Ridin' Out West...

Tomorrow I leave for my first snowboarding trip since 2005.  It's a pretty incredible thing.  My buddy Walt turns 40 this week, and he wanted to celebrate by reuniting in the mountains of Utah.  While I lived in Colorado (1998-2005) Walt came out to ride Copper with me a couple of times...back when I would ride about 10 times a season.  Now it's been six years since I touched powder, and it's hard to speculate on how I'll do out there.  But I'm certain that without the last couple of months at Crossfit I would be an absolute mess...

It'll be interesting to break the hardcore routine I've cultivated (hitting the Black Box at least three times a week since November). I'm happy to say my quads are finally coming around after Tuesday's thrashing.  I was worried there for a second that I'd have to be drinking at the lodge while I watch my buddies cut it up.  Looks like I'll be recovered and ready to go.

I checked into Crossfit Park City since I figured by Wednesday I should be acclimated and might be able to withstand a WOD.  I might hit up that box on Wednesday morning, but it's hard to gauge whether or not I'll be ready.  I'll play it by ear, but it would be awesome to squeeze in a WOD amidst all of the boarding.  I might also be quite spent after a full day Monday & Tuesday, so we'll see.  I'm definitely looking forward to dropping into as many boxes as I can when I travel.  I can imagine the pile of T-shirts I would have amassed in my 20s if Crossfit was around.  I was in a different state on average every month back then.  C'est la vie...

I may or may not report from Utah.  For now I'll treat this as a special WOD and maybe even keep track of my reps:

AMRAP Snowboarding - 72 hours

;-)

For now, be safe out there...Peace...

Deadlifting Oswego

Surprise!!  No snow this morning (at least by 4AM)! So I rolled into Crossfit unexpectedly for today's skill day.  I missed both deadlift days last week, which I was particularly bummed about, because it's been since December and I really wanted to get some weight on the bar and give it a shot.  Last time I "PR'ed" at 215, knowing it was far below my threshold, and when I saw deadlifts on WODs on both Saturday and Sunday of last week I figured I screwed myself until at least March or April (since I can't make it into the city on weekends).  Lo and behold today's skill day involved deadlifts for the warmup and Rack Pulls for the WOD.  But I was determined to focus strictly on deadlifts to really get into it and see where I'm at.

Warmup
20 Pullups (5x4 Double-Banded)
30 KB Swings (50 lb)

WOD
Deadlifts - 235 x3 - 275 x3 - 285 x3 - 295 x1 - 305 x1 - 305 x1 - 315 x1 (1 rep max PR)

I was dead set on getting over the 300 mark.  While I have no idea how much I weigh (last I weighed myself I was 330 lbs in the spring of 2010) I assume I hit close to my bodyweight today, which I'm pretty psyched about.  I was going to stop at 305 so I could say that I dealifted Miami (word to Scott in the 305), but I powered through and deadlifted 315, so I guess I'll have to settle for deadlifting Oswego, NY. I guess next time I'll try to pull for Roscoe, TX (325)...we'll see...

My quads are thumping from yesterday.  Not psyched to limp my way through the evening commute (in a blizzard). Pray for me...

Peace.

Squat...Me Worry!

I came into today feeling pretty damn good.  I hadn't done a decent volume of squats in a while, but I figured if I could power through the 100 burpees last week I could make this happen.  I think out of everything I attempt at Crossfit, air squats are my strongest exercise.  I knew once I hit the third round it would take some serious focus to power through the last 50 or so.  So I was a bit worried about hitting all 225 of them.

Warmup
Handstand (held for about a minute...flirted with the pushup while I was there)
10 Jumping Ring Dips
Frog Stand (20 seconds)
Death Stretch (ouch!)
Hip Stretches

Pullups - So Sara tells me she knew I got 1/2 a pullup last week because she reads my blog...<blush>. She asked me to set up the band so I could show her.  I got halfway up a couple of times.  Then she grabs another band and puts them together.  BOOM! I did 3 or 4 pullups with multiple bands...kind of surreal to be traveling over the bar...even if it did take a truck tire's worth of rubber to get me up there.  Gotta start somewhere...we talked about scaling the 12 muscle ups for the WOD (see below), and she decided on 24 jumping pullups and 12 banded ring dips per round.  Before I knew it, it was go time...

