Not sure where to start this one... so I'll go back to the Open. I've triewshownd looking up scores, and I can't tell where I've landed. There are MANY athlets that I know are better than me, that missed a score entry on their Open, and their scores aren't fully calculated because they didn't finish... So I don't feel my score fully shows where I'm at in the world... at least not fully. The math I did in my region, and on the world scale had me in roughly the top 13% in both the world and my region... and I know that can't be right... I did one workout Rx, just one, and had I done it scaled, I'd have been scored in the scaled division... I think... idk. everything is a confusing mess... aye yay yaaaay. Lets start over...
So, wasn't terribly sore today. Calf was tight all day, and as the day wore on, DOMS started setting in. Was ready to get to the box so I could start stretching and rolling out my quads... really I was ready for it when I woke up.... anyway.... Got to the box, and by now, quads are tight. Going through he stretching paces, made sure to spend some extra time on the shoulders and quads. Didn't help with tihs workout much, but it felt ... well no, I was doing smashes... so it didn't even feel good... but it felt needed. There we go. Todays WOD was two parts power clean, and one part pain. :P
Strength, work up to a heavy power clean. 1RM type effort. I started light, already had the wraps on, and started pulling. 75, 95, 125... 125 was heavy. I was a bit flabbergasted by how heavy it seemed. Looking back, I think it was probably me doing muscle cleans instead of power cleans (a little dip in the catch). I reverted back to my heavy lifting strategery of not counting the weight after I'd gotten close to my 1RM. I knew I was at 165, but after that I started using 2.5's and 5's on the edges. I knew I was in PR territory, and I kept going up, 5lbs at a time, so while I knew I was up there, I didn't know how much. After 4 weight changes, I was done. I probably coul dhave done more, but I was certain that was at least 3 different PR's...maybe 4. If you don't recall, I'll take the time to remind folks that I can't seem to measure weigh effectively when it comes to cleans. I actually asked someone else to count it form me to make sure. 185. 20lb PR. Not too shabby... now I just need to get under the bar, and that can be my new squat clean PR as well ;)
Workout was a bit nasty. Good workout, ready for it. Went 10 power cleans 2 ring rows, 8 cleans 4 rows, 6 cleans 6 rows, 4 and 8, 2 and 10. Weight going up as reps went down. I couldn't do the weight on the board. Brian, who's coaching tonight asks me what my max is.... I give him the new max. He then gave me my old max as my 2 rep, and then we went down. The workout wasn't overly difficult... it got heavy real quick. I did have a time, on the 4-8 set, that I put the wrong amount of weight on the bar. I had an extra 5 lbs on the left that wasn't on the right. I tried to clean it, bar was waaaaay low on the heavy side. The next 3 were all fine, but that first one was bad... it wasn't until I was getting ready for the set of 2 that I noticed I had more weight on one side than the other... a big "Ah ha!" moment, let me tell you. The only other notes from this workout... I didn't hit either of the 2 reps that were my old PR... I was dead at that point. 11:29 was my final time.
Great workout... I always enjoy the balance of Brian's workouts (when he programs). Tomorrows WOD looks like it would be awesomely awful, and fun. I don't think I'm going to make it though. Work people want to go to this place called Old Mill tomorrow night... first chance to have crab, decided to take them up on it... I mean if I'm feeling good, not terribly sore in the AM, then I'll do, but judging by the continued onset of soreness... I don't think I'm going to make it.
Back to the Open for a quick sec, I'm glad I did it, I know I did better than several folks...just wish it was a bit clearer exactly how well I did vs everyone, not just "several folks"...
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Monday, March 30, 2015
15.5
Almost didn't happen. The whole Open, I tried to get my first attempt in on a Friday or Saturday, that way I could use Monday to try again in case I just sucked something fierce. Worked pretty well, till we got to 15.5.... and then things went sideways. Not the way you're thinking though. My flight home on Thursday got canceled, and I got yet another night of garbage sleep in the last room in DC (smoking room at that), combining that with spending most of Friday in airplanes and airports (and not getting back to KC till 5pm).... Needless to say, it wasn't happening Friday, or even on Saturday, I was pretty well toasted. I've never been to On Track, or really any box on Sunday, so that left me with only Monday night... one and only one shot to get this right.
