Tag Archives: Crossfit

Endurance and Power Cleans

This week, per Dave’s suggestion, I am adding in two CrossFit Endurance WODs. Monday (4/26/2010) was the first one:

10x Row 125m / 1 min rest

My set times were:

1) 22.9	6) 23.7
2) 23.0	7) 25.3
3) 23.0	8) 24.3
4) 24.1	9) 25.1
5) 25.2	10) 24.6

This was harder than I had anticipated. The willingness to push hard was gone by set 4. Still though, my last set was less than 2s different than my first.

Tuesday (4/27/2010) night, I had originally planned on skipping, but then saw the WOD and thought it looked fun, so I went. It was:

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 Power Clean (135lb Rx) with 200m run after each set

My time was 18:11. As usual, the running sucked. I just feel like a huge lumbering fool whenever I run any distance. Maybe I just should just accept the fact that I will just always suck at running. It just doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Sigh.

At Wladi’s suggestion, we followed the WOD up with a Tabata Row. I went a total of 868m. This is the first time I have actually tracked how far I have went. Pretty interesting.

5k and the Filthy Fifty

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Last Saturday (4/17/2010), we had the finals for the 5k challenge that we had been participating in at CFCP. When we ran this one the first time, four weeks ago, my time was 32:31. This time around, I did it in 30:50. That’s 1:40 in savings. Not too much of an improvement, but at least I didn’t go backwards.

The most hilarious part of the whole day was that I won 2nd place for men in my age group. The fact that I won anything that had to do with running is straight up sad. There must have been only 2 of us =)

Over the CFCP group did really well! V got 2nd place in her age group as well, so, now we have matching prize mugs that we toast with while we drink tea. I also won a snazzy marathon towel as a door prize.

There were a few things that really got to me about this run. The first was that I had not even seen “Mile 2” yet when I could already hear that people were starting to finish. Wow, LAME. Next, after “Mile 1”, I didn’t see a marker for a while. When I saw another one coming up, I thought, “that’s GOT to be mile 3”. When I got up to it and saw that it was “Mile 2”, it was like someone took the wind out of my sails. Still, I pressed on. Running is mental and it’s a battle for me every single damn time.

Yesterday (4/21/2010), we had the pleasure of doing the “Filthy Fifty”. This WOD is a horrible “chipper” which means that it’s just a long list of stuff that you “chip away” at. This list consist of:

50 Box jumps
50 Jumping pull-ups
50 Kettlebell swings, 1 pood
50 Walking Lunges (50 steps)
50 Knees to elbows
50 Push press, 45 pounds
50 Back extensions
50 Wall ball shots, 20 pound ball
50 Burpees
50 Double unders

My time was a slow and horrible 36:44. Everything was great and went really quickly until I got to wall balls. I think it took me 15 minutes to do the wall balls and burpees. By the time I got to the double unders, which I already suck at, I couldn’t really lift my arms. I don’t want to do this one again for a LONG time.

In other news, I talked to Dave last night about how I’m progressing. I am noticing that my pants are all tighter! What? I eat paleo, almost never cheat, and workout 3x/week at CFCP. What the hell is going on?

My body IS changing. I am noticing that I am more solid in lots of spots and even my stomach is a lot less fatty, it’s just, bigger. Maybe there’s muscle growing under there and still fat on top… I don’t know.

At any rate, Dave suggested that I add in Crossfit Endurance 2x/week when I’m not at CFCP. I am excited about starting this and to see if it helps to increase my results and performance.

Snatches and Soreness

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Last night at CFCP was awesome. I really love the Friday evening class. The Olympic lifts that we are learning are SO much and even more fun when you know how to do them correctly.

We worked more on the Snatch last night and got into doing more of the exercises with weight (presses, snatch balance, heaving snatch balance, etc). The WOD was “Isabelle”. I did this one on Monday in Albany, but I didn’t go with the Rx weight. Last night, I did.

Again, “Isabelle” is 30 snatches for time. They don’t have to be full squat snatches with the OHS, they can be power snatches if you are strong enough.

Last night I got this done is 6:16… almost 3x longer than it took me with 95lbs on Monday. Whatever, I am happy with that.

After the WOD, I wanted to try to go a bit heavier on the snatch. I was able to get 155lbs. I quit there as I was tired.

This morning for open gym, I was on the fence as to whether or not I wanted to work out. I am sore as hell, tired, and well, just not really feeling that hot. When we got there, the WOD was:

3 rounds 1:30 on, 0:30 off of:

Dead lift (225lbs)
KB Swings (24kg)
Pull Ups

I didn’t count my reps on this and really just did the best I could with how I felt. After the first round, I really didn’t want to do any more. You can’t stop though, unless you want to be the target of endless ridicule, so I just kept going.