WOD
Three rounds for time of:
12 Muscle-ups
75 Squats

I cranked through the first round without much problem.  Sara said I had the best squat in the room (she's a good motivator), and she also was on me to keep going whenever I was hunched over, feeling I couldn't crank out another 40, 30, 5 ...whatever it was.  A couple of the guys helped me through round two.  When I finished the squats one of them thought I was done and he yelled "time".  He obviously isn't familiar with my pace ;-).

In round 3 I did the jumping pullups 1-3 at a time, and slopped my way through the ring dips (likely a couple of sketchy reps in there for sure).  Then came the final 75 squats.  I was really giving it everything I had and I didn't know how I was getting through this one.  I hit 25 and I really didn't know where the other 50 were going to come from.  I had the guys on either side of me eggin me on and Sara in the middle...she was relentless.  The problem (at the time anyway) was that she's seen what I'm capable of.  So when I came up from 5 more and hunched over she just wasn't havin' it.  I just kept chipping away...5 more, 10 more, 3 more, etc.  Finally I got there...

Time: 23:09

I know I'm still miles away from RX'ing an entire WOD, but it feels great to be cranking out these high numbers of reps.  I'm hitting milestones left and right, and it feels amazing!

It's snowing already...again.  Looks like another shovel WOD is waiting for me at home, and with tomorrow being a rest day I guess it's good timing that I'll have to wake up and shovel, missing yet another Crossfit day so my driveway doesn't end up a sheet of ice. C'est la Vie...

Psyched for Thursday!

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...

Snatched from the Jaws of Pain...

If I wake up very sore I've learned to just get my body moving and I'll be alright .  A couple of times the pain has cost me a day at Crossfit.  But I've learned that by the time I get to the Black Box it's almost three hours after I wake, and I'm likely favored to power through a workout without much trouble.  If a metcon was on the schedule today that would have been very questionable.  The only way I was getting through today was the fact that it was all skillwork...a nice chill day where we focus on the ill-named but ever-powerful "Snatch".

A nice visual breakdown of the Snatch

I was happy to get some weight on the bar and see where I stood with this exercise.  I don't remember doing a straight-up power snatch (from the floor)...several times we went over the muscle snatch (starting from the bar at mid-thigh) and we did snatch balances a couple of times in the past (or maybe once in NYC and once in Morristown). 

Warmup:
Pullup Attempt (got 1/2 way up with thickest band several times...this is HUGE for me)
30 Kettle Bell Swings (16 kg)
20 Ring Rows
10 GHD Situps
5 mins Double-Under practice

Snatch:
6-7 warmups with bar (45 lb)
65 lbs (x3)
85 lbs (x3)
105 lbs (x3)

I'm pretty sure the WOD called for seven rounds of one rep, but I really wanted to get comfortable with the exercise, and Sara was more concerned with that than adhering to the exact number.  She had a lot of helpful comments, and she mentioned that my snatch form was better than my cleans.  I felt good with the weight, and I feel like if I pushed heavier it would be borderline.  I didn't want to get so heavy that I compromised the form of the exercise (or bring myself any additional pain).  It gets meaningless when you do that, even though it's the most common thing I see in other types of gyms.

Either way another productive skill day in the books, and I'll have a solid reference point next time we revisit the snatch.  The soreness from yesterday's madness didn't slow me down at all, but you can bet there's some solid rest coming up this weekend before I attack next week's Crossfit schedule.

Peace...

Yeah Burpees!

Click for Burpee Fun!

What do you get when you cross two handstands, 75 bent-over dumbbell rows, a 2K run and 100 burpees? Frankly I have no idea what the name for it would be, but let's just say for me this week I call it "Wednesday".

