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.

Nicole

Early Monday morning I made my second attempt at this benchmark. First attempt was a little over a year ago.

"Nicole"

AMRAP in 20 minutes:
Run 400m
Max pullups

Score is total number of pullups.

Results: 40 pullups (6 runs, 10-7-5-7-5-6)

I was pretty focused on making my runs fast and efficient, but I think with the pullups I wasn't exactly exerting my most "max" effort. Husband and I got up early to fit a workout in, and had a full day afterwards -- finishing cleaning our apartment, move out inspection, pick up car trailer, drive to our new place about 6 hours away, and start unpacking. That made it kinda hard to pour all my energy into my workout, because I knew I would need lots of energy all day.

I am sad to say that today I feel like I got hit by a truck from the waist up. OMG. My abs are sore, my elbows have a bit of tendonitis going on and let's not even talk about my shoulders. It's so funny that no matter what else you do in your time off, when you stop doing CrossFit you get soooo sore from the most benign workouts!

Husband got 87 (7 runs), and his pullups were strict, no kipping. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. He is a freakin beast. Makes me so proud to be his wife. :)

Catch-up

Today
Short beach loop
Distance: 4.61 miles
Time: 53:17
Pace: 11:33/mile

I took 3 fairly long walk breaks. The sun was too hot -- I should've done this run about an hour earlier. Also, this was my first long-ish run in quite a while. Due to wildfires conditions have been really smokey here off and on for the last month. I've really lost a lot of what I built up, but hopefully I can get it back quickly with runs a few times a week.

Wednesday 7/6
Did a WOD I got from Angie.

50-40-30-20-10
kb swings (16kg)
AbMat situps (butterfly)

Results: 13:10

Would like to try this one with Russian swings and the 24kg kettlebell sometime.

Tuesday 7/5
"Fran"
21-15-9
thrusters (65#)
pullups

Results: 10:28

Not my fastest (9:10 @ Level I Cert), and not my slowest either, but only barely. The issue this time was just conditioning. My heartrate was off the charts, and that's what slowed me down the most -- catching my breath. I probably could've benefitted from someone getting in my face too. :)

Sunday 7/3
I ran for ~37 minutes and I don't the distance of my route. It felt good to be up early and outside.

Friday 7/1
Yoga, good times as always. I realized that doing the 11am class really makes a difference in how hot it feels in the room. I think it must be the sun coming in or hitting the building. I never start to feel like it's too hot to breathe in the 5pm or 6pm classes that I've taken.


Thursday 6/30
~30 minute run in the morning.

WOD @ 5:30 (only had 1 student in class, so we did the WOD together :))
4 rounds
800m run
50 air squats
then
50 hands-off pushups

Results: 30:09

Monday 6/27
Squat 12-12-12-12 @ 105

That really hurt.

Metcon:
10-1
Pullups
AbMat situps

14:56

Went mental on the pullups, eeek.

Hit yoga that night as well.

Bodyweight WOD

I thought the WOD today would be something I could quickly fit in between coaching and my chiropractor appointment. I took me nearly 5 minutes more than I would've liked. Too slow on pullups, and I just basically suck at pushups. Alot. This does not bode well for doing Murph in two weeks...

WOD:
1000m row
air squat x 80
sit up x 60
push up x 40
pull up x 20

Results: ~17:00

Wednesday is endurance day

That's the new trend in our programming -- Wednesday's WOD is always a long endurance WOD.

Did this one solo after coaching the 9am class.

WOD:

3 rounds:
800m run
200m backwards run
30 1-arm kettlebell swings
10 chest to bar pullups

Results: 31:32, 16kg kb, "regular" pullups

I just didn't have C2B's in me today. In fact, my kipping skills were pretty much zero on the first round. Thankfully my brain kicked back in during round 2 and those 10 went a lot faster. Longest set was only 3 in a row, so not my best pullup day. Thank god there were only 30 total...

I like 1-arm swings -- I wouldn't mind if we did them more.

My hamstrings were singing on the run, from the squat workout yesterday. I'm glad this week's squat workout didn't cripple me like last week's. That sucked.

Lynne

Never did this benchmark before, so it's good I got a baseline on it.

"Lynne"
5 Rounds for max reps of:
Bodyweight bench press
Pull ups

Score is total reps.

Results: 61 reps, 95# and kipping pullups

As you can see, my husband is a freaking beast. Craziness! And those are all deadhang pullups to boot.

Husband wanted me to do 105#, but when I tried it, I crapped out on rep 2. So I counted that attempt as a warm-up, and dropped down to 95#. Not quite ready to go heavy on bench press until I practice it a bit more...

