Legs ‘R Dead
I really didn’t want to work out this morning given the last 2 days of working out, but well, it’s the first day of the “Holly Jolly Challenge” at CFCP and I didn’t want to disappoint. I think I will name this one “Kindel’s Meaner Than Nikki’s Mean Workout”. Here it is:
- Run 1 mile
- 40 {kettle bell swing, sit up, squat}
- 3 400m runs
- 30 {kettle bell swing, sit up, squat}
- 2 400m runs
- 20 {kettle bell swing, sit up, squat}
- 400m run
- 10 {kettle bell swing, sit up, squat}
- It was not timed. You just had to finish… which I did, thankfully. I impressed myself greatly as I was able to run the entire 1 mile without stopping. My pace was just slightly faster than power walking, but hey, NO STOPPING! On subsequent 400m runs, I took maybe 2 walking breaks total over the course of 6 runs. Not bad in my book.
- After the workout we talked about paleo for a bit to get people up to speed on what’s expected during the challenge.
It was a good morning.
The Terrible Twenty
I had debates in my head about going to class this morning. Last night, I didn’t think I would be able to make it down to class this morning, but well, when the alarm went off, I actually felt good and rested.
It was a bigger class than usual, about 6 people. The workout was a really good one today. I felt like it hit all of my areas without really killing me. I am sure that I will still be a little sore, but I find that the more often I workout, the less sore I actually get. There seems to be a fine line.
Anyway, here’s the workout which we named the “terrible twenty” in honor of the 20th of November:
- 20 front kicks (each leg)
- 20 lunges (10 per leg)
- 20 burpees
- 20 floor washers (55lb barbell)
- 20 front squats (55lb barbell)
- 20 push ups
- 20 push presses (55lb barbell)
- 20 sit ups
- 20 kettle bell swings (40lb kb)
- 20 side kicks (each leg)
My time was 10:45.
On to work and other things today.
Tonight is the happy hour with CFCP to kick off the holly jolly challenge where we will be in teams of four to help keep each other on track through the holidays. Yet another thing that I love about the encouraging environment of the crossfit culture.
Otherwise, I have a seriously bad case of vacationitus. Although I am getting all of my work done, I am really having a hard time focusing with a 5 days weekend on tap for next week. I literally cannot wait to be away from my computer (mostly) for five days straight!
In other good news, my parents will be coming on December 9th to visit until the following week. That makes me really happy as I really miss them. I probably don’t tell them enough, but, I really do wish they were here all of the time. One day…
Back to work for me…
Leg Killer
OUCH!
This workout wasn’t named, so I made one up. Dave told me Nikki came up with this one, so I named it appropriately as “Nikki’s Mean Workout”. I am sure she can do worse, however.
Anyway, here it is:
- 300 jumps (double-unders if you are nuts)
- 200 lunges
- 100 squats
- 75 v-twists
- 50 sit ups
My time was 23:10.
Jody was the only other person in class with me. She did double-unders and only came in a minute after me. Good job!
I doubt I will be doing much walking in the next few days.
Grace
Yesterday was the first time I got to do “Grace”, another named workout from the crossfit archives. As with many workouts, it looks really simple and straightforward on the board:
- 30 clean & jerk for time
I found myself in an interesting personal dilemma last night. The Rx weight for this is 135lbs. I tried pressing 135lbs and it was a little dicey. I am not really that great on the technique for a jerk yet and I was honestly scared to try it out for the first time with that much weight.
While I should have used a weight somewhere in between 95lbs and 135lbs, I ended up doing the workout with 95lbs which is the women’s Rx weight. I was the only one in the class that didn’t do Rx =(.
I read a post on the CPCF blog a few months back where Nikki was asking how come people weren’t going heavy on their workouts. I remembered this posting after I got home last night. I think I feel prey to this fear of the weight.
My time for this workout was 2:36. It was challenging for me with 95lbs, but not “lay on the floor after the workout” challenging. I should have used more weight.
