Tag Archives: Baseline

This Weeks Workouts

On Wednesday (3/10/2010) night, we did a little number that I thought I did pretty well at. It was three rounds of:

  • 400m run
  • 10 clean to overhead (135lb – Rx)
  • 10 pull ups

My time here was somewhere in the 23:46 area. I don’t remember exactly, but I think that’s right. Like I said, I thought I did pretty well on this one. I didn’t take any walk breaks on the 400’s, although, my last run was SO slow I may as well have been power-walking with my AM/FM headphones on. I felt strong on all of the clean to overheads and OK on the pull ups. I think I could have done more pull ups unbroken, but still, I was happy with my effort.

Friday (3/12/2010), I managed to get out of the house to workout. I was happy that I did because we did “Baseline” two times. The way the workout was written was:

  • “Baseline” (500m row, 40 squats, 30 sit ups, 20 push ups, 10 pull ups)
  • Rest 3 minutes
  • “Baseline” (500m row, 40 squats, 30 sit ups, 20 push ups, 10 pull ups)

There were not enough rowers for us all so we went in heats. The rest ended up being “until the next heat finished” which was closer to about 6 minutes. Again, I improved my baseline time. The last time we did baseline (the night we did it 3x), I did my first round in 5:00 flat. I was using a band (don’t remember the color).

This time, I finished my first round in 4:43. That’s an additional 17 seconds off my original baseline time of 5:40 on my first day of Crossfit. I have gone from jumping to band to kipping pull ups all in less than a year and that makes me happy. I have improved my time while making the workout harder. Cool.

The second set took me 5:14, just about 30 seconds longer than my first set. About 150m into the row, I felt my energy bottom out. It was all mental from there.

More Improvements

Man, it’s been a LONG day. It started out with Master Joe’s meteor fist class in the morning followed by another hour of kung fu class where we reviewed the 4 spear forms. Then I had a very busy and brain destroying day at work. All the while, with pain and limited mobility in my arms due to soreness from Monday’s workout.

Tonight’s workout was our baseline workout, which I did on August 19th, 2009… just about 2 months ago. The only different was this time, we did it three horrible times. The workout (in case you are too lazy to click the link) was:

3x

  • 500m row
  • 40 squats
  • 30 sit ups
  • 20 push ups
  • 10 pull ups

My times for each set were 5:00, 6:06, and 6:22.

What’s amazing to me about this workout and, well, crossfit in general is just the sheer amount of work you can make yourself do. As an example here, in 17:28, I was able to do:

  • 1500m row
  • 120 squats
  • 90 sit ups
  • 60 push ups
  • 30 pull ups

Had you given me the workout in the above listing, I’d look at your and tell you that you are crazy. Breaking it down into manageable, yet still really challenging sets works really well. rec

I am really happy with my progress here. The first time I did the baseline workout, my time for one set was 5:40 and I was doing jumping pull ups. It’s great to see that I am doing something harder (pull ups with a resistance band, not jumping pull ups) and my time went down. It’s beautiful.

What isn’t beautiful is that I still can’t straighten my arms. I don’t think it’ll be better tomorrow.