I can't find it recorded anywhere in the blog, but I think I tested my bench press 1RM over the summer, and it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 120-130#. Just for future reference...

Murph-esque

I didn't think I would workout today, but with only 2 athletes in the 530 class, I decided to do the WOD with them.

It was basically Murph, or at least the middle section of Murph.

WOD:
Run 800m
21 OHS (135#/95#)
2 rds "Cindy"
15 OHS
4 rds "Cindy"
9 OHS
6 rds "Cindy"
3 OHS
8 rds "Cindy"
Run 800m

Results: 66 minutes; 65# OHS; 1/2 knee pushups

While I didn't have it in me to do 200 Rx pushups tonight, I'm pretty happy with doing 100 unassisted pullups. No rips in my hands, either. Good stuff.

My back felt a little sore as I started, which freaked me out on the two long sets of OHS, but then the pain completely went away.

Allie

Pulled this WOD from CrossFit Camden. It's a great test of stamina and endurance.

"Allie"
400m run
20 pullups
400m run
15 wall ball shots (14#)
400m run
10 burpees
400m run
5 tire flips

Results: 11:50-ish

Felt the lung burn, so I know I pushed myself -- that was my main goal.

My previous time for this was around 14 minutes, but I think the 400m run at C2 is a bit short.

Front squats, pushups, swings and situps

Got together with my girls at the base gym this morning, and we all just wanted something simple. R had this one in her notebook from CrossFit Saratoga.

3 rounds:
15 front squats
25 pushups
35 kettlebell swings
45 situps

Results: untimed; did f.s. at 45, 65, 65 and 35# kb for all swings

I was super-slow on my pushups again today. They were all good form, but just 1s and 2s and 3s which took forever.

Note on my gymnastics skills... there seems to be quite a bit of practice required between just being able to do a skill correctly, and being able to do it correctly for many reps in a row. The same things has been the case with pullups in the past. Maybe it's a matter of developing a rhythm or technique for stringing them together? Who knows...

--
Speaking of pullups, I hit a new PR in those yesterday as well. Prior to coaching at 6pm, I did 10 kipping pullups in a row. Woot! The first 4 were chest-to-bar to boot. I'm back to doing those daily, even if it's just a few, and it's really paying off.

Cindy

Had a rematch with Cindy this morning.She and I have a history.

May 2010 - A pitiful 7 rounds + 5 pullups
June 2010 - During first 20 minutes of a Murph attempt (after completing the starting mile), I did ~12 rounds
February 10, 2010 - 9 rounds + 3 pushups

Here's the secret to a good Cindy, at least for me -- spend time practicing both pushups and pullups prior to attempting. I have focused a lot on pullups lately, but haven't done many pushups in the last few months. Need to work those back into warmups as much as possible.

Move, weightlifting practice and CrossFit barbell triplet

While it wasn't exactly a WOD, we moved over this past weekend, and it wore my ass out! Seriously, by the end of the day on Saturday, I was barely dragging myself along. Other than a short lunch break and afternoon nap, we were constantly on the move from 10am until 10pm.


Monday was my first weekday weightlifting practice in I don't know how long... It was good stuff.

Deadlift: 10-8-6-5-5-5-3-3
55-85-85-85-95-95-105-125

Loads were light, worked a lot on form. My low back issues are kinda complicated to describe -- but it's nice to finally know why I've always sucked at deadlifts, why my squat was broken for so long and why my clean loads plateaued for so long.

Press :5-5-5-3 (power clean bar from ground)
75-75-80-85(2)

Barely got my last two reps up for my set of 5 at 80. Rep 3 of my last set at 85 got stuck in front of my forehead for a few seconds before I gave up. This makes me want to re-test my press 1RM (which had dropped down to 90 in the fall), in light of all my pullup work. I think it's helping, and that's exciting!

Pullups: 3x10
Performed mostly unassisted deadhangs, and a few kipping pullups. I logged this as a day in my Get Strict program.

Abmat situps with medball: 4x15 (14# ball)

--
This morning I attended an 8:30am CrossFit class, which I'll start teaching next Tuesday, along with the 6:30am class. It was the last day for one of our coaches -- he's been splitting his time between the gym he co-owns and our gym, and will be focusing in on his own place from here on. He programmed a fun barbell triplet for us.

5 rounds:
5 squat clean thrusters
10 shoulder to overhead
15 front squat
load: 77#/55#

Results: 15:51

I certainly could've rested a lot less. And I didn't really string together the squat clean thrusters. But I did unbroken sets of ground to overhead and front squats on all 5 rounds. For shoulder to overhead, I did a combo of push presses and power jerks.