Here are some things I would like to work on as far as crossfit goes in the upcoming months:
- Keep working kipping pull ups.
- Schedule a skills session for pose running.
- Practice Olympic lifts with lower weight so that I can get more comfortable with them.
After crossfit last night, I headed down to meet Victoria at the KF school. I watched the lower belt class then joined in for the brown belt class. I hadn’t taken one of those in a while.
It was a good review and I was able to help one of the 2nd’s start on the sai kata, which is one of my favorites.
Three days of working out…
…makes Bryan a very tired guy.
Last night’s workout was really hard for me. It showed in my 400 runs. In my posting about progress with running, I thought I was starting to get these under my belt, but I feel somewhat set back. The workout was:
21 – 15 – 9
- Ring dips
- Box Jumps (20″ box)
- Kettle bell swings
- 400m run
My time for this was 16:06, which I wasn’t terribly happy with. I was able to do about 10 unassisted ring dips before I had to switch to using a red band (thanks for grabbing it, Nikki). My runs, as I stated above, sucked. The first one was OK, but then they got worse. By the third one, I had to take walk breaks and run really slowly because I got really bad cramps in my right side and shoulder.
On the positive side, I did all of the jumps and didn’t have to do any step ups.
Following this madness, we did what I referred to as “five minute abs”:
- 1 minute straight crunch
- 1 minute left side crunch
- 1 minute right side crunch
- 1 minute reverse crunch
- 1 minute straight crunch
I was able to bust out 256 total reps. Burn!
We did a good job of getting to bed early last night, but it was one of those nights where you just kind of toss and turn, then roll around for a bit. We were both tired, but neither of us could fall asleep.
Right as we were *finally* falling asleep, Bella and OC got into a really bad cat fight. They both drew a little blood which was a little frightening. If anyone knows how to deal with this, I’d love to hear your suggestions.
Since I really didn’t sleep well last night, I didn’t do so well this morning. I was wide awake at 4am so, getting out of bed wasn’t really a problem. When class started, I was pretty much done after the warm up. Argh.
The workout for this morning’s class was:
5 rounds for time
- 30 squats
- 20 SDHP (Sumo Deadlift High Pull)
- 10 burpees
My time on this was 15:35. I was pretty much in agony from round one on. The follow up for this was a nice Tabata set of sit ups. I realized on the fourth round that I wasn’t counting my reps. Doh! Oh well, maybe next time.
At any rate, my body is TIRED, so, no working out over the weekend! Tomorrow’s cheat day too, yay!
Not fit for the Armed Forces
I felt like I picked myself up and carried myself to work out yesterday. I had very little energy from a very hectic day but, I haven’t yet worked out this week, so in my mind, I didn’t really have a choice. The workout was the Army Fit Test followed by some other stuff. I am not sure, but I don’t think the Army would take me =).
The workout was:
- 400m run (as fast as you can)
- 1 minute of pushups (strict chest to deck)
- 1 minute of sit ups (strict all the way up and all the way down)
Followed by:
- Tabata squats
- Pull up ladder
My results for the fit test were:
- 400m run: 1:36 (way faster than I thought it would be)
- 1 min push ups: 38
- 1 min sit ups: 34
I was able to do 150 reps for tabata squats and again made it through 10 rounds (1 short of 11th) on the pull up ladder. I used a blue band. This is actually really good news. The last time we did a pull up ladder, I made it through only 9 rounds and I was using a stronger band. I like the continued progress I am seeing here.
On the sheet that we used to record results for the fit test, we had to list out five goals. Being that we didn’t have much time to think about them, I hastily listed these five:
- Dead lift 400lbs.
- Do 50 squats without a break.
- Do 10 kipping pull ups without a break.
- Learn hand stand push ups.
- Learn to not hate running.
I’m happy there are people out there that can make it in to defend our country, rights, and liberty b/c I don’t think I’d be accepted =).
