DT

Have been wanting to do this one again (first time) for a while, I was bummed that it came up on a day where I had to play it safe and not get too sore. But I mentioned to another girl after class that we should get together and grind it out at Rx weight (115) so it may still be in my future. :)

"DT"
5 rounds
12 deadlift (155/115)
9 hang power clean (155/115)
6 jerk (155/115)

Results: 8:22, 65#

I put 75# on my bar, then changed my mind and took off 5's and added 10's to go to 85. Which I tried, and realized would mess me up. At which point I was pretty much out of time for messing with my weight, so I pulled off the 10's and went. Definitely too light, but it was still a good workout -- more like a barbell complex.

Jerks were messy. I power jerked (push jerk for you CrossFitters) and was pressing out on a bunch of them. I just get wonky when I don't split jerk. But that takes too long during a CF wod.

Fresh start

Today was my first day at the CrossFit gym in my new city -- see linky love in the sidebar.

I scaled the WOD and I am totally OK with that.

I'm sure it's been apparent due to my lack of posting that my CrossFit workouts have been minimal to nonexistent the last few months. I really lost my fire and my purpose for doing CrossFit -- I didn't really know why I did it anymore. After I reached the point where I was Rx-ing 90% of movements in WODs, I didn't really progress much farther, and I also lost that excitement of doing new things that I didn't think I could do.

I recaptured that feeling with my marathon training, and with a totally new activity I had never done before -- yoga.

Today I decided that the next 3 months I'm living here, I'm just doing CrossFit because it's fun and I like it. I'm rebooting, restarting, resetting myself. There are a lot of stories that I have in my head about myself as a CrossFitter. I'm throwing those away. I will be whatever I want to be, and achieve whatever I want to. And if I don't *want* to do something, I don't have to beat myself up over not trying.

These next 3 months are my time to start fresh, and rebuild from the ground up. Time to get this foundation solid.

--
"Bradley"

10 rounds for time of:
Sprint 100 meters
10 Pull-ups
Sprint 100 meters
10 Burpees
Rest 30 seconds

Results: Scaled to 5 rounds, 20:40-ish (bad memory)

My blood blister / giant callous from Nicole on Monday ripped open in round 2, so the right grip went on. The left hand ripped open in round 5. I think this was caused by a combination of two things: I haven't shaved down my callouses in a week or so, and I should have after pullups on Monday.  And the pullups bars are pretty rough -- good for hanging onto, bad for poor hand care.

Wilmot

Did this one in my garage on Saturday at 5pm, and it felt like it was 200 degrees in there! After round 3, I went inside and shut the door to do my squats so I could breathe.

My ring dips are back to being a bit crappy. Shouldn't have stopped practicing them!

"Wilmot"
6 rounds:
50 air squats
25 ring dips

Results: 33:33, two skinny bands to scale ring dips

Murph

Husband and I joined a few of my CrossFit athletes to do Murph on Saturday morning. It was quite the hellacious experience, just like last year.

"Murph" aka "Body Armor"
For time:
1 mile run
100 pullups
200 pushups
300 air squats
1 mile run

Partition the pullup, pushups and squats as needed. Start and finish with a mile run. If you've got a twenty pound vest or body armor, wear it.

 Results: ~80 minutes -- I was laying on the ground and didn't personally look at the stopwatch, and the only time I heard said out loud was "an hour and 20 minutes". I guess that's as exact as it needs to be in that time domain. :)

This was a 10 minute PR for me. Definitely came from improvement on pullups.

Like the last time I did this, I ran a separate stop watch which I started after returning from the first mile run. I partitioned the work into 20 rounds of 5 pullups, 10 pushups and 15 squats. Having that second watch helps me gauge how well I'm doing with moving through my sets without taking too much rest.