I'm happy to report that my back felt a little funky in my warmups, but I didn't feel a single twinge at all during the WOD. Yay!

Friday AM AMRAP

Saw this WOD last week sometime, and knew I wanted to put it into our morning rotation at the base gym.

We had to substitute hang squat cleans for squat cleans, due to lack of bumpers. We scaled down the weight of the cleans and push press. We did AbMat situps instead of toes to bar, because there just aren't enough appropriate pullup bars to do pullups and T2B with 4 people. And we each started at a different point in the rotation to help with crowd control.

"Christina"
AMRAP in 20 minutes:
9 pullups
9 hang squat cleans (65#)
9 kettlebell swings (35# / 16kg)
9 AbMat situps (I added a 12# med ball)
9 push press (65#)
9 burpees

Results: Started at KB swings; finished 3 full rounds plus KB swings and AbMats of round 4

The weight on the hang squat cleans felt heavy to me at first, but I think I was using too much arm. Once I got more tired and started "popping and dropping" things felt a lot better.

Got 5 pullups in a row on each of my 3 sets of kipping pullups. Booyeah! It's all mental for me, not physical -- I'm getting myself back on the "no less than 5 to start" train, and it feels good.

Again today it wasn't strength, but just cardio/endurance that really held me back. 

--
Had originally planned on doing another "A" day for my pullup program today, but I'm hurting. I will get it in after weightlifting practice tomorrow morning.

Base gym FAIL

I went to the base gym to do today's WOD, thinking they would have a 1.5 pood (55#/24kg) kettlebell. But the heaviest they had was 40#.

The kicker? I have a 45# kettlebell at home.

[facepalm]

Oh well, I tried. :)

--
10-8-6-4-2-4-6-8-10
double unders
AbMat situps w/ med ball (12#)
kettlebell swings (1.5 pood - used 40#)

Results: 10:13

Finished up with a 60 second handstand hold, 3 sets of 5 kipping pullups (actually got 5 in a row the last set), and 3 Turkish get-ups on each side with a 20# kettlebell. Then they kicked me out because it's a holiday and they were closing at 6pm.

Weightlifting, Get Strict

Wanted to do some weightlifting practice today, but didn't want to drive the 25-45 minutes to one of the gyms with a platform. So I did what I could in the gym on base.

Front squat:
3-3-3-3-3
85-95-105-115-125

I paused at the bottom on all sets except the last. I really wanted to retest my current 3RM of 135, but didn't want to push things with my back, or with dropping weights in a gym where they're not supposed to be dropped. :)

Split jerk:
3-3-3-3-3
45-65-85-90-95

Not heavy, just getting back in the groove after a few weeks of not practicing. Didn't feel like I really got my speed until the last 2 sets. This weight felt kinda heavy for some reason!

After the weightlifting work, it was time to start a new pullup program that I came across online.
Get Strict, from CrossFit Virtuosity

Today was a volume day.
A. 3 sets of 10 strict pullups
used my skinny band; sets were broken -- 6-2-2, 7-2-1 and 6-2-2

B. 3 sets of 10 --superset of barbell row and pushups
45# barbell
pushup sets: 10, 6-2-2, 6-2-1-1

Back squats and a quick metcon

At the gym on base this morning.

Back squat: 5x5
95
105
115
120
125



Still holding back from anything really heavy, since the back issue hasn't been resolved. Oddly, today it only twinged when I was re-racking the barbell.


2 rounds:
20 OHS (45#)
15 pullups
500m row

Results: ~15mins

Main site chipper

We took on the crazy chipper from the main site at our box, and it was interesting to say the least!

25 Walking lunge steps
20 Pull-ups
50 Box jumps, 20 inch box
20 Double-unders
25 Ring dips
20 Knees to elbows
30 Kettlebell swings, 24k/16
30 Sit-ups
20 Hang squat cleans, 35/20 pound dumbells
25 Back extensions
30 Wall ball shots, 20/14 pound ball
3 Rope climb ascents

Results: 30:50

I completed the pullups without incident, definitely got 5 to kick things off. THANK GOD.

Banged out the box jumps at a good pace.

Thought my 20 DUs were in the bag, but missed #20 and had to do one single DU. Still pleased with that. :)

Skinny band for the ring dips -- need to rededicated myself to getting rid of that soon.

K2Es were fucking beautiful, not to brag. :-D

Swings, situps, hang cleans -- no problemo.

Back extensions -- this is where I wussed out big time. I've learned recently that my back is a very weak area in my body, comparatively. So I have a stronger back than some people, but overall I'm front-dominant to compensate for a weaker back. I knew these back extensions would lock me up, but did them anyway. And then got locked up. Probably wasted 2 minutes afterwards trying to un-fuck myself enough to do the wall balls. I had a Filthy Fifty flashback for sure.

