Tag Archives: Crossfit

Back to Fio’s Class

I went to CFCP last night not really expecting much. I am really working on taking things slow, not worrying too much about time and using light weights. Here’s what we did last night:

Warm-up

10 (Squats & Burpees)
500m row
Stretching (really tight…argh)
GHDs/Back Extensions
Dead Hang Pull Ups
Ring Dips

Skill

Double Unders – I forgot my rope and had a really bad time with the ropes they had there. I hate the speed ropes.

WOD

3 rounds

400m run
21 Ring Push Ups
12 Back Squats (just the bar, 45#)

Time: 14:28.

Until I can workout normally and against the clock, I’m not really going to do the good/bad/overall thing.

I was able to do the squats and runs unbroken. I went really slow on the back squats because that is how I hurt my back and I really wanted to be conscious of what I was doing. The ring push ups felt fine. I just took breaks as needed. The runs were slow as usual, but they were OK… didn’t hurt.

It’s nice to be back but I really am finding that I need to make a real concerted effort to not rush based on watching the clock.

Back At It

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Lots has happened since the last post.

I went to open gym this morning and wasn’t sure if I would workout with the group or not. I ended up being in a group with the Goldbergs, Mike Tillman, and Sonny. It was a great reminder that CrossFit is customizable and modifiable for any fitness level, injury, etc. Nikki (I know I will regret saying this at some point) gave us a really easy WOD. Now, I say “easy” because I couldn’t Rx the KB swings. I am keeping it light due to my back still healing. We started off with a warm up, which really got me breathing hard. Being away SUCKS. After the warm up, we went outside and did some more stretching/sprints, then came in and broke up into teams of 5 to complete:

3k row
300 KB Swings
300 push ups

Our team got it done in just under 13 minutes. After that WOD, we went outside and did some Tabata running and squats. Lastly, we came inside to do 5 minutes of fun which didn’t feel so great. Still thought, it was good to get back in there and move around.

In other news, I was finally able to finish the shelving in the closet in the baby’s room. Here are some pics:

Finished closet:

I had to borrow Matt’s dremel tool as I needed to make my own notches to inset the hanger rod clips into these 16″ brackets. FYI, if you ever go to Lowes to look for this kind of shelving, understand the Rubbermaid makes 2 lines, HomeFree (for closets) and FastTrack (for pantries and what I bought). If you want like, accessories, hanger rods, etc, you need to get HomeFree, but then you are stuck with 12″ depth shelves. I wanted to get as much out of the closet as possible, so I bought 16″ depth shelves. Well, the brackets for the 16″ selves DO NOT have the extra notch needed to put the hanger rod clips in. COME ON.

So, talking to my dad about it, he thought a dremel could be used to cut the notches in myself. He was right and it worked just great. I added the zip ties for a little extra insurance that they don’t fall out:

Lastly, it’s days like this that I wish I had a pickup. I got a call from Babies R Us that the crib has come in, but I am not sure if it will fit in my car. Also, we bought a new dining room table last night which came at a really great deal, but I can’t fit the box that has the tabletop in it in my car. Argh. I hate nothing more than asking people for help. I feel terrible asking people who have pickups to help me out, but I am lucky that I have nice friends that are willing to do it.

CFCP Total Finals

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The finals for the CFCP total challenge were today. I have to say that I was really apprehensive about it as I didn’t get 6 full weeks of working out in due to travel. Also, I haven’t really been working these lifts. On top of that, I slept horribly last night.

Anyway, I decided that I would just give it my best and do whatever I could do.

We started with back squats, my least favorite of the three lifts. I started with 335# which was where I ended last time. No problem. Then, I went up to 345#. Again no problem. For my last set, I was going for 355#. I grabbed the bar, racked it, stepped back, got down, the as I started pushing back up, I heard a very loud POP in my lower back.

Ouch.

Josh helped me dump the weight and I immediately laid down. Robin came over pretty quickly and had me do a few stretches, press ups, etc.

It didn’t feel horrible, but I was pretty sure I was done for the day. I could probably have done the strict presses, but there’s no way I was dead lifting 445# in that condition. I would have just injured myself further.

The worst part of this all is that my mother and grandmother came to watch this. In being a member of this gym and doing this stuff for about a year and a half, I have rarely injured myself. The worst that’s really happened to me thus far has been muscle soreness.

Oh well. It’s a sport, after all and sports will have injuries from time to time. I guess we will just need to see how long this one takes to get better. Right now, it’s iced.

I was really disappointed that I had to leave. I am really proud of the rest of
my friends that went on, finished, and showed incredible progress over the course of the 6 week challenge. You guys rock and inspire me.

