Tag Archives: Crossfit

Operation Get Some–Thoughts After Competing

It’s clear that I am NOT a competitor, nor am I a competitive person. Let’s start there. Competition makes me feel like a loser, mostly. Usually, people don’t compete in something unless they have some feeling that they have it in them to win. There are things that I feel that I could compete confidently in, but CrossFit is not one of them as you just don’t know what the events are going to be.

I surprised myself on the first and second WODs. After WOD #2 I was actually in first place (I think… that’s according to HB) due to my 215# split jerk (the highest of the day), but I quickly lost it on WODs #3 & #4 as they were more metcon based and I just don’t have the lungs for them.

Here are the WODs and how they played out:

WOD #1

300m row
10 back squats @ 185#

Immediately followed by…

WOD #2

3 minutes to find your 1RM on shoulder to overhead.

My time for WOD #1 was 6:02 and I put up 215# on the shoulder to overhead. 300m is a good distance for me on the C2. I can pull hard pretty consistently, and if I am careful, I won’t gas myself out. This was the only WOD that I was happy with my performance on.

WOD #3

This is where I totally lost it and came in dead fucking last out of everyone that came out. It was a 12 minute AMRAP of:

3 burpees
6 air squats
9 KB Swings @ 1.5 pood (I did 2 handed snatches as KB swings still don’t feel so hot on my back)

I managed to get 10 rounds plus 1 burpee. Horrible. I guess trying to compete while sick isn’t the best idea, eh? I felt like my chest was going to explode. There was also lots of coughing and hacking. After this WOD I was pretty discouraged and didn’t even want to go through with the next.

WOD #4

At this point, my attitude was horrible. Mostly of “screw it, whatever, I want to go home'”, much like a five-year-old that takes the kickball away and stomps back to his house because he’s losing. More so, the WOD was something that there was no way in fucking hell that I would ever even have a chance at, so, whatever. You gotta know when to fold â€˜em, right? The WOD was:

800m run (to the end of Cherry St. and back)
50 games style push ups

My time here was 6:37. At least 2 minutes slower than the people that I needed to keep up with. Guaranteed that even had I ran the hardest I could have run, I still would have lost. The odds of me doing that with a chest cold… – 1280371471324.

You may have read my post on running at some point. If you haven’t, take a minute to see why I have such negative feelings surrounding this activity. Those feelings combined with the fact that I really needed to place on the last WOD to stay competitive meant something along the lines of “fuck you, fatty, you’re done” in my head.

So, V says to focus on the positives. Let me see if my pessimistic ass can find any.

I did pretty well on WOD #1. I didn’t come in first, but was at the very least had a time that was competitive with the rest.
I came in 1st on WOD #2 and split jerked more then everyone else. Yay for me.
I participated and didn’t quit even though I felt like chewed up, spit out dog shit and wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep before even arriving.

Maybe there are more, but I can’t think of any.

I have been thinking about whether or not I would like to do something like this again, and it’s hard to say. I went into it promising myself that I wouldn’t think of it as a competition and that I would just have fun and focus on getting the activity in. That worked great while I was staying with the rest of the pack.

As soon as I started to slip away, I was that fat little 6th grader back on the school court yard with everyone else leaving me in the dust and it felt absolutely horrible.

It took me a good 5-10 minutes after that last WOD to flush the feeling of “loser” out of me, but eventually I did and remembered that these are all my friends and don’t think the horrible thoughts that those 6th grade bastards did.

Take it or leave it, right or wrong, those are my thoughts.

The weekend

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Friday Night (2/11/2011), I was still feeling pretty sick. I felt that, if I did the WOD that was on the site for the day (Nicole, 400m run, pull ups to failure for 20 minutes) that it would not be good for me.

Dave told me to come to the clinic and we’d find something for me. It ended up being pretty easy going, but fun still. I did the following:

Strict ring pull ups in sets until failure. I think I got 6 or 7 sets of 1-3. No idea on the total.
2x{5 kb clean & jerk (each arm), 10 goblet squats, 5 kb snatch (each arm), 10 goblet squats} untimed

Saturday was “Operation Get Some”, an event that Wladi and Carson planned. They did a fantastic job and everyone had a lot of fun. Mostly. I wrote a separate posting about that, as I have… well, let’s just say “issues that I should probably see someone for”.

