Tag Archives: Crossfit

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.

Weekend Workouts

Leave a reply

Friday was a relatively light work day. Normally, I go over to Jose’s house to work on Friday’s but he’s leaving for a trip, so we decided to work remotely. Since he had to go and pick up a van over lunch, I took the opportunity to accompany V to a Crossfit nooner.

3/5/2010 – Stairway to hell:

100 double unders (sub 300 singles)
90 back extensions
80 squats
70 sit ups
60 lunges (1 per step)
50 push ups
40 box jumps
30 KB swings (1.5 Pood)
20 burpees
10 pull ups

My time was 23:51 Rx. Well, 1/2 Rx? I did 300 singles, not double unders. I would have been there until the evening class if I would have tried. I guess I just need to work on them outside of WODs. Anyway… this workout seemed never ending. Even half way through, it still seemed like I had a ton of work still left to do. Sometimes, it’s just important to finish…

3/6/2010 – Saturday morning, we did the 300 challenge, a first for me.

25 pull ups
50 dead lifts (135lb Rx)
50 push ups
50 box jumps
50 floor wipers
50 KB clean & jerk (1 pood, 25 per arm)
25 pull ups

I came really close to finishing this one, but unfortunately, I will have to give myself a big, fat, DNF. I had 21 pull ups left when the cutoff time of 20 minutes came. Despite that, I am really proud of the effort that I put forth for this one.

I had a conversation with Lance after this WOD. I was lamenting the fact that I didn’t finish and he made a great point. He said that your body doesn’t care if you don’t finish. Your heart, lungs, cardio system, and muscles don’t give a crap. As long as you work hard, you have made a huge deposit into your “health account”. I wasn’t really feeling badly about myself, but this was really good to hear.

I was also really proud of V b/c she used the Rx weight for dead lifts. That’s right, ladies, 95lb dead lifts 50 times. That’s no joke. She also didn’t have to go down to her knees for the push ups. Can your girl do that? (Ryon, don’t answer)

Other than all that, it was a pretty, well… interesting weekend.

The chiropractor we have been going to told us about a place in Leander that sells grass fed beef and pork called the Sassy Pea market. We went there on Saturday to check it out and they had a pretty good selection of stuff. I would like to eventually buy 1/2 a cow and stash it in the freezer, but for now, we just got a few things to try; some short ribs, an arm roast, and some stir fry beef. They didn’t have any ground beef and they were out of pork.

They also have farm eggs, which makes me very happy.

We also had a conversation with them about selling our Perfectly Paleo products at their store. They did tell us that they are trying to do a little farmer’s market type deal and we might be able to sell there at some point. That’s a whole other blog post.

I am sore… and drained in every way I can imagine. Great way to start the week.

Welcome Back…

Leave a reply

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

1 Reply

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.

SUCK!

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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.

Rough Week

Leave a reply

This week was rough for me. Ever since the workout last Friday, I have had some really bad soreness in my legs. I have only experience soreness to this degree a handful of times since starting crossfit, but this one was a doozy.

By Wednesday of this week, I was still really stiff and sore, but decided it was time to get in there and move a bit. The workout was mostly OK except for the lunges. We did it “Fight Gone Bad” style:

3 rounds, 1 minute at each station – score reps:

Lunges
Pull Ups
KB Swings
Sit Ups
Row (count meters)

It’s typically pretty hard to “take it easy” at crossfit, especially when people are constantly egging you on to “go go go”. I made out with a total score of 818. Here’s how my reps came out:

Lunges: 21, 20, 18
Pull Ups: 16, 13, 10
KB Swing: 18, 20, 16
Sit Ups: 24, 21, 17
Row: 192, 209, 203

I ended up using lighter weights that I normally would. For the lunges, I used 20lb dumbbells and for the KB swings, I used a 25lb KB. I felt a bit less stiff after this workout but it was still bad.

Thursday night, I went to tai chi class. I got a good review of some of the lower ranked material, which I really did need. My legs we letting me know they were there pretty much the entire time.

Tonight’s workout looked like it was written for me in my current condition. I was really excited when I saw this one posted on the blog:

Shoulder to overhead any way: 3 – 3 – 3 – 3 – 3

I went a few more than 5 sets on this b/c I got close to 200lbs. At that point, Dave wouldn’t let me NOT try 200lb. My set broke down like this:

95 – 115 – 135 – 155 – 175 – 185 – 195 – 200

This was followed up by 3 rounds of:

250m row
15 burpees

I finished it in 7:13 and was gassed pretty much the whole time. It did work really well to loosen my legs up. They feel a lot better now. Hopefully they will be back to normal in a day or two.