Wall balls were badass, got 15 the first set, not sure if I broke the 2nd half or not. Soooooo glad these don't trip me up so much anymore.

ROPE CLIMBS. Went up with the rope wrapped around, came down with feet in the J-hook. Probably rested a little too long between attempts, but I'm still too freaked out to do these while I'm super-winded or feeling weak in the arms. Since we don't have a crash mat, I'm OK with this.

--
The only thing I'm pissed about is the WOD was posted with 24kg/16kg for the kettlebell swings, and Rx on the main site was 2 pood (32kg) -- which means ladies Rx was 24kg. Boooooo. I would've used my 45# kettlebell or maybe even the big one if I had known that.

Plus ladies Rx should really have been 25# dumbbells... Bummah.

But based on what was written on the whiteboard the day I did this, I am happy that I only scaled ring dips. Woot! I will take "nearly Rx" whenever I can get it. :-D

Finally Friday

I can't remember the last time I did CrossFit for five days in a row -- fulfilling my promise to complete all of my WODs during my week of programming was tough! Most folks at our box get a rest day on Wednesday, as there's no evening class, but I think my bud Melissa joined me for the 5 day WOD fest. :-D

Would any bodyweight-focused week of programming be complete without some kind of tabata? I think not!

"Tabata Something Else"
Complete 32 intervals of 20 seconds of work followed by ten seconds of rest where the first 8 intervals are pull-ups, the second 8 are push-ups, the third 8 intervals are sit-ups, and finally, the last 8 intervals are squats. There is no rest between exercises.

Score is total reps from all 32 intervals.

Results: 270

Pullups - Started out with the goal of doing 5 per round. Did 5 on the first round, dropped down, and sadly waited until time ran out and didn't do anymore. I felt bad that I didn't jump up for another couple. So I did my 5 and then 1 or 2 the next round. :) I started crapping out after 4, then 3, then 2. My lowest score was 3 or 4 on the last round -- mostly because my right hand ripped open on round 7. I'm happy to report my kip was pretty good -- in terms of using hip power, and not just shoulder power. Yay! :) I think my total for pullups was in the high 30's.

Pushups -- Dropped down to 5 pretty quickly, but hung in there for the duration. I'm happy with that, because I know 95% of the pushups I did were full ROM.

Situps -- Stuck with 10 or 11 the whole way through, which is pretty standard for me on tabata ab mat butterfly situps. Like I said after my last crack at "Annie", I think I just need to find a way to do situps fasters. But that is pretty much at the very bottom of any CrossFit priority list I have. :-D hehe

Squats -- Holy shit were my legs beat down from the rest of the week! I was barely cranking out 10 or 11 by the last round. Crap! Usually I'm good to stick at 14 towards the end of tabata squats, but not on this day. My legs were cramping up and really hurting badly by the end, but I was trying to push through the pain as much as possible. I think I did manage to get over 100 on squats, though, so that was good. :)

--
Later Friday night I did a "make up" WOD with a friend who'd had to miss class on Wednesday and Friday. Here's what we made up for ourselves.

21-15-9
burpees
situps
double unders (x3 singles)

Finished up with a sprint down and back on her cul-de-sac. During which we were followed by her husband driving the neighborhood kids around on a golf cart. Good times. :-D

Swing, squat and pull

Today I finally got to introduce my box to one of my all-time favorite WODs, which I first did at CrossFit KoP.

For time:
20 KB Swings, 20 Squats, 10 Pull-ups
18 KB Swings, 18 Squats, 9 Pull-ups
16 KB Swings, 16 Squats, 8 Pull-ups
14 KB Swings, 14 Squats, 7 Pull-ups
12 KB Swings, 12 Squats, 6 Pull-ups
10 KB Swings, 10 Squats, 5 Pull-ups
8 KB Swings, 8 Squats, 4 Pull-ups
6 KB Swings, 6 Squats, 3 Pull-ups
4 KB Swings, 4 Squats, 2 Pull-ups
2 KB Swings, 2 Squats, 1 Pull-up

Results: 20:38 -- 45# kb, kipping pullups

The clock was all jacked up, and stopped for an undetermined length of time at 19 minutes. So I'm not really sure how accurate my time was. But it couldn't have been more than a minute or two off, so I'm happy, since last time I used a 45# kettlebell and "mental floss" for my pullups, and finished in 23:35.

I did all sets of swings unbroken except 16. I don't know what the heck happened, I just lost focus and dropped it after like the 7th swing. Lame.

