busy week so far

Sunday,
I went to the 11am session alone on Sunday. Erin stayed home with the kids as Lil Bit had been sick the night before. We were both up repeatedly through the night tending her, so I was feeling very sluggish.

for the strength session I did 3 sets of 6 push press at 155# just at 70% of 1RM. The last set was VERY heavy.

METCON
50-40-30-20-10
Power Cleans (115)
Box Jump Overs 24″
Push Jerks (115)
T2B
Teams of 2 – 25 minute cap

So here’s how this one worked. You and your partner do 50 reps total of each of the listed exercises. Split them up anyway you like but you must complete all 50 reps of one exercise before moving on to the next.

I got to the box early and watched the preceding session. Not one team finished this METCON and there were some very strong teams in that group. Three things became apparent at that moment: 1) This was not going to be a WOD that I would finish. It was simply one that I was going to endure. 2) I was going to need to scale back the weights. I took them to 95#. 3) This was gonna hurt.

My partner and I did ok. We spent the entire 25 minutes in motion working in alternating sets of 10. I had completed 2 push presses in the round of 30 when Coach Laurie called time.

I felt that workout ALL DAY long.

Tuesday
While the main group worked on cleans today, I elected to work on the rings and practice handstand holds. Just sort of felt like being upside down today, I guess.

For the ring work, I did an 8 minute EMOM – Hold 1 inversion for a slow 5 count, then 3 skin the cats. This was a lot of fun. Useful for anything other than shoulder mobility and body control? I’m not sure, but I enjoyed it and there’s value in that.

Handstand holds went really well. I’m getting kind of excited about these. This is a skill that is just recently emerging and that’s always cool. I can’t kick into a freestanding handstand yet. However, I can kick up to the wall, nudge myself off and hold an unsupported handstand for 3-5 seconds. That’s progress!

I joined the group for the prescribed METCON

21-15-9-15-21
Power cleans 135
Push Ups
Do 40 double unders after each round
15 minute time cap

I scaled the weights to 115#. For the rounds of 21 and 15, I broke the exercises into 3 descending sets. So 8 reps, 7 reps, 6 reps for the round of 21 and 6,5,4 for the round of 15.

Double unders were sloppy. That was annoying because I ran off a really crisp set of 10 just before we got under way. I was feeling very encouraged about them. Then they evaporated. They were by far the most time consuming element of this METCON.

When Coach Lindsay called time after the assigned 15 minutes elapsed, I had gotten through the round of 9 and completed two additional power cleans.

Looking forward to a rest day tomorrow.

 

thursday cost me friday

Chasing an Rx yesterday and the cummulative effects of this week’s workouts left me MUCH more wore out than I anticipated today. It showed in the WOD.

WOD for Friday 020113 –
Ring Inversions, Skin the Cats
20-40 Strict Progressions from one movement to the other

I didn’t really have aspirations of getting 40 strict progressions, but I didn’t expect to have quite the chalenge that I did just getting 20! My body was TIRED!

I found the biggest challenge of this portion of the WOD was getting inverted. Once I was upside down moving through the progression from inverted to skin the cat was ok and I could do a few reps. But getting upside down smoothly and with minimal swing was very difficult. I often found myself swinging in the rings like a pendulum.

I did progressions in sets ranging from 2-5 reps over the course of the morning. I attempted a lever once. That ended very quickly. I got approximately 5 degrees past beyond vertical and gravity took over taking my feet straight to the floor. Even though I was tired, the ring work was still fun. Ring work always feels like recess and play time to me. I enjoy it tremendously.

METCON
3 Rounds For Time:
10 Clean & Jerks (135/95)
Run 400m

When I saw this posted Thursday night I was figuring on a 12-13 minute Rx workout. I figured, “I’ve done Grace before Rx. It took just under 5 minutes. Run the 400’s at 2 minutes each, plus transition time. 13 would be aggressive. 12 would be personally amazing. But what the hell?” Then I tried this morning and no. So, very no.

I did a few warm up cleans with a bare bar and then added 35# plates to go to 115#. I figured a few more warm up reps would be wise. After 2 reps I thought, “Oh. 115# might be enough for today.” Everything just felt sluggish.