All weekend, I grappled with scaled vs Rx. I know I could have done Rx, but it would probably take me over 2x as long... I'm thinking 36 minutes... probably selling myself a bit short, but that was in my head. After agonizing over it, I asked a few coaches. Andy P was the first one I asked, and the first one to respond. He suggested scaled, and I'm glad he did (and that I listened).
Morning got here early... I hate Mondays. I usually go to bed at a normal ish... ok late time, and then can't fall asleep till after midnight or 1am, and then I'm up at 0315. Fortunately, I got some great sleep on the plane this week though. If you've every flown, you know how the flight attendants come by and ask you to make sure your seat is upright before landing... they didn't even bother me. I was OUT! I sat up about 200 ft off the ground, and was like oh, I should put my seat up, and did it just in time for landing. First time thats happened, I'm glad they let me sleep.
Work was work, and the hours sped by. I've been thinking about this workout a bit. I've seen people posting about it being the first time they threw up, not being able to walk the next day, people uttering thanks to the CrossFit gods for no burpees... just lots and lots of chatter about this one.... all that to say I've got no idea what it's going to be like, other than the generic "awful". Thankfully, Justin (of Building a new Justin) has posted a time and effort and that gave me a starting place for planning my attack. Being of... well starting at similar sizes, I figured I can keep up, or maybe beat him. Using his time, I'm able to asthmatically work out how long I can spend on each part of the workout. For those of you that don't know what 15.5's rep scheme, it looks a little something like this. 27-27-21-21-15-15-9-9, starting with a calorie row movement, and then thrusters (65lbs for me). Justin put up 15:35. I stared using some basic math through the movements. I figured it would take 1 minute for the 15 and 9 rep calorie rows, and 2 minutes for the other two, so that was 6 minutes... The thrusters I counted on taking 4 minutes, then 3, 2, and finally 1 as the reps got lower. Adds up to 16 minutes... so as long as I'm faster than the times I just figured out, I'll be good.
Clock strikes 5, and I'm out. Got to the hotel, checked in, changed, and off to the box. My rental this week is a pickup truck, I finally feel like I fit in with everyone else in Sussex County, DE... another story for another day (basically it's like they've all got a "truck" of some kind). I get to Unlocked in plenty of time, get inside and start warming up. My plan was to workout during the same time as the class... didn't put enough thought into it, I needed someone to count, and there was only one coach... derp! So I elect to wait till the class is done, and do it while Jeff (who's coaching) is doing his workout. Win-win all around.
The workout for the class sucked. I'm not sure who's got it better, me doing 15.5 with no time cap, or them doing an 18 minute AMRAP of strict press, box jump overs and weighted overhead situps... I watched the carnage unfold. Sweat, swearing, and feats of sustained intensity. Everyone put in an incredible first 10-12 minutes, then the fatigue started hitting. To the classes credit, no one got real sloppy with any of the movements. Finally, 18 minutes is over, and the only sounds is people sucking eggs. Maybe I don't have it better? Either way, it's go time.... well, not quite. I didn't just jump right into it, I waited for Jeff to get ready, wanted someone else to suffer with me, even if we were doing different workouts.
This Tyson quote was going through my head all the way up until the first pull of the rower... I had my plan, I was going to smash this... then the suck started.
The one positive on the flight back on Friday was I got to catch up on my Mens Health. The issue I was reading had Bieber on the cover (for reference), and there was an article in there on breathing, the diaphragm, and how most of us are all kinds of 'doing it wrong'. I couldn't find it online to link it, but it was a very interesting read, one with information I want to incorporate into my life and workouts... just wish I had started by this workout, might have helped me.
My rowing is usually pretty strong, it was just ok tonight. Problem is, I wasn't giving it that full lean back 'calorie rowing' pull. Those tend to mess up my breathing more than regular rowing... I still did a few anyway, but I mainly tried to focus on just getting it done. 27 calories takes a while with the 'just get it done' approach, let me tell ya. I was somewhere around 80 or 90 seconds when I got done with the rowing, ahead of my curve, but not by much. Took a few seconds to get my brearings, and up the bar went, then down I went. 1. 2, 3... 10, 11, 12.... I think I stopped at 12. Not to shabby for my first set. Problem was, now I was breathing that shallow stuff, only filling the top half of my lungs. I forced myself to take a few big gulps of air, and then go again. You'd think 12 in the first go, I'd be doing alright, but man, it felt like it took forever to get to 27. I didn't even bother to look at the clock... till I got done with the second set of rowing, which I had to stop at least twice during to just take a full breath. It was somewhere around 5 minutes and change, not bad, keep moving.
