Tag Archives: Workout

Fran & Open Gym

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.

Rough Week

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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.

Week of Rowing

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Both of my paid workouts this week had 5 rounds of 500m rowing. Eh. My whole body hurts… it hurt already, then last night, I was the only one to show up for class, so Dave & Wladi made me do this:

500m row
10 back squats (185lbs)

This took me 19:37. I was really trying to beat out my friend Ryan who did this in 17 and change… I was doing really well too until I hit my 4th round. By that time, my legs were all but shot and I couldn’t do more than 2-3 squats at a time. Still, I am happy to have finished in under 20.

This morning for open gym we did 2 WODs, both with a partner, both 3 sets each, both for time. The first was:

3 rounds (taking turns)

5 push ups
7 squats (used a 25lb dumbbell and did it like a goblet squat)
9 burpees

The second one was also 3 rounds (taking turns)

200m run
7 wall balls (14lb)
9 SDHP (25lb kettlebell)

I didn’t track the times that me and V got on these. I am really proud of her for doing good full push ups on everything during these workouts. Sure, it took a little longer, but that’s the only place the strength will come from. Plus it gave me rest which I really needed today. I am so damn sore from yesterday that everything today just felt absolutely awful. I am not kidding. Victoria even pointed out to Dave that I looked really miserable while running. And I was. I hear Dave did a little impression of me… I’d love to see that =)

Dead Row Ups

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I haven’t written about it on this blog, but this past weekend we both had stomach viruses. Victoria got it from the kids in her class and had it REALLY bad. So bad in fact that she had to go to the ER really early on Friday morning.

After the ER visit, she felt a lot better. It was inevitable, though, that I would get it… which I did the following day. Mine was not nearly as severe as hers but it is lasting longer. I haven’t yet gotten to the stage where I can eat my normal diet all day every day. Things like meat and vegetable are still sort of nasty sounding at times.

Anyway. I felt better enough to go workout last night. Since I wasn’t feeling completely better I made a little deal with myself that I would take it slow, do what I could, and generally just not push as hard as I normally would.

The workout was 5 horrible rounds of:

500m row
30 sit ups
15 dead lifts (Rx’d @ 195lbs)

I think I finished this in 25:06 (it might have been 25:04, but I don’t remember). If you read my blog, you know that like to do some math when we do long workouts like this so here goes.

Total Work Done

2500m rowed (that’s a little over 2 miles, I think)
150 sit ups
14,625lbs dead lifted (that’s 7.3125 tons)

Victoria cracked a joke when I said I would take the sit ups slow. She said something along the lines of implying I was already doing that. Funny. Well, I took them slower than I normally go. During the warm up sit ups (2 sets of 15), I literally felt like I was going to hurl every time I sat up. I think this was a good choice.

I tried to keep a good ~2min pace on the rows. I think at one point I was in the ~2:30 area, but quickly got it back down after some heckling from the coaches.

The dead lifts were challenging as well and I tried to take them in small sub sets. They also made me feel like I was going to hurl. Hopefully today won’t be as bad and I can push a little harder.

18 Minutes of fun…

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… if by “fun” you mean “breathing really hard and feeling like death” then, yes, fun. This workout was pretty challenging but all kidding aside, it was fun. Here it is:

3 minutes each of

Row
Clean & Jerk (Rx – 135lbs)
Jump Rope

This workout is 18 minutes long no matter what your fitness level is. We were told to calculate a score by adding calories burned on rower + number of clean & jerk reps + number of jumps. My total came out to be 713, which I was pretty proud of. Here’s how my reps looked:

	1	2	Total
Row	50 cals	37 cals	87
Clean & Jerk	12 reps	13 reps	25
Jump Rope	309 jumps	292 jumps	601
	371	342	713

Wow! I came out swinging! The first round felt great! I felt strong on the row and clean & jerks. I got into a great rhythm on the jump rope. We got a 1 minute rest before round 2, then it all went to crap. I felt like I was rowing as hard as I could on round 2, but I am sure if I were in a real boat, I’d have been slowly drifting down a lake.