After OGS, we got home and ate lunch. As we were settling in to relax for a bit, I got a call from my Grandmother that she was headed to the ER as she had been throwing up all night and was starting to get chest pains.

V and I met her there at the ER and she was very quickly admitted. The doctors did some tests and quickly determined that she had atrial fibrillation. She had never had this before.

Anyway, they gave her a few different drugs to get her heart rate under control as it was in the 170s and 180s, peaking even near 200 at times. That’s very scary and very dangerous. They also did a few other tests like blood work, cat scan (to check for clots), cardiograms, etc and all looked good.

Once her heart rate was under control and she was feeling better they decided to admit her overnight to the ICU. The drug that they put her on has to be monitored closely as it can lead to low blood pressure and low heart rate. They were very clear about why they were putting her in the ICU; not because she was unstable, but because people need close monitoring on that drug.

The long and short of it is that she ended up being able to go home yesterday (Sunday) after just 1 night’s stay. The cardiologist believes that the stress and nutrient depletion of throwing up for 12 hours straight led to her heart entering into this abnormal beat pattern. Once they slowed her heart rate, her heart went back to a normal pattern by itself pretty quickly.

She’s got a few follow ups to make but she will be fine.

The question now is, what the hell did she do to make herself throw up for 12 hours?! That sounds like a stomach virus to me and from what I hear, her neighbor’s kids have both had that sort of thing on and off. Whether or not it came from them, who knows. I am not trying to place blame. It very well could have also been from something that she ate. Whatever it was, I hope it doesn’t happen to her again.

Sunday was mostly a wash. We stayed in bed late, then got up and ate breakfast. We had a house painter come over to give a quote which we happily accepted. After that, we went over to Costco and Whole Foods for groceries, then I headed to the hospital for a visit and ended up bringing her home. By the time I got home, there wasn’t much left in me for a lot. I made dinner and got a lot of stuff prepped for our Valentine’s dinner today. Speaking of which, here’s what’s on the menu:

Appetizers

Red and Gold beet salad with arugula, goat cheese, and balsamic honey reduction.
Parmesan crisps.

EntrÃ©e

Chicken breast stuffed with spinach, mushrooms, garlic, parmesan cheese & covered with tomato cream sauce. Side of roasted asparagus.

Dessert

Chocolate covered strawberries (choice of dark or milk chocolate).

I am very much looking forward to sharing a romantic dinner with V. Life has been very busy lately (I know, I know, just wait) and we haven’t really spent lots of quality time together.

Operation Get Some–Thoughts Prior to Competing

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I have been thinking about this a bit as this event has been approaching and thought it would be interesting to get my thoughts prior to and after this “Operation Get Some” business that CFCP is hosting today.

Typically, I hate competing in stuff. Especially, stuff that I am nowhere near competent to be competing in. I used to watch people test for kung fu and wonder why in the hell they were up doing what they were doing if they knew that they weren’t competent with what they had to do or perform.

I find myself feeling VERY pessimistic about doing this. I fully assume that I will be DFL (figure it out) on every event and I don’t even know what the events are! It also does not help that I have been sick for the last few days (first time in way over a year) and have not slept well in quite a few nights. I am not making pre-game-excuses, just venting about what’s on my mind. Also, I paid before I got sick.

At any rate, I fully expect to compete with no one and to have my ass thoroughly handed to me. In the end, I, at the very least will have more activity in one day than the average American does in a month (probably).

Double Unders!

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I can say that I am finally getting my double unders under control which is making WODs that include them WAY more enjoyable.

Friday, 2/4/2011

CFCP was closed because of bad weather, but they made a WOD that everyone could do at home:

50 – 40 – 30 – 20 – 10 Double Unders with 10 burpess between each set

My time on this one was 8:15. NOT BAD! I was really happy with how my double unders went! I think that my smallest string was 8 or something like that.

Monday, 2/7/2011

WODDING in a hotel is always fun. Ryon and I scoped out the weight room and there was ample space for the following (I suggested to Dave, then he added the tweak on the double unders):

10x

10 push ups
10 sit ups
10 air squats
10 double unders (must be unbroken to count – this was Dave’s addition)

I didn’t time this one as Ryon and I were sharing the rope, but it felt like right around 9-11 minutes. Nice little lung burner. I really thought that I would have a lot of problems with the unbroken DU’s, but I will be damned if I only messed up on 2 sets! WOW!

