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Every time I go away on business, I have the intention of working out. This time, I think I was able to do it. I was able to get one WOD in last Tuesday (2/23/2010). I made this one to do in my hotel room:

10 rounds of

10 push ups
10 sit ups
10 squats
50 jump ropes

It took me right around 14 minutes to do this one. I didn’t have a stopwatch going. I just looked at the clock when I started and when I ended. I would have done double-unders, but I was on the 2nd floor and didn’t want to start heel smashing.

About 3 days later, my car was buried under 2-4 feet of snow depending on the side of the vehicle. I totally consider this a WOD. I worked like an animal for over an hour to get it completely dug out. Next time I am in a blizzard, I will see if I can improve on my time =)

It seems like every time I take a break from the gym, the workout that is planned for when I come back is really hard. In fact, I sometimes think that the coaches sit around and say “Bryan’s coming back today, what’s really hard for him?”.

No, I don’t REALLY think that, but it sure does feel like it. In fact, I don’t think it would matter what work out was picked for my first one back. It will pretty much always suck.

Last night’s WOD was deceptively hard:

7 rounds of

10 db cleans (Rx 40lb in each hand)
10 burpees

There it is again. Just 2 things. 70 times. Argh. This took me longer than I would have liked. I clocked in at 15:56 after lots of breaks. Better luck next time kid…

Week Ending Workouts

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Friday night (2/19/2010), we did “Running Phat Cindy”. I have done regular Cindy before with a personal record of 17 rounds. “Running Phat Cindy” is also AMARP in 20 minutes, but there’s now a run and the squats are weighted:

400m run
5 pull ups
10 push ups
15 back squats (65lbs)

I Rx’d this one and got five full rounds in. In fact, I completed my last squat as the clock was changing from 0:01 to 0:00. Just under the wire…

I didn’t feel so great on the runs for this one, but felt really good on all the other stuff. I guess I need more work on my running. I think that will be something that I will have to work on forever. The first 2 weren’t bad. After that, I took at least one walk break. Again, I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath.

Saturday (2/20/2010) morning, we took another crack at the “Fit Test” that we did back in November. This workout is:

1 minute of push ups
1 minute of sit ups
400m run
Tabata set of squats

My numbers for this were:

Push ups: 40 (previously 37)
Sit ups: 31 (previously 34)
400m run: 1:42 (previously 1:36ish)
Tabata squats: 104 (previously 150ish)

(I need to verify those numbers when I get home. I didn’t have my sheet on me when I wrote this.)

I didn’t do as well on this one as I did last time. The only thing that went up was push ups. I can probably make a few excuses as to why my performance wasn’t where it was last time like “I was tired”, “I was sore”, or “it was raining”. But really, I guess I really just didn’t do as well. Maybe those are legitimate factors, maybe they are not. I don’t know.

FML

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I will be the first to admit that I am an avid complainer. If you were to make a web 2.0 style “word cloud” of the things I complain about the most, the word “sore” would most likely be the largest word followed closely by “tired” being slightly smaller.

Mostly, my complaints aren’t about anything really important in the grand scheme of things. Maybe it’s important to me on that given day i.e. I can’t move my legs well enough to go from the bedroom to the kitchen to make myself breakfast. But, really, no one should care about these trivial complaints but me. I’m sure anyone that reads them on my statuses or hears me just thinks to themselves “Oh, that’s Bryan. He’s either sore or tired…” I don’t think anyone really cares about my complaints.

Occasionally, I will have a complaint about some larger issue. Most likely this will have to do with “the government” or some other type of large system that’s only out for making money and protecting their own interests.

Other people complain too. They complain about their family, their job, their house, their money, car, pets, etc. That’s fine. Hey, if I can complain, so can you.

One of my pet peeves lately, however, is acronym “FML”. This expression has been made popular by the site http://www.fmylife.com. If you are unfamiliar, “FML” means “Fuck My Life”. The site consists of people’s Facebook status like submissions about the bad stuff that happens to them during the day.

For example (from the site, just picked one):

Today, I went to the movies with my friends. A pretty redhead came on the screen. One of my guy friends leaned over to me and said, "Have you noticed there aren’t any pretty redheads in real life?" I guess he forgot what color my hair is. FML

I have tried to use “FML” in a Facebook or Twitter status here and there. Every time I have tried to use it lately, I have deleted it and really, just decided to leave it out.