The clean & jerks were worse. I felt gassed and weak every time I tried to get a rep. To my credit though, I didn’t mess any up or waste any reps like the last workout with cleans. The fact that I got one more clean on my second round can only be attributed to Wladi yelling at me to get back on the bar and do one more.

I was trying like hell to get to 300 jumps on the second round. I had Duan AND Johnny U encouraging me to go but I just kept tripping up on the last 50 or so jumps. Close… maybe next time.

When will I learn…

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… that it’s NEVER easy despite how I think it looks written out? I think I should just make a template for these posts as I am about to say again that I didn’t feel like working out last night. I was drained from the day and it’s activities. With all of that, I didn’t want to do anything at all.

The workout last night was all bodyweight (except for the v-twists):

15 – 9 – 6

V-Twists (20lb medicine ball)
Lunges
Mountain Climbers
Push ups
Sit ups

I really thought, for some reason that I’d get this done in 10-15. I was wrong. Once I started in on this one, I knew it was going to be closer to 20. In fact, it was 19:23.

If you add it up, it’s 90 reps of everything (v-twists, lunges, and mountain climbers were actually double b/c you had to the amount on BOTH sides), which is more than a 21-15-9 workout (double in fact as 21+15+9 =45).

Again, ab work was my weakest link and slowed me down the most. The v-twists followed by sit ups killed.

In other news, last night for dinner, I tried my hand at some home made gyro meat. My grandmother recently gave me a vertical rotisserie that she had just sitting her garage (boxed, unused). I found a recipe on foodnetwork.com by Alton Brown, which, cannot be bad. I was a little nervous about how it would turn out, but it was really just delicious.

As we are paleo and hardly ever eat dairy (i.e. no Tzatziki sauce), I made a lemon/olive oil dip for the meat. Overall it was delicious and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Here’s the recipe if you are interested:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/gyro-meat-with-tzatziki-sauce-recipe/index.html

New Dead Lift Max

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I didn’t really feel good today. I woke up early to take my grandparents to the eye doc. My grandfather has to get his eyes dilated and well, he can’t really drive after that, so I was their humble driver.

I got home and worked for a while, then I just didn’t feel good. My stomach hurt, I was tired, I felt very blah. I didn’t feel like doing anything physical tonight. At any rate, I sucked it up and decided to go to class (also b/c I had to bring V’s bag of clothes hehe).

There was almost no one there tonight b/c of the UT game. Whatever.

The workout tonight was:

3 – 3 – 3 – 2 – 2 – 1 Dead lifts
Tabata Pull ups

Both V and I hit PRs tonight on dead lifts. This stuff is really paying off and there’s no better way to gauge it than “I can lift heavier shit than 5 months ago”.

My sets looked like this:

1) 315lbs
2) 325lbs
3) 335lbs
4) 355lbs
5) 380lbs
6) 405lbs
7) 410lbs (this was a bonus b/c I didn’t really have much problem with 405lbs).

I have a feeling that I could have maybe bumped it up a but more, but I was starting to get fatigued and I didn’t want my form to suffer. There will always be a next time. It’s only January and I have already surpassed my goal for a 405lb dead lift. W00t!

Needless to say, my grip was shit when we got to pull ups. I got 36 in over 8 20s sets. Ouch.

You’re Pushing It

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… well, I am, but that was all I could think of for a title.

Despite my (still) super sore legs and general malaise at the end of the day yesterday, I decided to drag my sorry ass to work out at the 5pm class. I checked the workout on the site and saw that there was no running. My spirits were uplifted slightly due to this AND the fact that I felt I could wear my Vibrams. When we got there, I was pretty nervous when Dave said “let’s go outside”.

I have never run in my Virbrams. Dave gave us the choice of either a Tabata sprint OR “Death By 10 Meters”. I lobbied for Tabata sprint, because that’s a 4 minute thing as opposed to potentially 20+ minutes for DBTM. It was effing cold out and I wanted to get back inside ASAP. Tabata sprint it was.

