A Minute to Win It

Looks like it was max effort day. 
He's really on the ball

My hip is feeling a lot better, and it helps that there's no running, deadlifts or any other hip-heavy exercises today, so I can keep away from it one more day...every little bit helps.  I haven't tried to mobilize the hip capsule again yet, and I think I'll wait a while until I'm confident I won't mess it up again.

Today was mellow, as is the case with a lot of strength days.  It's good that we're focusing on the shoulder press, because I feel like I need all of the shoulder strength I can muster if I want to improve with pullups, handstand pushups, ring dips, and heavier lifting overhead.

Warmup (3 Rounds with PVC):
10 Shoulder Dislocates
10 Good Mornings
10-second handstand hold

WOD
Resting 60 seconds between sets:
Press 2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2

We paired up on the racks and got going quicky.  Pretty cool WOD, though in retrospect we didn't think ahead about how limiting the minute rest time was as far as increasing weight goes.  Frankly neither of us was a superstar on the press, so we were happy to stay around 85-95 lbs for the whole WOD and just focused on pressing well with good speed, and fighting my urge to push press.  We got through it quickly, and Kevin programmed a little "cashout" metcon since we had some spare time left:

CASHOUT
Five Rounds for Time:
10 Ring Rows
10 Situps

Time: 7:11

That was a nice little workout.  Not the most blistering day of work at Crossfit but a good sweat and some solid strength work.

Ready for more tomorrow...

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda...

Today's WOD was posted as a 10K run.  Even if I was capable of running a 10K in a reasonable amount of time, I wouldn't have the time to do this before work.  So I rolled the dice on coming into Crossfit, hoping Kevin would allow me to do yesterday's WOD:

WOD - For time:

135 pound Front squat, 10 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 9 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 8 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 7 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 6 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 5 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 4 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 3 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 2 reps
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent
135 pound Front squat, 1 rep
15 ft Rope Climb, 1 ascent

Fun looking WOD!  I wasn't anticipating much resistance from Kevin, and I was excited to see one of my CF buddies Reda already doing that WOD as I walked in the door.  Kevin said it was no problem to do it, so I went ahead and got set up.  I was very confident I could RX the weight, as I did the 100 back squat WOD a few weeks back, and did that one in the high-bar position. Sara says that makes it basically the same exercise as a front squat, as you employ your quads a lot more than your posterior chain with the high-bar.

But anyway Kevin said the rope climb, which we scaled to four jumping pulls on the rings (touching chest each rep) would take a lot out of me between squat sets, so I reluctantly heeded his suggestion to do 115 lbs instead.  I knew I would be more than comfortable with 135, but I never want to pretend I know more than the trainer, as this is never true.  Though while I'm confident about very little in Crossfit, I'm confident that I can squat heavy, and I've proven that I can do a lot of reps at 50% of my PR 1-Rep Max weight. I don't fault Kevin for not knowing that, as Sara has much more of a handle on my history with these types of WODs. Needless to say I put the 115 on the bar and got ready to hit it.  There were around five other people who showed up...as I told Kevin, nothing silences a Crossfit box more than a 10K run...Kevin programmed a sick WOD for the other people with double-unders, sumo deadlift high-pulls and chinups.  "Good luck to them" I thought...though I probably needed that WOD more, I was now even happier to be doing yesterday's. We did a warmup that included shoulder dislocates, ring rows, and back extensions.  After that we were ready to hit it...

3...2...1...Go!  I got a great pace going right off the bat.  With the descending rep scheme I didn't hold back much on the squat sets, all of which were unbroken.  The ring pulls weren't bad, but by the fifth set I saw what Kevin meant, even though I still felt I could easily have handled that 135.  I heard Kevin calling out the time and I really felt I had a good shot at putting up a sub-10-minute time for the first time since Fran.  But this would not come to pass, as I hesitated one too many times, and damnit did I really need that drink of water going into the 8th set?

WOD Time: 10:10

I'm nobody to complain when I put up a 10-minute time for any WOD.  But it's further evidence that moving forward I'll be able to hold my own with RX'ed weight on WODs with squats.  I would have been happy putting up 12+ mins but lifting 135, but better safe than sorry I guess, and I got a decent sweat going to kick off the week.  Mission accomplished. :)

Cindy - 2011-02-22

Today's WOD caused a major conflict for me, because I love deadlifts and would love to see where I'm at for sets of 3. But I've never done Cindy before, and I just had to set a benchmark to see where I'm at for that workout.  I missed it on Monday (we had the choice between Cindy and Mary), and as soon as I saw it on the schedule I knew I HAD to make up Cindy.  It seems to be one of the quintessential Crossfit workouts.  Firebreather Matt Chan says that Crossfit comes down to pushups, pullups & squats, so in a way Cindy is a true marker of your Crossfit metcon performance.

WOD
"Cindy"
Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
15 Squats

I warmed up with four sets of three handstand pushups, with three abmats under my head.  I'm feeling great about these, and hopefully next time they show up in a WOD I can do them with some depth.  We'll see...
I also did some stretches with the PVC (shoulder rolls, shoulder dislocates, overhead squats).