We did some grocery shopping after open gym, then got home, ate and took a really long nap. Almost 3 hours, I would say. We had a goal to clean the rest of the house today, which we did some of, but not all. It’s been like 2 months that we are trying to do this. Maybe before we leave for MS, it will get done. Who knows.

Tomorrow, we have the finals for the 5k challenge. I am really tired and sore, so, this will be an interesting experience, for sure.

Albany

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Albany was a pretty nice little city from what I saw of it. I guess I really didn’t see TOO much, though. At the very least, I found one good place to eat (The Barnsider Restaurant). The people that I came here to work with were really nice. I know I posted a rant about offices just a few days ago and, for the most part, I do really feel all of that stuff, but I didn’t really mean for it to reflect on the people there. They were really a pleasure to work with.

Big thanks to Crossfit Albany for letting me drop in while I was in town. Here are the WODs that I got while I was visiting…

Monday (4/12/2010)

30 Snatches for time
1 Mile Run – Untimed

We started out with some Bergner warm up, which is always good. I got the 30 snatches done in 2:26. The Rx weight for this was 135lb but I opted to go with 95lb instead as I wanted to work on my form a bit. I have never tried to snatch more than 105lb. Last time I tried that much, it went up easy, but I still think I can get better on my lifts. Getting that down is more important to me than throwing around 135lb at this point in time.

I know you will be surprised to read this, but I felt very sluggish during the run. I started out sort of quick then died off. I never really got into that groove where it became easy. I tried to focus on pose the whole time and I think I’m getting better at it. Still, though, it came and went. At least now, I know when I am swinging my legs with my hip flexors.

Wednesday (4/14/2010)

Before I left the hotel for the office, I hit up the “workout room” and used the treadmill for some Tabata Sprints (Slight Incline 10 mph)

Later, at Crossfit Albany, we did the following:

3×5 Strict Presses

Followed by:

“Running Cindy” (AMRAP in 20 minutes of {400m run, 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, 15 air squats})

Followed by:

3×10 Hang Squat Clean with no dip (45lb Bar)

Starting off with the presses was pretty cool, actually. It was fun to have a little strength WOD built in before the actual WOD. My weights were 95lb, 115lb, & 135lb. They were all easy. I guess I had no frame of reference as I haven’t done much strict pressing since starting Crossfit. It reminded me of the old gym days doing military presses. At least now, I know for next time, I can probably start with 135lb.

Incidentally, the warm up for this WOD took it out of me, a bit. It was 3 rounds of {7 (ring rows, lunges, ring dips)}. When I woke up this morning, I was sore in my upper back and chest… I think this is why. Ring dips kill me every time.

Anyway, moving on.

Running Cindy went well for me. I didn’t take any breaks, which makes me happy. Well, it didn’t really make me happy during the workout, but thinking about it now does. I am getting to the point, I think where I am starting to rest less. Sometimes you need to just keep moving even if it’s not at the pace you really want. I didn’t take any walk breaks on my runs, which is kind of amazing to me. In total, I got 6 full rounds + 200 meters. When you think about it, in 20 minutes, I did:

6 – 400m runs + 200m = 2600m … that’s 1/2 a 5k, which is a little over 1.5 miles.
30 pull ups
60 push ups
90 air squats

Pretty good…

The last part of this workout was what they referred to as the “tall clean” drill which is basically a hang squat clean but without the “dip & shrug” part. The object of this is very similar to a “snatch balance”. You have to get under the bar without moving the bar very much, if, at all. Obviously, this is more difficult as you have to get under the bar when it’s at your waist as opposed to getting under it when it’s racked across your back. It took me a few tries to get the idea, but eventually, I got it and could see how this could really help with the squat clean technique. This was particularly challenging too as I was really worn out from all the previous stuff.

Regarding the rest of the stuff about the trip… mostly, it was pretty good. I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express which was really nice and very comfortable. They had a hot breakfast every morning which is always good for someone like me. My rental was a Hybrid Toyota Camry. I had never driven a hybrid before, so it was pretty interesting. Honestly, the best part about this car was that it had bluetooth integration. It’s so great for your car to just be your hands-free device the moment you get in.

The trip home… well, that didn’t go so well.

If you were reading any of my Facebook posts yesterday, you could probably tell that I was in a bit of a mood. All of the problems stemmed from missing my connection in Newark. I was supposed to fly from Albany – > Newark, then Newark – > Austin. The flight coming IN to Albany was 1.5 hours late. That means, no connection for me, and that’s the LAST flight coming out of Newark to Austin. Awesome. All I wanted to do was be home.