My first few sprints were great, actually. Wearing the Vibrams is a constant reminder for me to try to POSE and not smash my heals on the ground. I did smash my heals a few times and I quickly switched back to POSE. It also helped that I kept hearing Dave scream “PULL! PULL! PULL!”.

When we got back inside, the workout was:

40 push press (65lbs)
30 squats
20 ring dips
10 double-unders

Looks simple, eh? I don’t know what I did to deserve this punishment, but I finished it in 15:33. I hear I still beat a 55 year old man by about 18 seconds. Thank goodness =).

The push presses were, surprisingly NOT the hardest part of this thing. They were challenging, yes, but the ring dips were by far the things that made me want to throw a tantrum, throw up, then quit. Johnny U didn’t so I guess I couldn’t either.

The squats went by pretty quickly. I did my first set unbroken, my second set in breaks, then, with Chad’s coaching (i.e. “Do this set unbroken, don’t stop, I don’t care if it hurts.”) my third set unbroken. Nice.

I did my first set of ring dips 1-3 at a time with some kipping to mostly full reps. The rest of the sets were pretty much me jumping up and holding myself for a second or 2 before crashing back down to the ground. They seemed never ending.

The double-unders also got me frustrated. I did the first set of them alternating between singles and doubles, only counting the doubles. The next two sets were 30 singles. I tried a bunch of times on the second set to get a double under, but just couldn’t do it. Oh well, I guess I need to practice those.

A Hobbling Start to 2010

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It looks like 2010 is finally here. Yay.

I commented on a post that my friend Stephanie wrote a few days ago regarding new year’s resolutions. Her posting is really good and I suggest you read it. Anyway, one of the things I mention in my comment was how this is the first year that I can remember that I am not resolving to “lose weight” or “get in shape”.

Since joining CrossFit in August 2009, I have been in the process of “loosing weight” and “getting in shape”. In fact, 2009 (the latter half) took us through quite a few changes in lifestyle that I am very happy with in the “health and fitness” area.

The first two workouts of 2010 have left me hobbling around like an old man. My quads are pretty much sore to the touch and mobility has been … difficult. If you read my blog, you are probably well aware that this is not a strange occurrence.

Friday Noon – New Year’s Day

AMRAP 10 min

10 OH Squat with PVC
7 Medicine Ball Cleans (14lb)
5 Burpees

A LOT of people showed up for this one. I would say 30ish (maybe more) people came. Nikki and Robin split us up into 2 large teams. Each team then made three rows. Squats in the back, then cleans, then burpees. You could not rotate to the next exercise until everyone on your entire team was done.

Our team got in 9 or 10 sets. I don’t really remember. We lost, but still got a really good workout. They followed this up with a Tabata sprint around the parking lot. There were some times were I actually got into the pose and felt really good, but we all know how I feel about running.

Saturday Morning – Open Gym

400m run
21 wall ball (20lbs)
12 pull ups

My time was 15:15.

I felt really horrible during this workout. I felt like I was going to have the runs during my runs. The second I set foot outside the door and started running, my stomach felt terrible. Couple that with the cold air and I can just complain all day long. Really, my biggest problem was that I never felt my lungs open up. Usually when we do these heavy cardio workouts, the running really sucks for me for a few minutes, then I can feel my body adapt and breathing gets easier. That never happened on this one. I felt like I was behind the whole time… I could never catch my breath.

At any rate, it was still a fun morning as Ryon and Stephanie came up to our CrossFit to workout with us. It was great having them there and I think they had a good time.

After this workout, V and I went to Massage Heights to cash in one of the Christmas presents that I bought for her/us. We had the couples room for 1.5 hours of blissful pain. I told the therapist that my legs needed the most work. Although I try to roll my legs out pretty regularly, the sides of my quads still get really tight and sore.

She did some pretty deep stuff on my back, which felt great/hurt like a mother fucker and then moved on to my legs. I had to hold back screams and probably some tears as she started digging into my IT bands. She went on to tell me that she thinks I have some adhesion going on between one of the muscles on my quad and my IT band. The only ways to get break this up are body work and stretching. I guess if I had to put ONE new year’s resolution into words, it would be to stretch a whole lot more than I do now.