...So I'm limping triumphantly down 6th Ave after yesterday's WOD (most days after a tough metcon I get a little victory limp going) and I'm truly overwhelmed by my morning experience.  I'll set this up by pasting the WOD as RX'ed:

Five Rounds for Time
400m Run
20 Burpees
15 Bent-Over Dumbbell Rows

I get to the typical spot in the WOD where everybody's finished and I'm still truckin my way through round 3 out of 5...and as usual everyone has been encouraging the shit out of me the whole time.  Suddenly I have Anthony on my left doing the burpees along with me, and coaching me through the db rows. Then Anthony and Tim join me for the run in the final round.  We get back upstairs after the run and they both do the final 20 burpees along with me.  I cruise through the last 15 db rows and BOOM...

40:22

Sara asked me before the WOD if I considered scaling.  "It's a lot of burpees" she said.  I waved it off and went for it.  As I was leaving  there were hi-fives all around...such a cool feeling to hit such a benchmark!

There is no way to overstate how humbled I am that these guys invested their time and energy in getting me to finish this WOD. I mean they were fucking DONE. They are not trainers. They could have walked away and still been the nice guys that they are every day.  But there's something about Crossfit that makes people really care THAT much...something that makes us a team even though we're only competing with our individual selves.  I think there's some magic in the combination of someone's excitement as they're hitting their stride with Crossfit and the excitement of others as they watch somebody go through that discovery.  There was a lot of synergy in the room yesterday, and it felt damn fantastic.

Dope on a Rope

OK, so I can only imagine that the day I actually climb a rope...what a glorious day that will be...for now though I scale, and I scale hard...

WOD
Five rounds of:
15' Rope climb, max reps in 3 minutes

Scale to - Grab Rings overhead, start in squat position, jump & touch chest.  3 reps = 1 rope climb rep

Reps
42 - 35 - 33 - 36 - 34

So I imagined myself burning out by the third round, but I was actually able to power through this one OK.  Kevin gave us some amazing stretches to do afterward, which likely save my wrists, forearms, and chest.  He said we likely couldn't tell, but the compression of our chest to get up to the rings was intense, and without the stretch we would feel it hard (I'll likely be feeling it hard no matter what).

Also a great warmup today.  I feel more confident rowing, especially for shorter spurts like 500m.  I average around 1:50 per round, but depending on what else is in the warmup I easily go over 2 minutes (I didn't pay attention to the exact times today).  Here's what we did:
(2 Rounds)

500m row
10 Pushups
10 GHD Situps
10 Hip Extensions
10 Overhead Squats (PVC)
10 Pullups (Scale to Ring Rows)

All in all a decent Monday.  With tomorrow being a rest day I might ask to do one of the previous metcons, as I'm itching to tackle a big one that is way out of my comfort zone.

I need to get some bonus posts in about some amazing things I've been reading, on the web in general, but more specifically in the Crossfit Journal.  If you haven't subscribed yet it will be the best $2 a month you ever plunked down.  More on this soon...so many directions to choose from.  I've been nerding out on this shit hard.

For now...peace...

THE HICCUPS WOD

I was actually fired up to come into Crossfit today but it turned into a bit of a blase day.  I got a lot out of the workout skill-wise, but I didn't push the weight at all (I hadn't done half of the exercises before) so it was more of a skill-builder than a typical skill day workout.  We had the option of doing Wednesday's WOD, since CF NYC was closed that morning from the snow storm.  But I opted to stay on task...I guess going into the weekend it would have been a better choice to do the Wed WOD...either way, here was what I did:

(5 Rounds)
Hang Clean
Clean
Push Jerk
Split Jerk

Hey...HCPS...the HICCUPS WOD!  I'm such a fuckin nerd...

Weight: 65 lbs.

