CrossFit Games Open Sectionals 11.3

5 min AMRAP of:
Squat clean (50kg)
Jerk

Results: 10 rounds + 1 squat clean

The week 3 WOD was the first one where the CrossFit "powers that be" really started excluding athletes. Which made me sad. It was absolutely joyous when one of my newer athletes deadlift 100 once for a new PR, and a score of 1 rep on the week 2 workout. Alas, a clean of 110 is definitely something that requires a decent amount of strength and skill to attempt, not for the average newbie...

What was funny to me was that I had the best score of all the females at our gym. And what I got wasn't even half of what the best ladies out there put up on the board! I got to witness some truly amazing performances at my CrossFit Kids Cert this weekend -- I'm talking 25 to 30+ rounds. I love being around STRONG women! So inspiring. :)

Not to mention my girl Steph got 24 rounds + 1 squat clean. How amazingly awesome is that! I am in awe. :)

CrossFit Games Open Sectionals 11.2

Ooops, never posted about this WOD. Consider this to be me "catching" up. I haven't really done much outside of the Games WODs in the past 2 weeks.

AMRAP in 15 minutes:
9 deadlifts
12 pushups
15 box jumps

7 rounds + 6 deads

The deads were a lot easier than I thought -- but then again, I have an unnatural fear of them after doing high reps at too high of a weight. This weight was easy, once you got past the first one starting off the next round. All unbroken.

Pushups sucked sucked sucked, as expected. Was down to 1, 2 and 3 at a time by round 3. This was where I took my "rest".

Box jumps -- tried not to pause at all. On the 7th round, my right shoe came untied, so I kicked it off, did 1 or 2 jumps with 1 shoe, then kicked the other one off too. My judge was like "WTF!?" hehehe I'm thinking I could've done all 9 deads without the shoe issue. On a redo I might've been up for 8 rounds. I wasn't willing to try. :-)

WIdow Maker

Pulled this WOD from CrossFit King of Prussia.

"Widow Maker"
AMRAP in 15 minutes
5 burpees
10 box jumps (20'')
15 double unders

Results: 8 rounds

Was very happy with my result. I was absolutely miserable pretty much the entire time, and had the lung burn too. Hopefully this is helping get my cardio conditioning back where it needs to be!

And this was another day where I was very happy I spent the time learning double unders, so I'd have them when I needed them. I think I only got 2 or maybe 3 rounds with unbroken DUs, though -- I was just so damn winded and my legs were tired!

Friday Hero - Jack

“Jack”

Complete as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:
115 pound/ 75 Push press, 10 reps (from the ground)
10 KB Swings, 24k/16
10 Box jumps, 24 inch box

Results: 6 rounds + 7 box jumps, Rx*

What I loved about this hero WOD was how it could be performed by a wide variety of athletes without much scaling. That's the beauty of an AMRAP, IMHO.

That said, yes I went a bit slow -- got beat by the other chicks in my group by 2ish rounds. But I had a bit of a concentration problem with the coach trying to interfere with my push press technique.

Note: Please do not try to "school" me in the middle of an AMRAP. It makes me want to toss my loaded barball at you.

That said, I also wished I had worn my Oly shoes. I didn't because they're heavier and I thought they would slow me down on the box jumps. But it was the push press where I was having the most trouble, and they definitely would've helped stabilize my dip there, as well as in cleaning the barball from the ground.

*One other item of interest -- I used the 45# kettlebell on my even rounds, since we had 5 chicks and only 3 16kg kettlebells. Allie went badass with me and used it on opposite rounds. :)

She's got legs, and she knows how to use them

I predict this will be the week of sore legs. Which is a good thing! That's where I need the most work right now. I've got a pretty nice burn going from my run last night and then back squats this morning. Hopefully the workouts on Tuesday and Wednesday keep the momentum going.

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WOD:

AMRAP* in 20 minutes:

• 25 burpees
• 15 backsquats (bodyweight)

Results: 4 rounds + 3 burpees (75lb backsquats)

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I did this workout in my socks.

This is my 3rd time doing back squats in a workout -- I enjoy them more each time I try them. I'm getting much more stable and comfortable in holding the bar in that position. And today I dumped weight for the first time while doing one -- I just let it roll down my back at the bottom of the squat. Wasn't that bad. I'm going to go for it next we go for a 1RM on this one.

Interesting observation -- it was my arm strength that seemed to be the point of failure, especially since the burpees were killing my arms.

After we finished the WOD, I did sets of 3 reps at 85-90-95-100. Wow, 100 felt so damn HEAVY! Hopefully I can keep losing some weight so that it will be easier for me to achieve a bodyweight back squat. :)

Thoughts on burpees -- I have a new approach for these. One, keep the head up and looking forward. This seems to help me stay tense and focused. Two, when bringing the feet back in, get the back straight, and then jump up. I noticed that I was bringing my feet in far enough to be on all fours, but with my back kind of parallel to the ground. This made it harder to jump up. I think now my back and legs are strong enough to get back into a "tuck" position after the pushup. Getting back into "tuck" position really helped me do the burpees faster and more efficiently. Third, stay focused during the jump. I tend to just flail into the jump and clap. I think I lose a lot of energy and focus when I do that. (burpee video if you have no idea what i'm talking about)

I'm happy with 4 rounds -- my goal was at least 3 complete rounds. I'd like to repeat this one in the future and see how I do with heavier back squats. I'd love to stay at 4 rounds but squat something massive, like over 100. That would rock.

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*AMRAP = as many rounds as possible

Some oly lifts, yay!

"Oly" is slang for "Olympic" -- I picked that up somewhere in my perusal of Crossfit blogs the past week. I like. :)

WOD:

AMRAP 8min of:

• 5 Clean and Jerk (135 lbs/95)
• 7 ring dips

3 min rest

AMRAP 4min of:

• 5 hang power cleans (135lbs/95)
• 7 handstand push ups

Results: 3 rounds (85lbs; bench and box for dips) and 1 3/4 (85lbs, ankles over bar for HSPU)

**AMRAP stands for "as many rounds as possible".

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Wow, this workout was deceptive... I thought I would be throwing the bar up a lot faster than I did, after my first 5 C&Js I was sooooo out of breath, damn! And I was just barely able to get up the HPCs, after the jump my feet were sooo wide. It almost would've been easier to catch in a squat.

But it felt good, I'd like to do this one again sometime. And I'm happy that I learned another way to modify HSPUs. Put a bar on a squat rack, hook your feet over and hang upside down, and try to get as vertical as you can. I was really just bending my elbows a bit and then locking back out, but it's a start. I think at this point I'm going to be as excited about getting a true HSPU as I am about getting a true dead hang pullup.

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This is my last workout in the gym for a while, I'm leaving today on my trip up north. I'm going to do my best to keep working out while I'm on the road, but I do find it challenging to "program" for myself. I think if I was ever a coach or affiliate owner, I would offer "vacation programming" packages to my clients as part of their regular monthly fee. This month I paid for the whole thing, not knowing how long I'd be gone. It would just be nice to still feel like I was getting my $$$$'s worth. And given a set of equipment available, it seems to me they could come up with 5-7 workouts for me to do easily. They are the experts!

I'm taking along my 12lb dumbbells for DB hang squat cleans, thrusters, push presses, front squats, DB swings. I can borrow a broom here or there to keep working on my form for OHS and snatch. And then I've got my in-the-doorway pullup bar that I can use for jumping pullups and maybe some work on negatives. My big focus will be pushups, I'm so damn weak on those. I had worked on them a while back, and got better, but now I'm sucking again. Gotta put some time and effort into that, 2 weeks is enough time to make some decent improvements.