I can only imagine what is in store for us today…
Stick a fork in ‘em…
… my arms, that is. They’re done.
I have been a sore whiny bitch from Angie for the past two days. Thankfully, my arms aren’t nearly as sore as the last time we did a ton of pull ups, but my whole upper body/back needs a mini vacation.
Thankfully, Crossfit CP knows just how to um… not give me a break =)
Today’s WOD was:
- 20 wall ball
- 20 burpees
- 20 wall ball
- 15 burpees
- 20 wall ball
- 10 burpees
- 20 wall ball
- 5 burpees
Doesn’t look like a lot, does it. That’s what I said. You’d think I would know better by now…
My time was 10:45 and every second of that WOD sucked.
On the bright side, our Ft. Hood pal Leslie came down to work out with us. Thankfully, she’s OK and was not affected by the terribleness that ensued at Ft. Hood in Killeen today. My heart goes out to those affected by that.
Also, we have our team for the challenge. Yay! Thanks to Jody and Paula for being on our team!
Crazy Dream
I had a really weird dream last night and I remember it in pretty good detail, so I thought you might like to know about it.
This dream started with me finding out I was royalty in some way. My palace, which I now had access to was, the top floor of some huge building. So, me and V go to this building to the top floor and the door recognizes me and opens. Through this door, it looks like a huge outdoor pool area and it’s all huge and open.
So we are confused. I *THINK* "damn, it’d be nice if there were an actual house here". Then a huge house falls into the pool from the sky, floats back up to the top, and settles. We go in to explore and the door closes behind us.
As we are exploring this house, weird things happen. Lights are weird, I see other people in mirrors and through doors doing the same thing that we are doing.
At some point, I decide that i need to go out for groceries amidst this craziness. This is really cool because in this dream I actually have rocket boots like Ironman, but none of the rest of the suit.
As I leave the house, flying to the supermarket (a. why is royalty grocery shopping; b) how am I going to get this crap home??) I realize that the house/property/palace is trying to kill me. It’s literally launching some kind of exploding thing at me. With this realization, I go back to the house.
We do some more exploring of the house and rooms. Again, lights are weird but this time, I can feel something in the house. Some presence and something sad and angry. I feel like it’s time to leave.
When I try to go out the front door (the same one we came in to) I can’t. It’s immovable.
I remember passing by a mirror and seeing other people inside. I try to get their attention to talk to them. I couldn’t hear anything they had to say, but we had a really basic conversation in which I learned that they are basically trapped too.
Now, I know that there’s some evil behind this. We go into the living room and start asking “who’s here?” and “why are you doing this?”.
Then I hear the name "Jenny". I don’t know a Jenny.
This is just weird.
Jenny is some little girl that died young and is now lonely and wants people to stay with her.
In some way I agreed to the terms that we would stay in the house with her for one full year by entering. I then realized that the people I saw in the mirror were other people that she had trapped in other iterations of her scheme.
At this point, I woke up.
School’d
Angie took me to school.
I haven’t done many crossfit named workouts yet. Thank goodness I had a chance to meet “Angie” tonight (can you sense the sarcasm?). Here’s what makes "Angie” so brutal:
- 100 pull ups
- 100 push ups
- 100 sit ups
- 100 squats
My time was 28:32. I used a blue band for my pull ups and did my push ups almost entirely strict. Granted, I had to do them in sets of 1 and 2 by the time I got past 45 or so. The pull ups alone took me about 10:30, then well, I knew I was toast.
I have to admit that there were quite a few times when I wanted to give up during this workout. Had I been doing it in my garage, I would say that there is a 90% change that I would have FV’d, but thanks to Dave, Wladi, and well, the rest of the class that was done working out when I was only 1/4 of the way done, I was able to finish it. Thanks guys!
I don’t want to see Angie again for a long time, but, I think next time, we will have a slightly improved relationship. Still beats being on conference calls =).
That’s all for now… I can’t keep my arms on the desk.