Tag Archives: Workout

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.

Improvements on Running (?)

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I didn’t want to go to crossfit tonight. I didn’t feel like going to crossfit tonight. I felt like getting in bed and going to sleep. Work has been pretty heavy lately which has been taking a bit of a mental toll on me. But, damn it, I paid for 2x/week and I’m going to get it.

Tonight’s workout was another that I haven’t yet done. The warm up was:

10 reverse pull ups (aka ring rows)
10 burpees
10 squats

I got through 2 sets of this before I started feeling that crazy pressure in my head again. When I told Dave about it he had me do use the foam roller to stretch out my neck and upper chest. It started to feel better. Still though, I went lighter on the weight tonight that I normally would have because of this.

The workout was:

5 overhead squats
400m run
4 overhead squats
400m run
3 overhead squats
400m run
2 overhead squats
400m run
1 overhead squats

My time was 11:45 and I only used 65lbs. The squats were really easy and I need to use more weight next time. My biggest surprise about tonight’s workout was that I didn’t have to stop for a single walk break over the 4 runs. Usually after 2 runs, I need to start taking breaks. Although I wasn’t sprinting, I was running and didn’t have to stop for a breather.

The follow up workout was a lovely 100 jackknives with a 20lb medicine ball. I am not sure of what my time was, but I would guess it was in the 5-6 minute range.

Dead Lifts & The Runs

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I need to check CFCP’s schedule before I go. I am thankful that Dave is nice enough to let me workout when there’s no class going on. I walked in at noon today and there weren’t too many people around. Anyway…

The warm up was hard and sadly, I was tired after it. It was 2 rounds of 25 reps of GHD sit ups, jumping squats, and ring push ups. Ring push ups are hard! I have never done them before but there’s quite a bit more stabilization that needs to happen.

The main workout was:

11 dead lifts (Rx 225)
200m run (or red line sprint as it’s known at CFCP)

My time was 16:40.

I had some really weird head pressure during this workout. I was fine though the warm up and until we started. As soon as I started on round one, I got this really intense pressure in my head which made me slow down and take the workout a bit more cautiously. I wasn’t having problems handling the weight. It was a comfortable amount for what we were doing, but I had to stop and rest a few times because it was really something that I had never experienced before.

Its been about 2 hours now and my head does still hurt a little, but not nearly as bad as around my 2nd set.

Saturday Suffering & Mental Gymnastics

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This was a really busy weekend. I don’t even know where to start, really. I guess I’ll just start with Saturday morning…

We (Victoria and I) have never done a workout that was all kettle bell (that I can remember, anyway), so we decided to go to the free kettle bell class down at crossfit central. I have to say, I was pretty intimidated when I got there. It was the same feeling that I got when I went to the main pool at the Riata for the first time. It was the feeling of “I’m not even close to being attractive enough to allowed in here” and “I’m not even close to being fit enough to be allowed in here”. After being there for about five minutes, I realized that I was being silly because everyone was really nice! I also saw two people that I knew there that I had no idea were going (Andy and Sarah).

At any rate, the workout was challenging to say the least:

20 – 16 – 12 – 8 – 4 (60 total) of

Sprawl to high pull
Clean
Step-up

We did this in groups of three. Each did the number of reps for that round, then you rotated until each had done that number at each station. You couldn’t move on until everyone finished their reps. Out time was 14:55. Not bad. I used a 1 pood kettle bell and I think the box was 2′, not sure though.

After we got home Saturday, Victoria had to go get some wedding business taken care of and I had to straighten up the house. When she got home, she had to leave pretty quickly to go hang out with her little brother. I then had to leave to go to the kung fu seminar given by Elder Master Smith.

This seminar was eye opening and transformative, to say the least, but it’s too much to go into here. I will post something else about this. I sat down and tried to write about it, but I think it was just too much information and I am still processing on some level.

I sent an invite out Saturday night to a few friends to come over and watch UFC 104. It was last minute and no one but Ryon came over. I am thinking we can have the next one here too, but, I’ll give everyone a bit more notice =). It was a fun night full of delicious paleo food and some pretty damn good fights.

Sunday was another day of kung fu seminars. The first was about utilizing internal martial arts for sparring and fighting. Fantastic ideas here and honestly, a lot that I had just never thought about. I will say that Master Smith used me as a demo puppet for a slow motion fighting demo. He had me pinned up against the column in the school with his fist on my solar plexus. I can honestly say that I saw my life flash before me. That is one powerful guy.

We had a quick lunch then came back for Master Joe’s seminar which dealt with controlling your states of attention. Again, I will write about this somewhere else, but there was quite a bit of eye opening information in during this talk. Master Joe also did basically two sessions of open focus during this session and well, that is just heaven. If you have never heard of open focus, I strongly recommend you check it out (here’s a link to get you started: http://openfocus.com/)

After getting home from these seminars we just had a relaxing evening and eventually went to sleep. I must have been really tired as the heavy rain this morning that everyone seems to be complaining about didn’t wake me up at all.

More Improvements

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Man, it’s been a LONG day. It started out with Master Joe’s meteor fist class in the morning followed by another hour of kung fu class where we reviewed the 4 spear forms. Then I had a very busy and brain destroying day at work. All the while, with pain and limited mobility in my arms due to soreness from Monday’s workout.

Tonight’s workout was our baseline workout, which I did on August 19th, 2009… just about 2 months ago. The only different was this time, we did it three horrible times. The workout (in case you are too lazy to click the link) was:

500m row
40 squats
30 sit ups
20 push ups
10 pull ups

My times for each set were 5:00, 6:06, and 6:22.