5 rounds competed -- 9:25
10 rounds completed -- 22:59 (9 rounds completed at 20 mins)
16 rounds completed -- 42:20
20 rounds completed -- 55:38
Avg/round: ~2:45

Pullups were absolutely spot-on -- all 20 sets I did 5 reps. And they were all GOOD, chin way over. Didn't use grips or any tape, except in the last 2 sets I wore my left hand grip because my left hand ring finger callous ripped a bit. This is a huge departure from last time, when I had tape grips on both hands, and ended up ripping open a bunch of spots on my hands and fingers.

Pushups were... UGH. Every time I came to these, it was a mental battle to get them done. I think that pushups defeat me mentally more than physically. With pullups in hand these need to become a main focus. It's not as "sexy and cool" to do tons of good pushups, but so necessary...

Squats were consistent, but not fast. I only broke 1 or 2 sets for rest, and that was in the last 5 rounds.

--
I guess LT. Michael Murphy should have been my mental inspiration, but what mentally drove me to persevere and complete this workout was thinking about the American Widow Project. I had seen a post on their Facebook page in the morning before we went to meet the group to do the WOD. And I made it my goal that when I felt horrible, I would think about how lucky I am to be doing this workout side-by-side with my husband, who has come back from war safely 3 times now. I'm sure those widows would go through any amount of painful experiences to be able to spend time with their husbands again. So I dedicated my workout to them. They are the unspoken heroes that I will remember this Memorial Day.

Wittman

"Wittman"
7 rounds:
15 kb swings (24kg/16kg)
15 power cleans (95/65)
15 box jumps (24''/20'')

Results: 26:26, 55#

The 55# thing? A result of my morning brain. I thought to myself that if I loaded the bar with 25kg it would be 63.5#. Well, 25kg is actually 55#. Whoops.

Rankel

Hit this one on my own after coaching this morning.

"Rankel"
AMRAP in 20 minutes:
6 deadlifts (225#/155#)
7 burpee pullups
10 kb swings (2 pood / 1.5 pood)

Results: 4 rounds + 3 pullups

Scaled deadlifts down to 125. Originally planned on 135, but it just felt off during the warm-up. 125 started feeling too light by round 4 -- I think I may just have needed more warm-up, or I just haven't deadlifted in so long my form was rusty. I have been avoiding them pretty much altogether since October-ish, so that makes sense.

This was my first attempt at burpee pullups -- as suggested, I jumped up to a bar ~6 inches above my head. I didn't have any failed reps, and I felt really strong on pullups today -- I think it's the work I've been doing on strict pullups. It's nice to see it pay off, because it is really annoying to complete those extra sessions.

Loved swinging the 24kg kettlebell -- need to do that more often. All sets were unbroken, except round 3 -- lost control of the kb on rep 8.

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. :)

RJ

I had been seeing that several affiliate blogs were no longer posting their WODs (in particular CrossFit Unlimited), so on this particular day I decided to show up without looking at the blog.

Aaaaand, of course on this day we were climbing the rope and I had totally inappropriate clothing and shoes on. And I had to work that night, so no do-over. Grrrrr.

So I ended up doing this WOD with substitutions for the rope climbs. And honestly, it would've been *a lot* easier to just climb the rope 5 times instead of doing 15 pullups and 10 rope planks.

I think read a blog once about making the substitution so much worse than the actual movement that it motivates your athletes to learn to do the movement. At the time, I kind of raised my eyebrows and wondered if that was a good idea. After doing this WOD, I'm thinking it's a brilliant concept, but only if the person is strong enough to do the movement. If they're just afraid to try, or frustrated, the penalty of great pain could be a very useful (and sneaky) motivator. :-D

"RJ"
5 rounds for time:
800m run
5 rope climbs
50 push ups

Results: 48:04 -- 3 rounds, subbed 15 pullups & 10 rope planks for rope climbs

There was a 45 minute cutoff for this WOD, hence the 3 rounds.

All pushups were fully Rx, which I am very proud of. I have come really far on my pushups.

15 pullups and 10 rope planks were just brutalizing. Time to add a pair of long socks to my workout bag for those occasions where I want to climb the rope. And honestly they come in handy for on-the-fly deadlift work as well.

I need a follow up with this hero WOD, for sure.