Sara and I discussed where I'm at with pushups, as I still have to scale to knees.  I can do like 5 actual unbroken pushups, but my belly still drags me down and they're really brutal to try RX'ed.  So for something like Cindy I didn't have much choice if I wanted to get through multiple rounds.  Also Sara was saying that 10 rounds was a realistic expectation given my recent gains (isn't she always the optimist ;)  I was also planning on scaling the pullups using the 1.5 bands I've been using recently.  i wasn't anticipating a problem with the air squats, as I was actually not in any sort of leg pain for the first time in a while.  I crush squats under these conditions, and today was no exception.

3...2...1...Go!  I was doin pretty well out of the gate, and if pullups weren't involved I feel like I might have actually gotten 10 rounds.  But after the third or fourth round it was really challenging to get more than one pullup at a time.

Result: 7 Rounds plus 4 Pullups

I'm happy, even though it would have been nice to put up double digits.  Sara asked me what my Cindy number was in Elements, and I remembered that we did a half Cindy, and I couldn't get past the first round of pushups.  So if I was looking for perspective, there it is.  Progress is good, and today showed that my few months of Crossfit have paid massive dividends.

Peace...

Zero Degrees of Preparation

One of the locals snapped an action headshot

Butt. Ass. COLD! This was the simple truth facing me as I was the sole moron who actually showed up for the 7:00 class today.  Zero degrees with a nice breeze as New York City wakes up and sees me for the knucklehead that I am.  But hey, I ain't gettin' fit curled up for an extra hour in my bed, so I say BRING IT ON.

Kevin actually asked me if I'd prefer to row vs. run.  When I said run, he just handed me a stopwatch with this look on his face like "OK buddy good luck".

Warmup (2 Rounds)
10 Shoulder Dislocates (PVC)

10 Overhead Squats (PVC)
10 GHD Situps
10 Back Extensions
10 Ring Rows (RX'ed as Pullups)
10 Pushups (RX'ed as Ring Pushups)

WOD (3 Rounds for Time)
Run 800 Meters
Rest 2 Minutes

Times
5:49 – 6:25 – 6:10

I'm actually happy with my times, as I didn't walk long stretches at any point.  If I had to walk or slow down, I picked a visual spot to hit where I would start running full speed again, and it worked pretty well to motivate me.  Granted the obvious motivator was the fact that if I moved slow enough I might start cracking and bleeding right there on the pavement.  Either way chalk up another win.  Thousands to go...

Frontin' Some Weight

Today was a skill day for the Front Squat.  I remember going over this exercise in Elements class, but I haven't done them as part of a WOD.  I had no past performance to go by, so I figured I'd start light and see what happens.  Knowing that squats and lower body stuff in general is one of my stronger areas, I looked forward to
getting the weight up there (if the form didn't cause any pain like it did unexpectedly for the last Back Squat WOD).

Warmup:
30 jumping jacks
25 lunges (in place, alternating legs)
leg & wrist stretches
20 PVC shoulder dislocates (est.)

95 lbs. x 6 (getting my feet wet before setting my first weight)

WOD (RX'ed as "Front Squats:  3 -3 -3 -3 -3"):

115 - 135 - 145 - 165 - 185

Once again I feel like I left a little weight on the table.  But I felt great holding my form once I got up to 185.  I need to work on shoulder flexibility so I can get (and keep) my elbows obscenely up during the squat.

I cashed out with 30 jumping ring dips, which were going well until I finished and I noticed that my forearms were scraped up pretty good from the straps holding the rings...I need to figure out something to guard against this next time...maybe a couple of those leather spiked forearm guards that the guy from Judas Priest wears...

Feelin great!

Press Your Luck

I like when the main Crossfit site says "rest day" because it's always a "skill day" at the Black Box. We always focus on a particular exercise or a family of them, and really nail down the form so we can use them efficiently in future WODs.

Warmup:
10 PVC Shoulder dislocates
10 PVC shoulder rolls
20 walking lunges (with twisting to opp side)
10 GHD situps
10 hip extensions
10 pullups (sub ring rows)
2 mins double unders (sub singles)

Today's WOD was the shoulder press.  Five sets of five reps.  I've done a bunch of push press so far, but it's amazing how different an exercise the shoulder press is because you're not creating momentum from your hips to get the weight up.  You just get the bar above your head, lock out and repeat.  Check out this video of the shoulder press, push press, and push jerk observed side by side.

I started with a good test weight, since these were my first shoulder presses.  95 lbs. felt good, and I knew I could do a bit more.  Here are my stats:

Reps    Weight
5          95
5          115
3          125
5          105
5          115

We did a "cash out" of 30-20-10 double-unders and situps.  I'm still nowhere near getting a double under, so I did twice the RX'ed number of single-unders.  I counted up to 18 at a time that I'm able to do, which buries the max of two I was able to do just over a month ago.  Anyway I got through the cashout in 6:35...

Solid WOD to ease back into Crossfit after a much-needed weekend rest for my aching muscles.