Anyway… at the desk in Albany, I asked the Continental rep what the best thing to do for my baggage was. It was clear that I wouldn’t make my connection so, he recommended “short checking” the bag so that I could pick it up at the baggage claim in Newark.

When I got off the plane in Newark, I hauled ass to the continental desk where I got a bit upset. They informed me that they would not cover my hotel as the plane delays were due to ATC (air traffic control). I had a few words for the woman behind the desk, but then realized that their policies are not her fault. Oh well. Turns out most of the hotels in the area were booked as this whole volcano thing caused lots of flights to be cancelled which, in turn, results in, you guessed it… people getting stranded in Newark and needing a hotel.

Luckily for me, I am on business travel, which means, (sorry Ben) my company gets to pay for continentals incompetence.

Back to the lady at the desk. She called a few hotels in the area and they were all booked. Finally, she called the Hilton and they had rooms, so, to the Hilton I would be going. I asked her, then, what would be best for my bag. She said to leave it and it would be on the plane tomorrow morning. OK.

Now, I take the monorail thing 3 stops over to P4 which is where the hotel shuttles do their pick ups and drop offs. I wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, I call the hotel at which point, they inform me that they pick up at the bottom of the hour. It was 9:10. Awesome.

Just for grins, I called Continentals baggage services to see what was up with my bag. I had a feeling that it was spinning around the carousel back in Terminal A (4 stops away on the monorail). I was right. I asked if they could pick it up and re-route it back onto my flight for tomorrow. The rep said that I could NOT and that if I didn’t go and pick it up, I would have to file a lost baggage claim when I got back to Austin, and that they would send it.

Argh.

So I get back on the damn monorail and go back to Terminal A where my bag is in the baggage services center WITH A TAG ON IT THAT HAS INSTRUCTION TO RE-ROUTE IT FOR MY FLIGHT IN THE MORNING. I am about ready to scream at this point. Also, it’s past 9:30pm and if I don’t get back to P4 (4 stops away, remember?) in time for the shuttle, I will have to wait another hour for the next one.

At this point, I just took a cab to the hotel. I was done dealing with people’s gross incompetence at well, everything.

I got to the hotel, checked in, ordered room service, talked to V for a bit and went to sleep. No, my room service was NOT paleo. No, I don’t care. It was the only time on this trip whe
re I didn’t make a great food choice and I’m OK with that.

Now, I am waiting to board my morning flight. I had better not have any more problems.

P.S. My flight landed 35 minutes early! It’s good to be home…

End of the week…

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This weeks “Heavy Metal” class (Friday, 4/3/2010) was a lot of fun. Our friends from Ft. Hood (Centurion Crossfit), Amy & Donny came to work out with us. It’s always nice to have people from other places come down to visit and workout with you. It helps build the community which you are probably sick of hearing about.

We started out with the Bergner warm up, like we do every week. We went over some different snatch drills and the moved on to talking about the clean & jerk. For this class, we concentrated on the split jerk.

After going over drills with the PVC, it was time to start playing with some weight. We started out with a modest 65lbs to work on form. I have some flexibility issues going on in my upper arm/shoulder area that make it really hard for me to get the bar racked. I am working on this.

After working with 65lbs for a bit, we started upping the weight. I won’t bore you with the weights for every lift in between, but I eventually maxed out for the night with 205lbs. I was pretty happy with myself there. There’s a video somewhere, but it’s still on the flip camera, un-rotated, and unedited. By the time it gets on here, I will probably be pushing 300 =). P.S. There’s also a video of my falling on my ass and dumping like 155lbs or something. I told V that she can only post that one if it’s cut with some funny music and sound effects.

Saturday morning (4/4/2010), we decided to head on over to Crossfit Leander. We had met some of the people from there when we were selling at sectionals. They all seemed really nice. When we got there, surprise, everyone was super nice. I love that Crossfit is a douche-bag barrier.

The WOD that they had planned was pretty cool. We started out with a pretty lengthy warm up. It’s pretty much the same one that Crossfit Central does with some ladder drills thrown in at the end.

Once that was done, we had to find 3 eggs out in the area. Inside of each egg was a piece of paper with an exercise or “EGG-zercise” as they called it that day. These 3 movements made up your Tabata set. I drew box jumps, air squats, and pull ups. They had the Tabata sets as 15/15 (as opposed to the normal 20/10) as there are new people. The 15/15 is a bit less work and a bit more recovery.