I am not trying to sit on my high horse and criticize anyone that uses it. If you are an “FML” user, that’s fine. Keep on using it. You’re life must really suck. When I have tried to use “FML”, I can’t help but reflect on whether or not my life is really *that* bad. Let’s see:

I live in a nice house with my beautiful fiancÃ©.
I have an awesome family that I love.
I make enough money to eat well and do most of the things that I want to do as well as save for the future.

I wasn’t crushed under any falling buildings in an earthquake. My house hasn’t been destroyed by a natural disaster. I haven’t really ever had to struggle to make my bills or worry that there wouldn’t be food on the table or a roof over my head. No one really close to me has been involved in anything particularly horrible to my knowledge. Compared to someone in a third world country, I live like a king, in excess. I have more than they will probably ever have in their entire life. I am not bragging. I am simply stating a fact.

It feels wrong for me to say “FML” or “fuck my life” when I look at all that is NOT wrong with it. Granted, sucky things come up… medical bills, unexpected expenses, etc. But, is your little embarrassing moment really and truly summed up with “fuck my life”? Go cut yourself b/c you are probably an Emo kid.

Did your mom walk in on you getting it on with yourself? Believe me, she knows what’s going on. She will get over it. You will get over it. Oh, and yes, you will keep doing it. Just lock the door next time, dumb ass.

Did your kid spill soda all over your new car that you just picked up from getting detailed? Wow. That REALLY sucks. Fuck that man, your life is terrible. You should just throw that kid away. Better off they aren’t in your life anyway.

In case you are wondering, yes, I know that “FML” is just another “internet expression” and probably shouldn’t really be taken all that seriously. Still though, I can’t help but think about all of these things when I write it in a status. I have the feeling that if someone from harder times read it, they would say something like “stupid kid… you don’t know what a hard life is… quit your bitching”.

So I ask you. Is your life really THAT bad that you feel compelled to say that? Really?

Just sayin’…

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I am not trying to make a political statement here. I just noticed this small discrepancy in my twitter feed this morning between CNN & Fox News. It made me wonder. How can two giant news organizations not have the same answer for this? Was he 85 or 86? Maybe the person writing the twitter update made a typo.

I don’t know. It just makes me wonder about what other, more important factual items are slightly different.

SUCK!

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The last few workouts have been nothing short of brutal. On Friday (2/12/2010), we did this lovely number:

10 cleans
10 burpees
10 jerks
10 burpees
10 clean & jerks
10 burpees
10 jerks
10 burpees
10 cleans

I finished this one on 10:44 (Rx’d with a 135lb bar). I really liked this one. It was fun and pretty challenging.

I didn’t go to open gym on Saturday because we had the garage sale for Big Brothers Big Sisters. Thanks to the people who helped with their time and to the people that donated things to sell. Mostly, thanks to Crossfit Cedar Park for letting us do it there. It was a great location and we raised about $300. Not bad for 1/2 a Saturday of selling people’s junk.

Last night (2/15/2010), I went to the gym in the morning to drop off some macaroons to sell. While I was there, I happened to see the WOD and then dreaded it for the rest of the day. When I arrived at 5pm, I warmed up and then had butterflies until this thing started:

4 burpees on the minute while completing:

20 Thrusters
20 Sumo Deadlift High Pulls
20 Push Jerks
20 Overhead Squats
20 Front Squats

It didn’t seem SO bad when I first started, but, as with any “on the minute do something” workout, it got bad really fast. The fastest time for this workout in the sectionals was in between 3 and 4 minutes. Wow!

The longer time goes on, the more frustrating this thing gets. Just as you’re about to pick the bar up, the clock beeps and it’s time to do burpees again. BLARG!

Anyway, my time was 14:42. I was pretty happy with this, mostly that I finished in under 20 minutes.

Squatty Fran

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I checked the WOD yesterday around lunch time and didn’t really have any ill feeling towards it. Really, I just thought to myself “that’s a lot like Fran… we don’t have to get the weight overhead, but it’s more, and there’s a 1000m row… we’ll see how this goes”.

So, here’s what we did last night:

1000m row
21 – 15 – 9 {Front Squat (135lb Rx), Pull Up}

soreness of the past two workouts

Waaaa.