Still I thought, “well set it up by adding 10s to the 35s, so you can bail if you need to”. So I added 10# plates and tried one rep at 135#. That’s when it hit me what a tough week it’s been and just how hard we’ve worked this week. “115# it is.” I adjusted the bar accordingly.

I’ll spare everyone the gory details of round by round. In the end, I barely finished under 16 minutes, 15:57 to be precise. It was an ugly performance.

It did provide a valuable lesson in scheduling though. When the Open starts, I expect I’m going to forgo Friday workouts to allow myself a day of recovery before Saturday workouts. I’ll also have to be cautious about how I approach Thursday sessions to ensure I don’t smoke myself. To quote the comedian Ron White, “That’s useful information to have, right there.”

 

scaled up AND down

The METCON got a bit goofy this morning, but overall it was a very fun day at the gym. Lesson of the day? You got to keep an eye on these Crossfit types. They can be a tricky bunch! If you don’t watch ’em, they’ll talk you into all kinds of things.

WOD for Tuesday 071012
Rings
Practice ball ups, inversions, skin the cats, and levers

I’m a big fan of the rings. It’s unlike any other fitness work I’ve tried. So anytime we get to play with them, I get excited. The win of the day here I was able to do Skin The Cats! It’s such a great feeling when you discover a skill that you can do now that you couldn’t do before.

For the unfamiliar, Skin the Cat is when you go inverted in the rings. Lower your feet to the floor behind you without releasing the rings, then raise them back up so that you return to the inverted position. I did a half dozen sets of 2 or 3 reps at a time and it was great fun. My neighbors on the rings, Einar and Meghan probably got nervous about my giggling but I was having a blast.

I made a dozen or so attempts at levers too. I confuse levers the same way I confuse Russian (eye-level) and American (overhead) kettle bell swings. Is it a Front Lever when you’re facedown with your chest towards the floor? Or is that a “back” lever? We talked about this in the box and I stil don’t remember. Either way, all my attempts were face down, chest towards the floor. I tried them strict, balled, balled with one or the other other leg extended. I’ve got MILES to go before I’ll be able to do these.  But that’s cool. Everyone, and there were about 10 of us, seemed very strong with inversions and skin the cats. Very cool to see.

METCON
15-12-9-6-3 Reps For Time:
DB Thrusters (40/25)
Explosive Pushups

So for the thrusters I did some warm ups at 40# and figured out very quickly that yesterday’s WOD took it’s toll. Rx was out of the question. I pulled 35# dumb bells off the rack and took them to my area.

Before we got going, Jack demonstrated explosive push ups with plates. I couldn’t resist. I’ve never tried these before and I’m still a kid at heart when new stuff comes up. I had to get a turn and experiment with a few. Going into the WOD I had no desire or intention of scaling these up. Any way, I came forward and did a couple of reps and was surprised to find they felt really good.

Jack congratulated me and stacked another 45# plate on top of the original two, so that there was a stack of two plates to either side. So I did a couple reps of those. He said, “Great. You’ve got these.” I responded quickly with, “Yeah, I’ve got two of these! Not 45! Single plates will be just fine, thanks.” So I rolled those over to my workstation.

So DB Thrusters scaled down, Pushups scaled up. Let’s go to work. The clock started and the thrusters for the round of 15 were much tougher than I anticpated.

I also got confused during the round of 15 push ups. I realized I hadn’t asked what’s a complete rep? If you start with hands on the floor, flex your arms to drop your chest to the floor, then extend the arm and explode up onto the plate is that one rep? Or is a single rep not complete until you then flex your arms descending between the plates, extend back up and hop down off the plates returning your hands to the floor?

Suddenly I was concerned that I’d not only scaled up the explosion itself but also just doubled my reps. I called out “wait, I’m confused! I don’t know how to count these?” Jack answered back, “don’t double them up.” So I interpreted that to mean a descent with a hop up onto the plate was a single rep, and a descent then extension and hop off the plate was a second rep. That’s how I counted them from there on out.

After doing the pushups, I got 4 reps into the round of 12 and realized my form for thrusters had gone totally to hell and I was in real trouble. I dropped the 35’s and hustled to the rack for a replacement pair. I couldn’t find a pair of 25’s so just to get back to work, I grabbed a 25# and 22.5#. I finished that set and asked Jack to find me a matching set of 25’s. He was gracious enough to track a pair down for me and deliver them.

