snacking.

Learning all the bodyweight exercises and making up new ones is totally my jam.  Do you have any kind of focus on what parts of the body you want to strengthen and/or skills you want to improve on? 

[Riviera16]

13 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

@DoubleTrouble is our resident parkour expect (at least the most active in doing parkour stuff these days).  If you are looking for cool ideas to try, you should follow his thread

Oh, alright! Thanks for the tip!

 

13 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

@PaulG's threads are a veritable cornucopia of recipe and food ideas for cuisines you probably don't often eat.  If you are not following him, I highly recommend it.

...Actually, I kind of stole the basic idea of this goal from something he mentioned in his last challenge thread. 😏 I definitely plan to look over his posts for ideas!

 

13 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

Learning all the bodyweight exercises and making up new ones is totally my jam.  Do you have any kind of focus on what parts of the body you want to strengthen and/or skills you want to improve on? 

Well, the areas I'm most looking to improve right now are building arm/upper body strength to get to the point where I can do full pull-ups and push-ups. Core and leg strength is also important but not quite as high a priority for me at the moment. With a lot of arm stuff my one big limitation is my ongoing wrist problem; anything that involves putting force into the palm of my hand with my wrist bent back even a little seems to make things worse. As such, I wind up having to adapt certain exercises, like doing push-ups on my fists instead of with my hands flat on the ground. Fortunately pulling doesn't seem to cause any trouble as long as I keep my wrists straight. I'd be happy to hear if you have any thoughts on what kinds of exercises I might find interesting/useful!

[WhiteGhost]

11 hours ago, Riviera16 said:

I'd be happy to hear if you have any thoughts on what kinds of exercises I might find interesting/useful!

I checked out the kinds of things you are doing on your battle log and it looks like you have the primary strength builders in place.  Keep doing those.  As supplementary exercises, you may want to consider adding in some scapular work (pushups and rows using just your shoulders - arms stay straight).  These help with shoulder activation which is really useful for the end ranges of the movement (top and bottom) where it is often the hardest.  For pullups I would recommend adding in some deadhangs (both relaxed and hollow body) and (when you are ready for them) flexed arm hangs.  These help with a lot of things including grip strength which is often a really big but unrecognized hindrance to pullups.   

[PaulG]

15 hours ago, Riviera16 said:

...Actually, I kind of stole the basic idea of this goal from something he mentioned in his last challenge thread. 😏 I definitely plan to look over his posts for ideas!

 

Aw shucks, it's just awful nice that anyone's finding it helpful at all. ☺️

 

I'm glad you figured out your cooking challenge! Curious to see what you'll decide to try out.

 

3 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

[really good suggestions]

 

I agree with all of WhiteGhost's suggestions, they're all good ideas for gearing up for good pullups.

 

I do have one other suggestion, which is just that I see a lot of people who are much stronger, much closer to a pullup than they think they are, but think they can't because they haven't practiced. It's easy to forget that even though pullups are a foundational strength movement, they're also a skill. The first time I tried one, for example, I jumped and hit my head on the bar because I just didn't know how to jump properly; and then the next few times I flopped around like a fish. It took me accumulating about 10-20 minutes of practice over a few days before I finally figured out how to set up properly, and how to pull.

 

So definitely do all the movements to build scapular strength and grip strength, because those will be important. But once you're comfortable with the idea, or maybe even a little before that, don't be afraid to drag a chair over to the bar and try out a flexed-arm hang with a chinup grip, to test yourself. You can even test lowering yourself slowly from there; and if you can do that within a couple of tries you'll be practicing negatives. If you can't, of course, you'll know you've got a little ways to go, but don't be afraid to keep trying it out. Strength builds pretty quickly at that level, and you could start to surprise yourself after a little practice.

[raptron]

Welcome to the assassins! We love supporting up-and-coming ninjas. 😁

 

8 hours ago, PaulG said:

So definitely do all the movements to build scapular strength and grip strength, because those will be important. But once you're comfortable with the idea, or maybe even a little before that, don't be afraid to drag a chair over to the bar and try out a flexed-arm hang with a chinup grip, to test yourself. You can even test lowering yourself slowly from there; and if you can do that within a couple of tries you'll be practicing negatives. 

Seconding flexed hangs. They're 👌👌👌for hanging pulls and lockoff strength, which you might find valuable along your parkour and calisthenics journey. 

[Vidd]

I'll definitely be following this challenge

 

I used to have really bad wrist pain too doing pushups on my palms. What i did was use pushup stands to get my wrists into a straight position but you can even do this with a pair of dumbbell handles. But make sure they're the hexagonal shaped ones that aren't as easy to roll around with. Just a suggestion to consider if you wanted to keep progressing on your pushing movements while you work to rehab your wrists.