Black Box Crossfit in NYC

Speaking of wedding and relationship stuff, today’s our 2 year anniversary! I know 2 years isn’t a terribly long time and that you old timers that read this are saying something like “stupid kid, 2 years is nothing!”. Well, you are right, but it’s a milestone for me as no relationship I have been in has made it past the 2 year mark.

We have been doing a lot of wedding planning lately and while stressful, I feel that I am finally beginning to see past the time, effort, stress, and money suck of planning all of this so that I can actually focus on marrying a beautiful, awesome woman.

Fran & Open Gym

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Fran, Fran, Fran… that word has been going around our Crossfit gym quite a bit for the last few weeks. Granted there’s a “Fran Challenge” going on right now, so, it’s on everyone’s mind.

Eight months into Crossfitting and I have yet to do Fran, until this passed Friday. I have seen people do it. I have seen videos on YouTube of it. I tried my best to coach V when she took on Fran for her 2nd time this past week… I’m not really a good coach as in, I am not very forceful with my instruction, but I tried.

Needless to say, watching all of these people do it, and seeing the videos that I have seen caused quite a bit of anxiety for me as it became clear that I would have to do this on Friday.

If you read my last post, you know that I had some neck issues from sleeping all weird at the beginning of the week. Thankfully, those were resolved. By the time I got to class on Friday, all that was left was some upper back soreness from the night of 100 cleans.

So, here’s Fran (2/5/2010):

21 – 15 – 9 {Thrusters (95lb), Pull ups}

That’s it… 45 reps of both. Simple, right? WRONG. This was probably the most uncomfortable 7 minutes and 51 seconds (that’s right, 7:51 Rx’d), that I have spent in my time doing Crossfit type workouts.

All I could think of during the entire time was that I could not catch my breath. It seemed like “air” was always about 5 steps ahead of me. Honestly, it was miserable. I had Nikki, Jody, Wladi, and others shouting at me to keep moving, get on the thrusters, get on the pull ups but “air” became all I could think about. I think I actually saw spots and colors during the 21’s. I definitely felt light headed and had to take a few seconds to get back on it.

Honestly, I have never felt anything like that in my life. My guess, is that using opposing muscle groups as this workout calls for, basically means that every cell in your body is screaming for oxygen at the same time.

All in all, I am happy with my time and that I was able to do it Rx’d as well. Hopefully next time won’t be for a while and I will shave some time off.

Yesterday (2/6/2010), V and I went to open gym. The workout that Nikki came up with for us was rough:

400m run
7 thrusters (115lb, Rx was 135lb, but that was too much)
15 burpees

This one felt never ending. In fact, all of the 5 rounders feel never ending. I got a good feeling of accomplishment from this one as I was able to do each of the thruster sets unbroken. I did OK on the runs too. I didn’t really take too many walking breaks.

My time was 27:01.

Night of 100 Cleans

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I was very apprehensive about going to work out last night. If you read my previous post, you know about my current physical problem du jour (i.e. I hurt my neck sleeping). Since Monday, I have been doing rehab exercises and using the roller quite a bit to get in there and massage things out.

Yesterday around 4pm, I felt really good. I didn’t have any pain and I was rearing to go. I called the chiropractic office near my house that we have been wanting to go to for a while (Maximized Living in Cedar Park) to see if they had any appointments for today. They have split day hours, open in the morning for two hours and at night for two hours. There were no appointments open for me, so I decided to go to the gym. I figured I would rehab more if I needed to and try a light version of the WOD.

Yesterday’s WOD was:

4 cleans on the minute for 25 min

Followed by:

“5 minutes of fun”

The Rx for the cleans was 155lb for guys. I didn’t want to go Rx as I didn’t want to worry about tweaking my neck further. I tried a few with a modest 135lbs. They felt fine. I didn’t feel any stress on my neck and back. I knew though, that it was really important to keep my form very strict to avoid injury.

So, I started out with 135lb. Scott and Trevor happened to be around watching and were encouraging me to go up in weight. For sets 1-19, I think, I got the 4 reps in over the course of about 10-12 seconds. Bowing in to peer pressure (i.e. Scott and Trevor had the plates ready and I didn’t really have a choice, Trevor says), I went up to 145lb for sets 20-22, then again up to 155lb (Rx) for the last 3 sets.