The rounds of 9, 6 and 3 were all pretty uneventful after that. I broke both the thrusters and push ups into subsets of 3 for the duration of the METCON. Well technically, the pushups for the last round went 2 and 1. I tried to do them unbroken, but missed the last rep. I couldn’t explode onto the top of the plates that one last time. I had to reset, breathe a bit, then fire. Time to finish was 8:05. I’m very satisfied with that time. This was a very tough and entertaining WOD.

The METCON was over pretty early and as Jack and I put away my plates and the assortment of collected dumb bells (thanks for the help there too, Coach) I noticed Renee working on double unders.  She caught my attention and told me, “C’mon. There’s a 100 double under cashout before you can quit.” I knew there wasn’t, but my double unders certainly could use the extra practice and it’s always more fun to take on extra work with others so I said, “All right. Let me get a rope.” I don’t know if Renee used the same line on the others but by the time I’d found a rope I liked and was ready to begin there were at least 4 of us prepared to go after it.

My double unders were not smooth today. 100 double unders takes a long time too when you’re only getting sets of 2, 3 and ocassionally 4 reps at a time. Renee pointed out that I should try to stay on the balls of my feet more. I was donkey kicking on my jumps and wasting a lot of energy. Renee’s a good friend and I consider her if not an unofficial coach, then certainly a crossfit mentor. If she suggests something, I take it to heart and try to apply it. Staying on the balls of my feet is a weakness that I’m aware of and while it didn’t improve my reps immediately, it was definitely smoother. It’ll come in time…with more practice 😉

So let’s review…the coach cajoled me into scaling up part of the WOD and a friend coerced me into extra exercise and practice. I’m not certain if that makes me adventurous and open to new challenges….or gullable and easily manipulated. 😉 Either way, it felt pretty good, so I’ll just roll with it.

 

inversions and Annie plus push ups

Holy smokes! The kids and Erin aren’t the only ones who can go inverted on the rings anymore. It’s borderline embarrassing how tickled I am by this accomplishment.

Quick notes on today’s WOD.

WOD for Thursday 022312
Rings
Practice ball ups, inversions, skin the cats, and levers

I got my first unassisted inversions today! Holy crap! That felt so cool! Last time we did these I was sitting on a band like a swing between the rings and then inverting from that seated position. Today I was able to grab the rings, kick my feet up and whoop, up into an inversion. No big effort.

It was kind of funny too, because before we got started I asked Jack about ball ups. His answer was “you guys are past those. You were all doing inversions last time around.” But I reminded him how I got into those inversions in January, so maybe I would need to work on ball ups. But nope! That made the morning a lot of fun. I even told Jack and the folks around me, “that’s it. No matter what else happens, today is officially a good day.” I probably did a 8-10 inversions, over the course of the morning and attempted levers with varying degrees of success. Any day you go to the gym and discover a new exercise you can do, it’s a good day.

I experimented a bit with Iron Crosses, slipping my arms through the ring straps for support. These were extremely difficult and I was concerned about my wrist, so I didn’t spend much time with them. I also attempted a few back and front levers. I can do a very modest back lever and return to vertical. Next time we do them I may ask the coach to take picks of a couple. I’d like to be able to see with my own eyes how far beyond vertical I’m getting. I can’t do a front lever yet. As Jack described it, it’s really just an exercise in controlled descent right now. I lower my legs down a few degrees and then all the sudden they’re falling to the floor. Ah well.

I think the inversions are so entertaining and I’m so glad I can do them because they’re a “recess move”. It’s another one of those gymnastic activities that we did on the playground as kids. It’s another example of one of the exercises that enhances the sense of fun for me in crossfit.

METCON
50-40-30-20-10 Reps For Time:
Double Unders
Sit Ups
Push Ups

Whoa! This was a grueling WOD. With the addition of the push ups,it’s a modification of one of the girls, “Annie.” I doubled the reps required for the Double Unders since I was doing mostly singles. I was able to apply my 2 single reps, 1 double under strategy reasonably well for most rounds, but no rounds except the last one went unbroken. Sit Ups were solid. Sets of 50,40 and 10 situps went unbroken. Can’t say that for 30 and 20.