I didn’t track my numbers but it was still a good workout that tired me out.

Our eating has pretty much been crap since about Friday. I feel pretty awful right now. I can feel swelling all over my body. My joints feel like crap. I am bloated and am producing some pretty bad smelling… well… never mind. You get it.

It’s weekends like this that make inspire me to get down and dirty with Paleo for a while before “cheating” again. I NEVER, repeat N-E-V-E-R feel like this when sticking to paleo foods.

There’s a lot of other stuff going too, but I am finally feeling sleepy again. No doubt, tomorrow being Monday will suck the life out of me, so I had better try and get some sleep to deal with it as best I can.

<Witty Title>

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I had a pretty bad day today. You know, those kinds of days where nothing seems to go right? You don’t feel like you got anything of consequence done. You feel like you are fighting upstream with everyone and everything around you. That was the kind of day I felt I had.

If I would have missed a workout today, well, that would have been bad, but luckily, V and I made it to the 6pm class. Upon walking in the door, I started feeling better. A little self inflicted punishment to help forget about the day and how much it sucked… that’s a good thing.

Tonight’s workout, I hear, was a qualifying WOD somewhere (not sure of where exactly) but it was five rounds of:

5 power cleans (Rx @ 155lb)
10 burpees (did as many strict as possible)
Red Line Sprint (roughly 200m, and there was no sprinting)

My time for this one was 14:41. I thought I did a pretty good job of keeping myself moving while not taking too many breaks. The first three rounds were OK, but the last two felt like someone had removed all oxygen from the planet Earth. Not a pleasant experience.

After the WOD we hung around and talked for a little while. I love the people that we have met at the gym. They are so incredibly nice. Not really any douche bags to be found there.

V and I hung around the house for a bit after getting home. I didn’t feel like cooking so we just scrounged around. We watched some more of a movie that we started a few days ago, then went to sleep.

Unable to sleep by the constant turmoil that is my upcoming wedding in Mississippi, I now sit here writing this blog post. I don’t really want to get into the details of what is ailing me on a public forum, but it has been the source of many hours of lost sleep. Needless to say, a huge weight will be lifted on June 6th, 2010.

I love the girl I am marrying more than I can ever describe. That’s got nothing to do with it. It’s all coming from the event itself.

At the very least, I managed to be a little bit productive by creating a fan page for Crossfit Cedar Park. If you go there and you love it like I do, take a second to log onto Facebook and be their fan.

I guess I’ll try to go to sleep now.

DT

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I have been looking forward to trying out DT for a while now. I LOVE barbell workouts. They are by far, my favorite thing to do when it comes to fitness. I don’t know what it is about it. Maybe it’s the sense of satisfaction you get you execute a perfect lift rather than muscling the weight up. There’s a difference… it’s a huge difference and very noticeable.

In times of debating the merits of Crossfit vs. other fitness training regiments, I have come across the argument that Crossfit is “mindless” and “requires no skill”. If that is how you feel, try this workout and see if it changes your mind a little.

DT is 5 rounds of:

12 dead lifts
9 hang cleans
6 push jerks

The “Rx” on this WOD for men should be 155lbs.

As I said in the beginning, I have been looking forward to this one for quite some time. This one is all about technique, technique, and some more technique. You need have your hook grip working and you need to know how to do hang cleans efficiently.

I do not yet know how to do hang cleans efficiently. We hardly ever really have them in WODs at our box. That’s not an excuse, more so just a fact. We don’t do them very often.

I decided to go with 135lbs for this one as the hang cleans would be my weakness. My time was 16:30. Come to think of it, the last time I remember doing hang cleans in a WOD was really close to when we first started and my 3 rep max was 135lb.

The dead lifts were cake. The push jerks were slightly challenging. I didn’t have to break on any of them. The hang cleans SUCKED. I can see why the hook grip is so important here. I would say at least 3 times during this WOD, I got to the shrug part of the movement and the bar came right out of my hands. Had I had the hook grip on, that would have not happened. I think I need a thinner bar to accommodate my stubby fingers =).

I am still happy with my performance and look forward to trying this one again.

5 whole K’s?

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I hate running.

I really hate running.

If you know me, you know, I hate running.

When there are WODs that have lots of running in them, well, I don’t really look forward to the running part of things.

I have made some really great advances in running over the past year. With the help of my friends Jody & Paula, I was able to do the entire Turkey Trot last Thanksgiving with zero walk breaks. A few months after that, I did a Pose running skill session with Dave.