[Riviera16]

On 6/18/2020 at 11:17 PM, WhiteGhost said:

I checked out the kinds of things you are doing on your battle log and it looks like you have the primary strength builders in place.  Keep doing those.  As supplementary exercises, you may want to consider adding in some scapular work (pushups and rows using just your shoulders - arms stay straight).  These help with shoulder activation which is really useful for the end ranges of the movement (top and bottom) where it is often the hardest.  For pullups I would recommend adding in some deadhangs (both relaxed and hollow body) and (when you are ready for them) flexed arm hangs.  These help with a lot of things including grip strength which is often a really big but unrecognized hindrance to pullups.   

Thanks! I'll see if I can find a way to incorporate those into my workouts. Grip strength is definitely a big deal, especially for me with my wrist situation. I've noticed my grip is getting stronger as I'm increasing the difficulty of the bodyweight rows I've been doing but I do have to advance a little more slowly than I would otherwise in order to make sure my grip strength is keeping up.

 

On 6/19/2020 at 2:48 AM, PaulG said:

But once you're comfortable with the idea, or maybe even a little before that, don't be afraid to drag a chair over to the bar and try out a flexed-arm hang with a chinup grip, to test yourself. You can even test lowering yourself slowly from there; and if you can do that within a couple of tries you'll be practicing negatives. If you can't, of course, you'll know you've got a little ways to go, but don't be afraid to keep trying it out. Strength builds pretty quickly at that level, and you could start to surprise yourself after a little practice.

I actually tried something like that a couple months back; grip/wrist strength was definitely my top limiting factor but my arms seem like they have a little ways to go too. If all goes well, by the end of this challenge I'd like to at least be able to lower myself from chin-up position easily several times in a row. The one problem is going to be finding a place I can regularly do this without a gym…  

 

22 hours ago, raptron said:

Welcome to the assassins! We love supporting up-and-coming ninjas. 😁

 

Seconding flexed hangs. They're 👌👌👌for hanging pulls and lockoff strength, which you might find valuable along your parkour and calisthenics journey. 

Thank you!  I guess I'd better look into pull-up bar options for home. I know my dad did a little research on the subject a while ago and discovered our house's doorways are an unusual width and most doorframe mounted pull-up bars wouldn't fit properly. And, alas, we have too much clutter for anything freestanding to be a viable option. Maybe I can use a bar at a nearby playground and just wash my hands really well afterward. 

 

6 hours ago, Vidd said:

I'll definitely be following this challenge

 

I used to have really bad wrist pain too doing pushups on my palms. What i did was use pushup stands to get my wrists into a straight position but you can even do this with a pair of dumbbell handles. But make sure they're the hexagonal shaped ones that aren't as easy to roll around with. Just a suggestion to consider if you wanted to keep progressing on your pushing movements while you work to rehab your wrists.

Thanks! I've tried that too. It's much better than with my palms flat on the floor, but I've found that since it does still involve my wrist being slightly bent back with some force going directly into the bottom of my palm doing it on my fists/knuckles still works better for me overall.

 

…I've also found that our carpet is much more abrasive than the gym mats I was used to. 😓 Luckily our sofa arms are at a good height so I can use those instead and spare my knuckles the rawness and calluses.

[DoubleTrouble]

Parkour club! Hoping that your wrists heal up nicely.

 

[PaulG]

7 hours ago, Riviera16 said:

Thank you!  I guess I'd better look into pull-up bar options for home. I know my dad did a little research on the subject a while ago and discovered our house's doorways are an unusual width and most doorframe mounted pull-up bars wouldn't fit properly.

 

FWIW, I have the same problem in my apartment -- doorways are super wide -- and I also hate the neutral grips on most pullup bars because I stab myself in the chest with them when I try to do chest-to-bar pulls. So I finally built my own out of galvanized pipe. It cost me about $60 to build it, but if you use 1-inch pipe you could probably do it for $45. (I built mine out of pricier 1.25in schedule 40 pipe because I weighed a cool 210lb at the time, and wanted it bulletproof enough to go upside down on it.)

 

But, there are also a bunch of commercial options, and I saw a Wirecutter review of pullup bars recently that has a bunch of options for wide doorways.

[Riviera16]

All right, first day on the challenge! Well, technically second day, but who's counting?  
Actually, I started incorporating my challenge goals into my workouts with my last workout on Saturday. In addition to practicing parkour jumps and landings I got in two new exercises! 🥳 In fact, the whole workout was based on one I found researching online. That felt pretty great, getting to do something clearly new and different for a day. I think I'll keep researching different exercises/workouts since this time went so well.