Now I've done 100+ lbs on push jerks before, but I wasn't going to make the mistake of thinking that automatically translates to cleans.  So I started with 65 and felt good about just staying there.  It was just enough weight to emulate proper form, but not too light to feel like I wasn't getting a workout out of it.  All in all I was happy with my progress on the split jerk, but it was a lighter day at Crossfit for sure.  One thing I was psyched about was that during the warmup I tried an assisted pullup and I actually came up 3-4 inches, using the largest assistance band.  I'll get there...fun to check in on the pullups from time to time...after that I just hung from the bar a few times.

I had a 2-3 minute staredown with the support beam that I did the handstand against the other day.  The beam won...I'll try again on Monday ;-).

Handstand and Deliver

This is sort of what I looked like today

So I walked up to Sara to talk about today's warmup:

Handstand attempt (x3)
Tripod / Frog Stand (10 secs)
10 Ring Rows

Obviously with the handstand attempts I figured I would do pike pushups since there's no way I would be attempting handstands for who knows how long.  So I asked if the pikes are OK, and Sara immediately said "hands on the floor".  Before I knew it I was kicking up to 45 degrees, then on the second try...WHOA...holy shit I freaked out...I was upside down!! And then I panicked and sloppily flipped over.  But I DID IT.  Can't wait to get more comfortable doing it...seems just like the GHD situps and Forward Rolls and anything else that involves being inverted during the exercise.  Fear is the only inhibitor.  I'm used to dealing with that...man how cool would it be to not have to scale on the handstand pushups.  Crazy...

WOD
Three rounds for time of:
6 Muscle-Ups
30 Wallball shots, 20 pound ball
12 Handstand push-ups
135 pound Power clean, 15 reps

Time: 29:52

Scaling:
65 lbs. on the Power Cleans
6 Jumping Ring Dips + 6 Ring Rows in place of Muscle Ups
Pike Pushups for HSPU

Felt pretty damn good getting through another metcon.  Looks like bigtime snow tonight...I hope the first train gets to the city ahead of the curve...then again I probably should consider a shoveling WOD to make sure my wife can get out of the house after I leave...I guess that still leaves two days for me to get to CFNYC this week.  Damn I'm addicted...

Skill Day - Snatch Balances

So the skill days have proven to be very helpful in really getting a sense of where my strength is at with each exercise.  A lot of them are still my first attempt, so I've been starting slow with the weight.  With the exception of push jerk and front squats I haven't been going too high in weight, which is fine by me.  But when I'm able to push a little bit without getting crazy, I welcome the challenge.  I realize that as long as I can maintain solid form I can comfortably explore higher weight and really get a ton of benefit.

The last time I did snatch balances was part of my second vacation WOD in Morristown, and in retrospect I didn't really do them very well because I didn't get nearly the amount of immediate speed on the way down that I should have.  It was more of a slow descent, and it seems the essence of the snatches is an explosive, near immediate shift to get the bar over you, or in the case of snatch balances get under the bar.  Kevin said the entire purpose of the snatch balance is to build confidence and strength getting immediately under the bar.

We started with a warmup:
2 Rounds:
500m row (moderate pace for form)
10 GHD situps
10 hip extensions
5 Handstand Pushups (scale to pike pushups)
10 OH Squats (pvc)
10 ring rows (feet elevated)

I got a decent sweat going, and had to scale ring rows because I can't get full reps when my feet are off the ground.  These 500m rowing warmups have been getting easier. Had a nice chat with Anthony (one of the CF regulars) WHILE we were rowing.  If you came up to me in November and tried to talk to me while I was rowing I would have vomited all over you.

WOD
Snatch Balances
1-1-1-1-1-1-1

45 x3 (warmup w bar)
55 - 65 - 75 - 75 - 85 - 85 - 95

I feel great about getting 95 lbs.  The movement was a lot easier with the weight than actually getting the bar in position on my upper back...I was fighting to not have the bar position take away from the movement itself.  This time I was mostly successful...

Onto tomorrow.  I feel a nasty metcon coming on...bring it!!!