Tuesday, 2/8/2011

Ryon asked if I wanted to try some weight under load stuff. It sounded interesting so, of course, I wanted to! We did the following four exercises:

Back Squat
Lat Pull Down
Shoulder Press
Bench Press

For each of these, we used a 10 second up, 10 second down scheme until failure. 2 sets each. I think for the most part, I was able to go for 1 – 2 minutes on each exercise. It was a lot of fun, and really interesting to try something different. I would like to incorporate this in 1x/week, but I’ll talk to Dave about that.

WODs in the COLD

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CFCP is closed tonight due to snow. It’s funny how the entire area goes bananas when we get snow. Although it’s probably the right choice to make sure no one gets hurt, the NY’er in me finds the response to less than 1″ of snow to somewhat hilarious.

Tuesday, 2/1/2011

3×3 snatch – This just sucked for me. I don’t really know what to attribute it to. Cold, tired, sore… just a bad day. Things just weren’t working and for whatever reason, I just could not get the technique to go like I usually do. On Monday, I was snatching 145# pretty effortlessly. This time, I was having problems with 115#. Some days you got it, and some days you don’t.

“Tabata Tabata”

40s on / 20s off on the C2, must stay within 3 calories of previous round.
Penalty of 1 strict pull up for every calorie outside of plus/minus 3 of previous round.

All of my rounds were either 12 or 13 calories. No strict pull ups for me!

Wednesday, 2/2/2011

“Double Your Fun” (I named this one myself)

15 power cleans
30 ring dips
12 power cleans
24 ring dips
9 power cleans
18 ring dips
6 power cleans
12 ring dips
3 power cleans
6 ring dips

My time was 14:05. I started out with the purple band on the dips because I wanted to work my range of motion. Somewhere at about 15 or so, I started failing out, so I just took the band off and decided to kip. I guess you can’t really say that I fully Rx’d this one, but I mostly Rx’d it. I still paid attention to my ROM on the dips as much as possible, but man, 90 of them is no small task.

Knocked Down A Notch

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I was sort of riding high after doing so well at CFCP on Friday night. I performed way better than I thought I could and tried to carry that through Saturday (which I did) and wanted to just kill our WOD last night. Unfortunately, that didn’t really happy. I was dead tired by the time I got there and last night was a doozy.

Warm Up

3 minutes on the C2, damper 3, pull your body weight in watts
3 minutes on the C2, damper 3, pull your body weight in watts, but only 20 strokes/minute
stretches
50 GHD sit ups and 50 GHD back extensions superset with 3-5 snatches – got up to snatching 145#

WOD

30 Overhead Squat using 75#
400m run
21 pull ups

My time was 21:51 which I was really not happy with. My runs were terrible. I tried to push it on the first one, but the subsequent two were back to that shitty jog crap stuff. I have found that 400m runs at the 609 box are WAY harder than 400m runs at the clinic. Not complaining, just stating a fact.

On the bright side, I somehow managed to get in 5 pull ups using the butterfly kip (no idea why it’s called that, but whatever). I will have to work on figuring that one out again.

More WODs!

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Thursday (1/27/2011) evening, my words of “Dave, for the next 8 weeks, I will do whatever you tell me to do” came back to haunt me. I got a text that said “WOD 100 sit ups, 100 reverse sit ups, try to do sets of at least 25, no time”.

Sigh.

Sigh because I really suck at sit ups. But whatever, I did it. I got some cramps which sucked, but I was able to do the regular sit ups in sets of 25. The reverse sit ups hurt way too much to do more than 10-15 at a time. Sad, I know.

Friday (1/28/2011), I got another text from Dave saying “you should come to class tonight”… so I did. The WOD was something I didn’t really have a very positive feeling about especially for a lumbering lardo like myself. It was:

1000m row
800m run
10000m row

I have to admit that I really surprised myself here. I finished in 13:05 and didn’t really feel all that bad. Don’t get me wrong, the last 500m on the C2 felt like an eternity, but at least you know with the rower, that if you keep going, eventually it will be over. The 800m felt just fine and I was able to actually run rather than do that silly looking jog/speed walk crap.