Rest Day

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I am taking a day off as we have the finals for the CrossFit Total challenge tomorrow. I will talk more about that later, but for now, here’s what we did last night:

20 push press
400m run

Time: 9:23

I had Chris on my ass the entire time during this WOD (congrats on your first Rx, buddy!), so it was really good incentive to push through when I really just wanted to chill out for a few seconds. I’m going to do the good, bad, overall thing for this one b/c it was short and sweet. I knocked out as many push presses as I could at a time (first round unbroken, 2nd and 3rd broke at 10). I pushed on the runs to stay ahead.

After these past 3 days, I am pretty sore. I am already setting myself up mentally to not do so well tomorrow on my total. “I’m sore”, “I’m tired”, etc… suck it up.

Last time, it was 945# (445# DL, 335# back squat, 165# press). I will hopefully go up a bit on each. The other part that is making me nervous is that in 6 weeks, I have had to travel quite a bit and I haven’t really worked any of these movements in that time. I guess it will be an interesting experiment to see if any of the other training has made these numbers go up.

Diane

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I had mixed feelings when I walked into the box last night and saw this one. Dead lifts? Yay! Hand stand push ups? No!

Before all that though, we did a bunch of stuff which goes to show you that “our warm up is your workout”.

Warm up:

Jog 400m
Lunge Stretch
Lunge Cross
10 burpees
3x {6 power cleans, 10 GHD sit ups, 10 GHD back extensions}
10 burpees

Skill:

“Death By Double Unders” – 10 – 20 – 30 – 40 – 50 unbroken. I PR’d again on these and did 20 consecutive. I never did make it to 30 though…

WOD:

21 – 15 – 9

Dead lift (225#)
HSPU (Green + Blue Bands)

Time: 9:24

There’s not really much to write about this one. The dead lifts were OK. I took breaks as needed and watched my form closely. The HSPU were interesting as it was the first time I had done them on the bands. I almost fell forward a few times, but eventually got used to catching the band with my feet.

More WODs

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Saturday 10/9/2010

I really didn’t think I’d make it to open gym as I had gotten in really late from Nashville on Friday night. Luckily, my beautiful wife stirred me from my slumber and I was able to muddle through the workout that Nikki planned for us, which was:

5x – Weighted, whatever you want to carry; Run to Krispy Kreme, do 13 squats, run back.

I chose the weighted vest. I was just going to use the vest, then caught crap from the class. I then picked up a 10# medicine ball and used that too.

There was no timing for this WOD, but Nikki gave me an “A”. It was a good workout.

Tuesday 10/12/2010

Starting my week of unlimited WODs, I started out with this little number in Fio’s class.

35 Double-unders
25 Push ups
15 Pull ups

I got this one done in 18:52.

The good.

The double-unders (??). My first and last rounds were rockin’. I am finally starting to get these stupid things. People have been telling me over and over that I am jumping too fast but I never really got it. I think last night, I just got tired and started jumping slower. Just like that, I PR’d with 18 in a row.

The push ups and pull ups were fine. I worked through them as needed. My only frustration was that I couldn’t find a comfortable spot on the bar to do my pull ups.

The bad.

The double-unders (!!). My second and third rounds outright sucked. I was getting one and two at a time because I was getting frustrated and watching Trevor smoke me. Damn you, Trevor!! =) Just kidding.

Overall.

As you will probably notice, I have been dialing back a little bit on the WODs. I am trying to focus more on consistent sustained movement and not so much stressing my body out all crazylike. After reading the “Cortisol” chapter of Robb Wolf’s book, I am wondering if this level of intensity is what I specifically need for my “situation” read: fat & need to lean out.

I have started writing in my food log again. I want one of the CFCP coaches to take a look at it sometime soon after I accumulate more days in there. I have to say, that I really haven’t been eating AS much as I used to. I think over the past 6-8 months, I have been falling into that “hoover” mentality and eating tons of stuff. I have found recently, that if I really pay attention, most of the time, I’m not hungry anymore about 3/4 of the way through, so I’ve been stopping. Hopefully, with working out, creating a bit of a caloric deficit, sleeping better, and being not so stressed out, some of this weight will start to go away.

Additionally, I have have dropped my carbohydrate intake for the day. For a while, I was focusing on staying in the 50g/day range, which is what people like Mark Sission recommend for sustained fat loss, and not seeing any results, I decided to drop it down to about 20g. I find that, to stay in this range, I need to eat a lot more green vegetables (instead of tomato saucy type things which have WAY more carbohydrate than I had previously realized). Also, I have been focusing more on eating leaner cuts of meat rather than bacon every morning.

Out of sheer curiosity, I went to Walgreen’s and purchased some ketone test strips. I know that these aren’t the most accurate things in the world, but I was curious to see if I was producing ketones (Ketones are the water soluble part of fat molecules. After your body cleaves the fat molecule up, you are left with different pieces, ketones being one of them. Lots of tissues in the body can run on ketones as fuel instead of glucose i.e. sugar). If I understand Robb and others correctly, if you are in ketosis, it’s a pretty good indicator that your body has used up whatever sugar stores you had and is now operating/running on fat. This is a good thing for losing fat and leaning out.