I am getting better at Pose, but I am still not that great at it. Granted, I don’t really work on it all THAT much, but my stride has certainly changed. I definitely notice that.

Still though, I hate running. That’s why this challenge is perfect for me.

Today was the start of it. We had to run a 5k (that’s 3.1 miles). Not really a huge distance, but not really over right away either.

My total time to complete was 32:31 or something like that. I don’t remember exactly, but it was somewhere between 32 and 33 minutes. I ran this one straight through without stopping to walk at all. With that said though, there were a few times that I really wanted to stop and walk, but I didn’t.

I did learn a few things from this run:

I can run faster than I give myself credit for. I run slow and conservatively because I **HATE** getting cramps in my side. Once I get one of those, running gets even worse for me.
I don’t really know what my weakest link is. I noticed today that when I was running, my lungs were fine.
There really wasn’t a time that I was out of breath or couldn’t catch my breath. The reasons that I wanted to stop were:

My legs feel like lead.
My legs are burning.
I am bored.
This is uncomfortable.

I hit a really great stride at the end of the run. It felt like I picked it up about 30-40% over what I had done up until that point. It was at that point that I realized that I was on the end of the damn run and there was just about a 1/4 mile left. Suck.

In 4 weeks, I want to be able to work at a higher pace and not do this blur between “running” and soccer mom power-walking. At the very least, I want to be able to have periods where I am running faster than what my current rate of “normal” is.

With all that said, I still think that it’s a great accomplishment to say that I ran a 5k without stopping.

It can only get better from here, right?

Dating Sage

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Wow. Just wow. This WOD yesterday (3/16/2010) was insane. That is all I can say about it. From what I hear, Sage is Bergenger’s daughter.

All in all, this is probably one of the most demanding WODs that I have had to do since starting the whole Crossfit thing 8 months ago. I found myself having to actually take breaks resting on the floor. When your coach says “the 95lb snatches aren’t the challenging part”, be worried! In fact, he was right! The thrusters are by far the killer.

“Dating Sage” consist of the following:

5 rounds of

10 snatches (95lb)
15 pull ups
20 thrusters (75lb)

I read the blog and said to myself, “boy, that looks like fun!”. As usual, the first round was fun. Round 2 – 5, yeah, not so much.

My overall time on this was 33:14. I could have taken quite a bit of time off had I not taken so many breaks. There were times where I thought I was going to hyperventilate. It’s because of this though, that these ARE the types of workouts that I love; the kind that you want to quit 5 minutes in. These are the kind of workouts that show you what you are made of and what kind of will power you have.

Somewhere around round three, I honestly believed that I would not finish the WOD. Part of me was hoping Dave would tell me to stop at 3 rounds, but, Dave’s a good coach and knew that I could finish. He knew more than I KNEW that I could finish.

With that said, I am proud that I got all the way though five rounds of this WOD. It was physically and mentally taxing.

If you read my blog, you know that I like to do some math with these WODs. This one is just an insane amount of work. Allow me to break it down:

10 snatches @ 95lb = 950lb * 5 rounds = 4750lb
15 pull ups @ 200lb = 3000lb * 5 rounds = 15000lb
20 thrusters @ 75lb = 1500lb * 5 rounds = 7500lb

That totals 27,250lb moved around. Divide that by 2000 and you get 13.625 tons. I moved 13.625 TONS IN ~33 MINUTES. That’s insanity. To put that in perspective, my car weighs 3468lbs. So, I moved like, almost 8 of my cars. Crazy. Anyway…

This Saturday, we are running a 5k to kick off the next challenge at CFCP. I am really looking forward to this one. Running has always been the bane of my fitness life (cue up memories of junior high school of my fat ass “running” the mile in the school yard, with all of the other kids blowing by me), so it will be nice to take a four week period to actually focus on improving that.

Team WODs

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Yesterday’s workout was a fun one. Well, “fun” is up for interpretation. I don’t think many would actually think this was “fun”. Maybe I’m just crazy.

We started out with 5 minutes of fun:

1 minute of jack-knifes (20lb med ball)
1 minute of leg raises
1 minute of jack-knifes (20lb med ball)
1 minute of leg raises
1 minute of jack-knifes (20lb med ball)

I think I got something like 109 or 115. The 20 lb medicine ball became heavier and heavier as time went on. I think someone was playing a joke on me. We then continued on to a nice little team WOD that Dave made up:

3 rounds of

2 minutes of {row, renegade row, squat}

I didn’t keep track of my reps here. There was no rest in between rounds and at the end, we had to add up our team score. I don’t remember what my score my team got. We came in 3rd out of the 3 teams, but I still got a great workout.