 

My secondary goal of cooking is off to an interesting start, though not the way I expected. We ordered in Indian Saturday night, which definitely wasn't on my food plan, but was extremely tasty! It's inspired me to look into some authentic Indian recipes so I can have this kind of food more frequently, less expensively, and with my own twist on it. We've also signed up for a local CSA; now every other week I'll be getting nice, sometimes unusual fresh herbs, veggies, and fruits to use in whatever I'm making. 

 

Next big step: Figure out how to create enough floor space in the basement that I can practice parkour rolls. I've done them before but it's been a while and I know how important it is to become fluent with them before getting into more advanced moves, because of how it helps you spread out the impact from long drops.

…I suppose I could practice outside if it not wet, though the prospect of getting little grass bits all over isn't exactly enticing. 😓

[raptron]

1 hour ago, Riviera16 said:

All right, first day on the challenge! Well, technically second day, but who's counting?  
Actually, I started incorporating my challenge goals into my workouts with my last workout on Saturday. In addition to practicing parkour jumps and landings I got in two new exercises! 🥳 In fact, the whole workout was based on one I found researching online. That felt pretty great, getting to do something clearly new and different for a day. I think I'll keep researching different exercises/workouts since this time went so well.

Nice.

 

1 hour ago, Riviera16 said:

We've also signed up for a local CSA; now every other week I'll be getting nice, sometimes unusual fresh herbs, veggies, and fruits to use in whatever I'm making. 

Aw, lovely! I always loved when I've done CSA shares for the summer -- you definitely have to get creative. And get into pickling, haha.

 

1 hour ago, Riviera16 said:

…I suppose I could practice outside if it not wet, though the prospect of getting little grass bits all over isn't exactly enticing. 😓

EMBRACE THE GREAT OUTDOORS! Grass is no big.

[Vidd]

I think your focus is in the right place. Building a strong foundation with taking the time to master the roll is likely to save you injury later on

 

Since the theme of my battle log was all about Arrow I was considering trying the Arrow Workout Steve posted up on the site years back. It had links to a few great tutorials on rolling if you're looking for more resources on that.

 

 

 

[Riviera16]

I'm now halfway through the first week and results have been… Mixed.

Yesterday's workout was successful from a workout standpoint but I didn't practice any actual parkour techniques, which is one of my main goals. I wanted to work on rolls but it had just rained and everything was wet. It's one thing to get itchy, dry grass bits on yourself but it's another altogether to get itchy, wet grass bits and mud all over. I knew I could have worked on something else like jump/landings that I can do indoors if necessary and doesn't involve lying down, but I was frustrated enough at the weather that I basically just rage quit. 😒

 

On a brighter note, I had a lot of fun cooking yesterday. I made an old favorite of mine, oven roasted root veggies with rosemary and oregano, for dinner. But my larger success came at lunchtime with the discovery of an improvised kale salad "recipe" that I found surprisingly tasty.

 

One of the things I picked up from the CSA last weekend was a large bunch of curly-leaf kale. Now, I'm not normally a fan of dark colored greens in salads. Butter lettuce, iceberg, romaine, and coleslaw mix are my go-to options for a salad base. On the other hand I found I really like kale in other forms, notably as kale chips or as an ingredient in soups. I've been wanting to try kale as a primary salad ingredient for some time despite disliking other darker greens such as spinach or spring mix. What I did yesterday turned out much better than I'd expected and I think I'll have it again later this week.

 

Since I didn't follow a recipe I can't give exact measurements for anything, but basically what I did was start with small cut or torn up pieces of kale (washed, of course), added a little bit of coleslaw mix and some roasted bell pepper & sun-dried tomato pieces, cut up and mixed in some scallions and garlic scapes, and used balsamic vinaigrette as the dressing. Overall pretty simple, but as I said I liked it much more than I had expected I would.

 

 

After this cooking victory, I'm looking forward to what I can do next! Tonight's menu includes some sort of zucchini dish with homemade pesto. Later in the week I hope to start experimenting with those Indian dishes I've been thinking about. In the meantime, I will keep trying to figure out how to get basement cleaned so the weather can't thwart my ninja rolls. 😉

[raptron]

I highly recommend massaging your kale next time it pops up in your CSA. It sounds dumb, but makes the texture much more palatable! That sounds like a lovely salad. And homemade pestooo. Heck yes. It's the best. 