Last week, when I was in Nashville, I checked and there weren’t many. I was pretty surprised to see a really low ketone count. I mean, I am keeping my carbs around 50g/day, what gives?! Apparently, I was not being careful enough. Since paying WAY more attention to how much I am taking in, the test strips indicate a much higher ketone count. I am hoping that keeping my carbs relatively low like this will help. Basically, I am eating tons of veggies and a good amount, but not as much as previously, meat. NOM.

I have been trying really hard to control my stress and get better sleep. I think I am doing OK on both… as best as I can be doing, anyway, given my current situation.

3 x 800 = 1.5m

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Last night, I hit up CrossFit Music City again for my last WOD there. I brought along a guy that I have been talking about CrossFit to in the office here. They put him through a short 3-rounder and he loved it! Another convert… my work is done here.

As for our WOD, all we had to do was 3x 800m run with 2 minutes in between for rest. My times were as follows:

4:17
4:28
4:30

Not too bad, I think. In total, that’s 1.5 miles in 17:15. I tried to push my pace when I could, but there were definitely times where I needed to back off and not overload myself to the point where I would have to walk.

After the WOD, I headed over to Ted’s Montana Grill and got a delicious buffalo rib eye with some broccoli, asparagus, mushrooms, and onions. Absolutely delicious.

Thanks again to CrossFit Music City for letting me get some WODs in this week. As with most CrossFit boxes, everyone was super nice, welcoming, and supportive. If you are ever in the Nashville area, make sure you go check them out and get a WOD on. Ask for Mario.

Just keep moving…

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I am here in Nashville again this week. I resolved that I would hit up CF Music City 2x this week sot that I can get my WODs in. I really didn’t feel like going tonight, but I felt better once I got to the gym and started moving.

People are really nice there and tonight, I finally got to meet Mario, the owner who was also a really nice guy. The WOD was:

5x (22 minute cap)

7 thrusters (115#)
7 burpees
7 GHD sit ups
1 suicide*

My time was 15:11.

The good.

I kept moving. I didn’t have any intention of breathing fire on this WOD. I kept a relatively consistent pace and did 4 of the 5 sets of thrusters unbroken.

The bad.

My “sprints” weren’t really SPRINTS. They were more like speed-walking.

Overall.

I had no intention of breathing fire during this WOD. All I wanted to do was keep moving, and that’s what I did. I finished well before the cut off and actually had one of the better times of the people that were in class.

*Place 4 cones down the length of the gym. Sprint to the first, then back to the starting line, then the second, etc.

Open Gym

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I have been exhausted lately. Just really fucking tapped out. I few months before I got married, I felt this same way. Tired, exhausted, dragging. Well, I have been super stressed and that feeling of tired death feels like it’s hung around my neck with every workout. A little dramatic? Maybe, but just trying to get the point across.

Jody had what I thought was going to be a fun (aren’t they all before you start doing them?) WOD today. She called it “Tag Team Running Cindy”. You team up with someone and while one member is running a 400m, the other does as many rounds of “Cindy” as possible. She said to make it harder, you could run with a plate, to which I replied “I have to carry my fat ass 400m… I don’t need a plate thankyouvermuch”.

Anyway, I teamed up with Sonny and we got to work. All in all, we finished 17 rounds + 2 pull ups. Not great, not horrible. I did the best that I could given my current situation.

I have been feeling lots of “I used to”‘s lately which I will probably go into in an entirely different post, but today, I guess what’s important is that I went, I did something, and I didn’t quit even though I really wanted to.

Jody followed that WOD up with 5 minutes of fun to which I scored 102. That sucked.

Kelley… again.

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Dam you, Fio. Damn you.

Today’s WOD was, yes, Kelley. Good lord. I did this WOD a few weeks ago in Nashville at CrossFit Music City and it just blew.

Warm up

20s hand stand hold
12 GHD sit ups
12 GHD back extensions
3x push press at 75-80% 1RM (135#)

Skill – Snatch balance – Did this with PVC, 45#, 65#, then 95#.

WOD – Kelley

5x (yes, 5x)

400m run
30 wall ball (20#)
30 box jumps (I stepped, 22″ box)

Time: 35:26.

The good.

Well, I came in 20s quicker than last time and I used a taller box. I guess that’s good. The first part of most of my 400s were really good as they are down hill. The return, not so much.

The bad.

I took less walk breaks than last time, but I still had lots of times where I just had no air and really wanted to quit.

Overall.

I had much better sustained energy than I did last time. It was still killer, but I felt overall better than last time. Maybe it was just the type of day that I had last time. I don’t know. Either way, it was 35 minutes of suck, but a great workout nonetheless.