This workout was HARD. Obviously it would have been WAY harder had I done it entirely Rx’d but, I hate taking chances when I am trying to get over an injury. I am happy that I took it slowly and cautiously building up the weight as I continued to feel OK. Today, I am working on stretching a lot and continued use of the Grid Roller.

These 100 cleans were followed up with “5 minutes of fun” which consists of:

1 min regular crunches
1 min oblique crunches (left)
1 min oblique crunches (right)
1 min reverse crunches or leg lifts (I did leg lifts)
1 min regular crunches

The scoring on this one is to count your total reps. I was cautious with this one too as crunches usually put a lot of stress on my neck. I counted 282 total reps. I was trying to find the last time we did this on my blog, but I guess I didn’t tag it. Oh well.

By-standing

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I hate being a bystander for anything that I am interested in.

Yesterday morning, I woke up somewhere around 4am tossing and turning, unable to find a spot that didn’t seem to put pressure on my neck and back. I am not really sure of what caused this; maybe just the position that I slept in, but it’s really annoying and my neck is still sore.

It’s that kind of pain where when you turn your head, the middle of your back hurts. Ugh.

I went to CrossFit last night and thought I would be able to do some stretches and maybe just do a really light workout. I told Dave what was going on and he suggested lots of chin tucks and that stretch where you put your hands behind your head and tilt your head back. I brought me over to Mike (PT director) and he pretty much said the same thing.

I spent the first 30 minutes of the class doing these rehab stretches and exercises. I used the foam roller a bit also. Overall, it felt a LOT better, but I still opted to not push it past and risk severely injuring myself.

V chose to revisit “Fran” after doing it just 3 or 4 days before. She asked me to get in her face for it and help her get her time down. If you know me, you probably don’t think of me as the “in your face” type of guy. Needless to say, I could have been way harder on her, but regardless, she still shaved 4 minutes off of her time (from 12:something to 8:08). I am really proud of her for the effort that she put forth. It was great to watch someone that you care so much about break through mental barriers and grow.

I think I might be out for the rest of the week, or, at least a few days until I can move my head around without my back hurting. While I hate being out and sitting on the sidelines, I would rather wait a few days or a week to completely heal rather than tweak it further and be out longer.

Coconut Flour Pancakes

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There are some paleo purists out there who will argue that cramming “paleo” ingredients into “Neolithic constructs” does not a paleo eater make. While most of the time I agree with this idea, sometimes, I just want a damn pancake.

I have tried 3 or 4 different recipes so far for “paleo pancakes”. Up until this point, they have been OK. Some didn’t really hold together; others just didn’t taste good. Also, they have all been almond flour based recipes.

This morning, I decided to try a recipe that was coconut flour based. A simple Google search for “coconut flour pancakes” turned this up:

http://www.comfybelly.com/2009/02/fluffy-coconut-flour-pancakes.html

The recipe was really simple to make and it was the closest thing I have seen to an actual wheat flour based pancake to date. I tried a few with blueberries which was OK, but I think generally, it’s lacking something. The texture and rigidity of the finished product was really good, but it was just a bit bland.

I think that these would make a great vehicle for both sweet and savory ingredients. I will experiment further with this recipe and post what I find if it’s good. Here’s the actual recipe if you are too lazy to click the link =)

This recipe makes about 5 to 6 medium-size pancakes.

Update on 12/6/09 The best way to insure fluffy pancakes is to separate the egg whites, whip them until you have fairly stiff peaks, and then blend the egg whites back into the batter.

Ingredients

3 large eggs or 4 small eggs

1 teaspoon of olive oil (or your oil of choice)

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon (optional)

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

1 teaspoon of honey or maple syrup

2 tablespoons of coconut flour

fresh or frozen blueberries (optional)

Preparation

In a bowl, add all the wet ingredients and whisk together until well blended.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, and whisk mixture again until well blended and frothy – this will get them even fluffier!

Add additional olive oil or butter to a frying pan on medium to low heat and let warm for a few minutes. Next, pour the batter into small circles in the frying pan without letting the edges of each circle touch. Keep the heat fairly low and let the pancakes heat up slowly and rise – about 3 to 5 minutes.

Wait until there are several bubbles appearing on top of the pancake circles and the edges are cooked, and then flip each pancake to cook the other side. This will not take long, so watch them carefully, and then move the pancakes onto another plate. Continue this until all the batter is gone.

Enjoy!