[PaulG]

4 hours ago, raptron said:

I highly recommend massaging your kale next time it pops up in your CSA.

Funnily, I was just about to suggest the same thing! Though I know the technique as oil marination, it’s the same thing, using oil and, optionally, a little manual labor to break down the leaves’ coatings and tenderize them.

 

Working rolls indoors at first sounds like a good idea. You’ll want somewhere dry, and rugs or mats are much easier to learn the technique on than concrete. If you don’t have much experience with rolling or being upside down, you may even want to start on a bed — it can be really disorienting at first.

 

Not sure if you already have a tutorial, but in case it’s helpful, my favorite one I’ve seen was made by an old friendquaintance from Apex Movement in Colorado, one of the OG parkour gyms in the US.

 

 

[Riviera16]

On 6/24/2020 at 2:27 PM, raptron said:

I highly recommend massaging your kale next time it pops up in your CSA. It sounds dumb, but makes the texture much more palatable!

Huh. I'll have to experiment with that. Yesterday's salad didn't seem tough or bitter at all, but then again I did do a fair bit of mixing after adding the dressing. I wonder if that might have done some of the same thing. 🤔

 

On 6/24/2020 at 7:13 PM, PaulG said:

Working rolls indoors at first sounds like a good idea. You’ll want somewhere dry, and rugs or mats are much easier to learn the technique on than concrete. If you don’t have much experience with rolling or being upside down, you may even want to start on a bed — it can be really disorienting at first.

I actually learned how to roll ~3 years ago when I did my first bit of parkour. Since then I've periodically reminded myself how to do it but even after those mini-sessions I'm clearly not as fluent as I was the few weeks right after I first learned when I was practicing regularly. And yeah, mats/rugs are really important, especially when you're first learning. We have mats I've used for this very purpose in the past but nowhere to put them right now... 🤷‍♀️ Luckily, soft enough grass makes a decent second best option as long as it's not soggy/muddy. 😉

 

 

So, I made my pesto for tonight's dinner... and discovered the recipe I was using may have had a typo and meant to say 4 teaspoons of lemon juice, not 4 tablespoons of lemon juice. Even after increasing all of the other ingredients it was still much more tart and lemony than I'd wanted. It still tasted good with the grilled zucchini I made, so it turned out all right, but I've learned a lesson for next time. Despite the fact it wasn't the ideal pesto for a mild vegetable like zucchini, I was planning to do a salmon-based dish tomorrow night and lemony pesto sounds great with fish, especially salmon! I'm really looking forward to getting to try that.

 

While I was working on the main part of dinner tonight I also remembered we had a bunch of old dried figs and dates that were waiting for someone to do something with them. And so, while waiting for batches of zucchini to finish grilling, I did something with them. There's a recipe for fig energy bites that I've made several times in the past and quite liked. I usually use a mix of figs and dates rather than just figs and sometimes add extra spices, but the end product is still about the same. I found the base recipe online: http://puretsimple.blogspot.com/2016/09/autoimmune-recipe-paleo-fig-energy-bites.html. It's originally from The Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook by Mickey Trescott, which has been a source for me for a number of vegetable recipes that I've made time and time again. 

 

Actually, it's this cookbook that first got me into making interesting, tasty veggie dishes. For most of my time growing up my only experiences with vegetables were what my mom made, which were pretty much plain, microwave cooked veggies with salt. I didn't dislike them, but I didn't really like them either. They were just boring. And anyone who read my previous challenge thread knows how I feel about boring. 😜 Once I started cooking for myself, however, I discovered all kinds of new herb and spice combinations and cooking techniques that took vegetables from "meh" to "wow, can I have more of that?" basically overnight. There was a time in my life I would have been fine to just ignore veggies altogether but now I can't imagine what it would be like without them. And if you told that to my younger self I would probably have rolled my eyes and said you were crazy. Somehow, I guess these things just happen. 😏

[raptron]

It’s wild what happens when you treat veggies right, huh? Glad you’ve found so much delicious joy in them!

 

Lemony pesto salmon DOESS sound good! 

 

 

[Riviera16]

Yesterday I finally got to work on parkour rolls! 😄 That was really exciting; I've been impatient to get started practicing those again. The grass was damp, but only from dew, not rain, so it wasn't muddy, and at this point I was determined enough that I decided to "roll with it" anyway. 😏 Bad puns aside, I thought I was able to get back my basic knowledge pretty quickly. Muscle memory is an amazing thing. Still, definitely get good to keep working on those in the weeks to come. I hope to start adding vaults in next week as well, though it may be a challenge as I still don't have anywhere to practice them. I'm going to have to start scouting for low walls with flat ground and decent space on both sides.