What’s amazing to me about this workout and, well, crossfit in general is just the sheer amount of work you can make yourself do. As an example here, in 17:28, I was able to do:

1500m row
120 squats
90 sit ups
60 push ups
30 pull ups

Had you given me the workout in the above listing, I’d look at your and tell you that you are crazy. Breaking it down into manageable, yet still really challenging sets works really well. rec

I am really happy with my progress here. The first time I did the baseline workout, my time for one set was 5:40 and I was doing jumping pull ups. It’s great to see that I am doing something harder (pull ups with a resistance band, not jumping pull ups) and my time went down. It’s beautiful.

What isn’t beautiful is that I still can’t straighten my arms. I don’t think it’ll be better tomorrow.

Step up… or jump, whatever.

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Today’s workout was one of those where I have problems functioning afterwards. I had a hard time picking up my keys and then an even harder time getting the keys in the door when I got home. The workout was:

21 – 15 – 9

Box jumps (I stepped up onto a very large box, bigger than 2″, I think)
Hang squat cleans (65lbs, focused on form)
Pull ups (used the blue band, focused on kipping)

My time was 11:25.

Nikki did a pretty cool warm up that I can’t remember the name of (feel free to comment, Nikki). I am really enjoying learning these Olympic style lifts. They are so much fun!

I can feel a really big improvement in my pull ups. I can imagine that a year from now, I won’t even need a band anymore! That’s just crazy to think about when a few months ago, I could barely do a kip. Now, I can get about 3 kipping pull ups in at a time. Crazy!

Bear complex (Friday Part II)

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As I mentioned in my last post, a few of my friends did the “bear complex” WOD @ crossfit central yesterday. It looked like a lot of fun. Given the cardio nature of our workout this morning, I thought a little strength training wouldn’t hurt =).

The workout consists of five (5) rounds of the the following:

7 reps of…

Power clean
Front squat
Push press
Back Squat
Push press

Given the lesson I took from my workout with just hang cleans, I decided to be a little modest on this one as I have no idea what my capacity is for a workout like this. With that in mind, I started with 65lbs on the bar. My 5 sets broke down like this:

65lbs
75lbs
85lbs
90lbs
95lbs

In the end, I think that I could have done more weight, but it was still pretty damn challenging to do all of that without putting the bar down for the 7 reps. I will look forward to not working too hard over the weekend.

Lots of Jump Rope

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This morning’s workout was very similar to one I did a LONG time ago in Ryon’s Friday night class involving nothing but jump rope. The workout was:

4 minutes jump rope
1 minute rest
3 minutes jump rope
1 minute rest
2 minutes jump rope
1 minute rest
1 minutes jump rope
1 minute rest
30 seconds jump rope
1 minute rest
1 minutes jump rope
1 minute rest
2 minutes jump rope
1 minute rest
3 minutes jump rope
1 minute rest
4 minutes jump rope

I like this workout a lot. Since starting crossfit, I have paid more attention during repeat workouts to see if anything’s different. This time, I noticed a significant improvement in both my cardio during the workout AND my recovery time in between sets. All I can really remember last time from this workout was thinking I was going to die during and in between sets. This time, it wasn’t so bad.

Two of my friends did a workout yesterday at crossfit central that looked really run. I was thinking about trying it today in the garage as I have used my 2x @ Crossfit Cedar Park up for the week. If I do it today, I will post how it went.

Don’t leave me hangin’….

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I got to crossfit yesterday at around 5pm to workout with Duan again. The workout was:

3, 3, 3, 3, 3 – Hang cleans

I was not nearly as strong on these as I thought I would be. I started my first set at 95lbs, which was really easy, then, stupidly jumped up to 135lbs. I tried to do one, then had to drop it down to 115. My weights for my five sets went like this:

Set #1 – 95lbs
Set #2 – 115lbs
Set #3 – 135lbs
Set #4 – 115lbs
Set #5 – 115lbs

After my 3rd set, I tried to add more weight and it just wasn’t happening. I haven’t done tons of hang cleans since starting crossfit (or ever, for that matter), so I thought it’d be better to work on my form. The more I do these technical lifts, the more I see how important form is.

One interesting factor that I had never considered was the thickness of the bar. I never really paid any attention to this, but it was made really apparent to me yesterday. It seems that the bar that I was using was thicker (larger in diameter) than the bar that Duan was using. I tried the same weight on both bars (135lbs) and it seemed way easier on the thinner bar. Weird.

It’ll put hair on your chest…

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… only if you’re a guy. If you’re a girl, it’ll, um… I don’t know …

Today was one of those “we have to do what??!?!” kind of workouts.

I finally felt rested from the weekend and really looking forward to crossfit today. Today’s WOD changed that. I was exhausted after this:

15 “man-makers”* (25lb dumbbells)
50 squats (ass to ball tee-hee)

My time was 16:23.

I have talked on this blog before about how these workouts exercise your mind just as much as your body, muscles, and other systems. This workout was a real test of the old “I want to give up” reflex.

I realized pretty early on that 25lb dumbbells was not a great choice. Rx was 35lbs. Anyway, I guess what made it so hard is that the man-makers seem to take so long to do. When you look at the workout, you think “15’s not so bad”.

It seemed never ending.

Nevertheless, it was over in 16:23 and I feel more of a man for it.

*A man-maker is basically a burpee with weight and some added pain. This is a man-maker: