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...

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.