 

As of right now my challenge goals are looking pretty good for this week. I missed doing parkour practice as part of my Tuesday workout but got it in Thursday and will make sure I do at least a little on Saturday (barring unexpected injuries, alien invasion, and the like). My eccentric exercises for my wrists have been going smoothly and I've done light exercise on one off day this week already. Even if it's not a perfect score I still feel like I'm doing well.

 

Last night's baked salmon with pesto was a smashing success! I would have photographed it but everyone was hungry and it was already a little later than I'd expected so it really didn't seem fair to make people keep waiting. But myself, my mom, and my dad all thought it was excellent. Basil + olive oil + parmesan + lemon on fish is, without a doubt, an awesome combination.😋 I plan to do more pesto and seafood dishes sometime soon so I'll do my best to photograph those.

[DoubleTrouble]

Rolls are the most useful thing to learn in parkour IMO. For reasons

 

 

[Riviera16]

I noticed while practicing rolls today that I was coming out of the roll with the wrong leg forward for the whichever shoulder I was using. Got to work on that.  I also noticed that grass can leave tiny cuts on your shoulder if you're wearing a tank top while rolling... won't be making that mistake again any time soon. Still looking for places to do vaults, though no luck yet. Maybe I should try to set up something at home in case I'm ultimately unsuccessful. Also, I think I'm beginning to see progress on my precision landings. Even if I'm still not exactly great at them I'm a little better than I was at the start of this week.

 

Goals went well this week; the only thing I missed was parkour practice during one of my workouts. However, I did all my workouts, light exercise on off days (including hamstring stretching), and eccentric wrist strengthening. I had a lot of fun cooking too!

 

...And speaking of cooking, I made another pesto-seafood dish tonight! It's a sort of a cross between shrimp scampi and a shrimp stir-fry. I'd post the recipe but I didn't actually use one; I like improvising.  Basically what I did was fry up some sliced bell peppers and onions until they were mostly cooked and had browned/caramelized, added some chopped garlic scapes & scallions and let them cook a few more minutes, then added some precooked shrimp (in my case frozen-thawed) and a large scoop of pesto and let everything cook until the bell peppers were soft and the ingredients had time to absorb the pesto flavors. I found it helped to add a little water with the pesto to thin it into a more sauce-like consistency, being careful not to add so much as to dilute the taste. I had mine with cauliflower rice, though I'm sure normal rice, noodles, squash-noodles, etc. would be good too.

 

 

I've still got plenty of pesto left, even after this. I'll freeze some for future times... but not too much. Frankly I'm not tired of homemade pesto just yet and I seem to recall seeing a single remaining tilapia fillet in the freezer the other day...  The extra lemon accident may have not worked as planned for the zucchini, but with seafood it's the perfect match. Guess in the end I got lucky!

[Riviera16]

Well, I think I kind of killed my arms today…

 

Yesterday I finally got to take a shot at lowering myself from the top of a pull-up position to see how hard it was and how many I could do. Turns out, I could do four– three overhand grip and one underhand grip. My arms felt tired after that and I didn't want to push it so I decided that was enough for one day.

 

What I didn't expect was that even those four reps would make my arms noticeably sore this morning. I managed two more overhand grip reps today before my main workout, which turned out to have a lot of arm work itself. By the end of it my arms felt like overcooked zucchini noodles. I specify zucchini noodles because unlike standard noodles, which just get really limp and floppy when overcooked, overcooked zucchini noodles get limp and floppy and then fall apart into mush. That's what my arms felt like. Gonna take it easy on upper body work and focus on lower body/core next workout.  

 

Still, as tired as I am and as sore as I will be, it feels really good to know that I'm going to be building a good bit of strength with this. Step by step I'm getting closer to that goal of full bodyweight pull-ups!  

[PaulG]

 

2 hours ago, Riviera16 said:

Yesterday I finally got to take a shot at lowering myself from the top of a pull-up position to see how hard it was and how many I could do. Turns out, I could do four– three overhand grip and one underhand grip.

Nice! Welcome to the world of pullup negatives.  If you keep lowering yourself with control and work up to doing them more and more slowly, you’ll be able to progress to full pullups in pretty short order.

[WhiteGhost]

8 hours ago, Riviera16 said:

What I didn't expect was that even those four reps would make my arms noticeably sore this morning.

It isn't the number of reps but the overall exertion and also the fact that your body isn't used to this movement yet.  Going all out for four/five reps on an intense new exercises gives me major DOMS as well.