Saturday (1/29/2011), Jody showed us a good time at open gym with “The Superbowl Shuffle” which was a 20 minute AMRAP of:

7 burpees
14 CF games style push ups (where you take your hands off the floor at the bottom)
21 box jumps
28 lunges (14 R/L)

I didn’t count, but I think I got either 4 or 5 rounds in. Whatever it was, it was a good WOD and it felt good to move. She followed that WOD up with “Five Minutes of Fun” which is anything but. Well, it’s 5 minutes, but it sure as shit is not fun.

So there you have it. I worked out for 6 consecutive days this week and am feeling just fine… great, in fact. Maybe these green things really are magical. I haven’t been all that sore either. Maybe just a little bit here and there, but really, I feel like I can do whatever whenever. My recovery is getting much better too. About 2 minutes after that row/run/row WOD, I was pretty much ready to do something else.

Kettle Bell Fun

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Wednesday night… oh, Wednesday night (1/26/2011)…

I looked forward to the WOD all day because I generally like kettle bell workouts and this one had some movements that we don’t normally get to do.

I feel the need to list out the warm up as it was pretty damn significant.

5 minutes of jump rope
2 minutes of double unders (I did 38 in a row which is a new record!)
Stretches
50 GHD sit ups
50 GHD back extensions
25 snatch balance (started with 45#, then went to #75, then #95)
Group warm up

After all of that, the WOD was 4 rounds of:

3 Turkish get-ups (R)
3 Turkish get-ups (L)
3 Clean & Jerk (R)
3 Clean & Jerk (L)
3 Snatch (R)
3 Snatch (L)

The prescribed weight for this was 1.5 pood or ~55#. It took me 16:16 to get it done. To be honest, the clean & jerk and the snatches weren’t that bad. The Turkish get-ups were really difficult skill-wise and I failed on a few of them simply because I couldn’t keep my arm locked out through getting all of the way up and down. I am thankful for Fio’s encouragement to stick with it because I really wanted to drop the weight just to finish the WOD.

In case you don’t know what a Turkish get-up is, check this video out (but imagine a kettle bell in place of the wife):

Last night (1/27/2011), Dave sent me a WOD to do at home. It was 100 sit-ups and 100 reverse sit-ups. Not for time, but more so to try and work in unbroken sets. I was able to do the sit-ups in sets of 25, but the reverse sit-ups were a whole other story. I could only do those in about sets of 10-15. When I do a lot of ab work, I get really bad cramps. It’s really irritating.

Pushin’

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Yesterday, Big Dave asked me if I could come in for a WOD. I think that he only wanted me to do a Tabata Run, but he told me to jump in on the strength WOD first. It was:

1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1: Strict Press
3 – 3 – 3 – 3 – 3: Push Press
5 – 5 – 5 – 5 – 5: Push Jerk

My numbers came out like this:

	1	2	3	4	5
SP	115#	135#	155#	165#	175#
PP	135#	145#	155#	165#	175#
PJ	155#	165#	175#	180#	185#

I was really happy with these results and I think that next time, I will go for heavier weights on the push presses and jerks. V posted some videos of my last 2 sets of push jerks. In case you are interested, here they are. I don’t know which is which:

The above was followed up with a Tabata Run on the treadmill. Thank goodness Dave stayed there the whole time. I was breathing REALLY hard around round 6 and probably would have rested more if not for his coaching.

Running & Wall Ball

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I was dreading my workout all day yesterday (Monday, 1/25/2011). The second I found out what it was, I didn’t want to do it, even though I know that the things that I don’t want to do are the things that I SHOULD be doing. Pretty good allegory for life, eh?

After Fio’s crazy warm up, the WOD was 5x:

20 wall ball @ 20#
400m run

I did the first 3 rounds unbroken, but my running is still abysmally slow. I tried to push my “speed”, if you want to even call it that, on the first few rounds before my energy had left. Overall, I was shooting for a sub 30 minute time, which, I think would have been excessive. I would have been more accurate in saying a sub 20 minute time, but either way, I win.

I finished in 18:56.