Somehow that middle set of 30 was just nasty. In my head, I expected the round of 30 to go very quickly compared to the first two. But that wasn’t the case for me. Even though I was more than halfway through at that stage, that round of 30 from start to finish was just a grind.

Push ups sucked every round! Jack suggested I do dumb bell push ups so that I could maintain a neutral grip and alleviate pressure on my wrist. That was a great call. I was dreading the idea of 150 ring push ups, going into the box today. So when he suggested the dumb bells, I jumped at it. Of the 150 push ups required, I got 65 strict reps, then had to go to my knees. No set went unbroken. In total it took 20:10 to get through this WOD. Technically, I don’t think this one counts as an endurance WOD, but it qualifies in my book. 😉

 

the importance of compression shorts

It was just plain fun today. Working on the rings is always cool, but today was a bit of a break through day. Mostly it was like play and I just love that.

WOD for Tuesday 011712
Rings
Take 30 minutes to work on inversions and skin the cats
–Rest–
10 Rounds For Time:
10 Deadlifts (135/95)
10 Pushups

Jack lead the warm ups and after working Sunday and Monday, my body was aching. My legs felt so tight today. I was cringing through most of the stretches and exercises. I might have whimpered once or twice. I’m not sure.

We moved over to the rings to start that work. One of the rings skills that eludes me are inversions. I’ve tried a couple of times and just haven’t been able to put the motions together. Well, today, Jack showed us a way to scale the inversion, by starting out in a band. Wrap a band between the rings and position it on your back. Hop up between the rings and seat yourself in the band like an elastic swing. Then ease yourself backwards until inverted. This was EXACTLY what I needed.

Once I’m upside down, my form is ok. I have a good vertical line that I can hold. Jack mentioned that I have a good hollow body. I can hang there for an extended period of time. But getting my feet from the floor over my head has been impossible until today. Without the band it still is.

Couple of reminders not to take any of this too seriously. First, I discovered that if I inverted too fast before I had my body rigid, the band slides up my legs behind my knees and my butt would drop too fast. The result I couldn’t get the correct straight line inverted position. More than once I ended up hanging/swinging head up with my hands holding the rings, my butt to the floor with my legs bent and the band behind my knees. We dubbed this the “Ukrainian Porch Swing.” It’s a little known gymnastics move that we’re confident will be showcased at the London games this Summer.

Another lesson learned…ALWAYS wear compression shorts. I’m sure everyone at the 6:15 session (Meghan in particular) was thankful that I did because I pantsed myself on more than one inversion. It can’t be helped! The band starts out taut against the seat of your gym shorts. As you invert the band still with a lot of tension in it slides/rolls the length of your legs and on more than one occasion it took my gym shorts with it. Mind you I’m inverted at this point, so my shirt is now hanging loose down over my head, so if it weren’t for compression shorts, poor Meghan working on the rings directly across from me would have been staring into the glare of a full moon right there in the gym…awkward. So after 20 min or so of monkeying around on the rings it was time for the METCON.

That METCON got in my head as soon as I saw it last night. 100 deadlifts is a lot of deadlifts. 100 deadlifts at 135 pounds, is 6.75 Tons! My legs were very sore from two days of squatting. I wasn’t sure what I would be able to do today.

In the end I decided to scale it back. I went with 115 pounds (5.75 Tons is a solid work out) and stole an insurance policy from Drew. He did the WOD Rx, but rather than use 45# plates, he used 35’s and 10’s. The logic being if the 135 was just too much he could strip 20 pounds off quickly and continue on. Drew is smart! And strong! Like I said, he did this RX and finished in a ridiculously fast time. I’m jealous. I also know a good idea when I see it. I set up at 115 with a combination of 25’s and 10’s, just in case. To my surprise, I did all 10 sets of deadlifts unbroken. Push ups were another story.

I got through the first 5 sets unbroken. After that things degraded quickly. After the 7th set all push ups were done from the knees and no set after 5 was unbroken. Somewhere in the 8th set, Jack called out the time and I realized that I was mostly keeping a one round per minute pace. My spontaneous goal at that point became finish under 10 min. I missed it…stupid push ups. Final time of 10:12.

Today really just was one of those days where I was reminded how much pure play there is in crossfit. At least for me there is. I had a blast. That being said, after 3 straight days of workouts, I’m really looking forward to a rest day tomorrow.