Started off with 5 pullups in a row, so that rocked. :) Started losing my kip a little bit, but I gave myself a little mental pep talk and brought it back at the end. Yes there were a few ugly, somewhat deadhang pullups, but I've accepted those as normal for me. Maybe one day I'll have that beautiful consistent kip that others have. But until then, I'll get my chin over the bar however I can. :-D

I didn't remember how challenging the squats felt! Or maybe they just felt challenging today due to all the other stuff we've been up to this week. Making the promise to do all my own workouts is going to kill me! I am sooooo ready for a rest day, thankfully tomorrow's WOD is only 14 minutes total of work. But then again I should know better than to think a short AMRAP would feel "easy". :-p

Worst WOD in a looooooooong time

Doing some catch-up posting, and back dating the next couple posts. Apologizes for the feed reader overload!

--
Sooooo, remember that Monday morning session with Aimee that I blogged about? I was pretty beat down from that, but had a date with Dorothy to head back to KoP for the 4:30 workout. As a bonus, my husband even wanted to go, and finally got to meet Aimee and Jason, who had been on vacation when he came in over Christmas.

OK, so here's the WOD.

4 rounds:
500m Row
15 Pull-ups
15 Sandbag Burpees (lateral jump over sandbag)

Results: 32:27

Shit. You. Not. That was my finish time. Over 30 minutes.  Holy fucking hell.

At CF KoP, the pullup bar are next to a wall. And I swear if there had been a couple more pullups in this workout, I would've punched the wall. Seriously. I thought about doing a million times during the WOD. I was doing pullups 1 at a time, I was doing them with 2/3 kip and 1/3 deadhang in many cases, and it was awful.

As for the row, after round 1 I just started shutting my eyes so I couldn't even see how slow I was rowing. Boo.

But really it was the pullups that killed my spirit on this one. I guess I didn't enter the WOD with a confident spirit, so I beat myself before I even started. Yeah it was hot and I couldn't get a good grip on the bar even with tape and chalk, but so what? Everybody else was operating under those same conditions, and Aimee was even 5 months or so pregnant!

This was one WOD I really didn't want to finish. With all the fibers of my being, I did NOT want to finish. But I did.

I just hope it taught me something? Sometimes I feel like other people have these great experiences with just finishing horrible WODs, but when I do awful, I never get that sense of pride just for finishing. I did feel very proud for finishing Murph, despite it taking 90 minutes... I dunno. I guess this is just another area of the mental game where I need to keep observing myself and my reactions and hopefully learn something I can apply to future WODs...

Allie

I'm supposed to be doing the dishes while husband mows, but you know I had to get on here and post my WOD first, right? :)

This morning we did "Allie" -- yep, named after one of my friends from the gym. She won the honor of creating a workout to torture us all after her slam-dunk victory on the Paleo challenge during April and March. My goal was to be my time from my first attempt on this WOD.

"Allie"
Run 400m
20 pullups
Run 400m
15 wall ball shots (20#)
Run 400m
10 burpees
Run 400m
5 tire flips

Results: 14:10 -- took 37 seconds off my old time, woot!

This WOD is deceiving -- it looks simple, just run a mile with some other stuff thrown in. But if you go all out, it really gasses you! Plus the humidity was horrible this morning, though thankfully there was cloud cover to keep the sun from totally scorching us on the runs.

Pullups were accomplished as follows: 5-5-5-4-1. My goal was sets of 5, but in hindsight, that isn't enough of a challenge for me. I regularly do sets of 5 deadhangs at the pool -- with kipping in play, I should be able to bust out more like 7 or 8 in a row. But then again, at least I didn't forget how to kip like I did on Wednesday's deadlift-pullup WOD. I'll be happy with 5's for today, and go for more next time. :)

Wall balls were to the 10' mark with the 14# ball. Forgot that Allie was using the 20# ball, and that I meant to use that one too. I think I'd be OK with throwing that to the 8' line. :)

OMG, runs must've been sooooooo slow. Like I've been saying for a bazillion years, I need to hit the track and do several 400m sprints to assess where I'm at. Did you guys know that in high school I ran a sub-6-minute mile, and a 400m in the 1:40s? I was fast as shit. Right now my weight is about 15 pounds heavier, mostly due to musculature I've built in my core, back, chest, shoulders and arms, so it's gonna be a lot harder to move my mass that fast. I'd like to bring my 400's down to the 2 minute mark. Should be doable -- my most recent timed mile was around 8:30.

OK, now I will go work on the kitchen. We have been ignoring it all week and it's a total disaster. I'm going to put on my fav NPR show ever, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and hopefully that will help pass the time. :)