The plan was out the window, and thoughts of how I was going to break it up were gone, it was just do as much as you can, as fast as you can. A few times I tried to not drop the weight, but leave it in a hang position.... Taran told me to have fun with that, and I see why after trying it a few times. Sitting under load, even in that position with only 65lbs, is difficult. I finally get done with that set, "halfway done". Man. Half way... thats it, I've still got two sets to go. Really, my memory of the last two isn't super sharp. Everything seemed slow...everything was slow. I've got several people not named Ali (who's counting for me) yelling and cheering... I'm the only one doing 15.5...it's my first time, they know it and are being encouraging. The only thing I really recall besides the encouragement, was my form, and it was atrocious. I mean at the bottom of the squat, I'm sure half the time my back was rounded, elbows pointing down... very poor, but I was getting the reps in, and for me, thats all I was concerned about.
The last 9 reps were both the easiest, and hardest. Knowing I was almost done, made me want to slack a little more. I know I took some extra breaths in there. Broke up the thrusters into 3-3-3, done. I didn't want/need to puke like others, but I did, on this rare occasion, go and lay down. Didn't last long, didn't feel right, so I staggered back up to my feet, trying to catch my breath. This was my first workout with the new wraps, and they performed like champs. I tried to warm up without them, and my wrists were howling in protest... so I'm pretty well just going to wear them all the time for a little bit, till things get better.
14:38. Not a terrible time, not a world class time either. It's my time, and I'll take it. I could have done better, I know I stopped too many times to breathe, and I'd love to say my breathing was my #1 issue, but I think my mentality is still #1. I pushed harder though this because I had someone I wanted to catch, not because I was pushing just for myself. I think I still would have beat him regardless. I didn't bother looking at the clock after the 11th minutes, was too focused on the task at hand. My problem is that there were a number of times where I hit the number of reps I was aiming for, and I put the bar down, I didn't push for that little bit of extra. I really need to find that in the coming weeks/months.
The aftermath of this has been something else. After I'd cleaned everything up (well Randy helped with a lot of it now that I think of it), and went to change into my everyday shoes, I started shaking. Not like debilitating shaking, but shaking non the less. It lasted for a while too. I'd like to imagine that it was my bodys response to "getting punched in the face" and having the audacity to keep going. Either way, it was something that while isn't a first time, it's unique enough that I notice and make note of it.
I drank a Kill Cliff, ate a Kill Cliff bar, and just tried to control my self... 15.5... you suck. Took a lot more out of me than I realized. The shakes continued off and on till I got to Wal-Mart for some groceries... then it was just pain and inflammation in my knee/calf on my right side... I swear I'm not falling apart, but it feels like it sometimes. I ate a lot of stuff after that workout, most good, some not so much... I'm hoping, maybe praying that I'll be able to walk tomorrow. Find out soon enough.
I wanted to post my final Open score, but it hasn't updated yet with where I fell. Anxious to see and compare. Until then.
All weekend, I grappled with scaled vs Rx. I know I could have done Rx, but it would probably take me over 2x as long... I'm thinking 36 minutes... probably selling myself a bit short, but that was in my head. After agonizing over it, I asked a few coaches. Andy P was the first one I asked, and the first one to respond. He suggested scaled, and I'm glad he did (and that I listened).
Morning got here early... I hate Mondays. I usually go to bed at a normal ish... ok late time, and then can't fall asleep till after midnight or 1am, and then I'm up at 0315. Fortunately, I got some great sleep on the plane this week though. If you've every flown, you know how the flight attendants come by and ask you to make sure your seat is upright before landing... they didn't even bother me. I was OUT! I sat up about 200 ft off the ground, and was like oh, I should put my seat up, and did it just in time for landing. First time thats happened, I'm glad they let me sleep.
Work was work, and the hours sped by. I've been thinking about this workout a bit. I've seen people posting about it being the first time they threw up, not being able to walk the next day, people uttering thanks to the CrossFit gods for no burpees... just lots and lots of chatter about this one.... all that to say I've got no idea what it's going to be like, other than the generic "awful". Thankfully, Justin (of Building a new Justin) has posted a time and effort and that gave me a starting place for planning my attack. Being of... well starting at similar sizes, I figured I can keep up, or maybe beat him. Using his time, I'm able to asthmatically work out how long I can spend on each part of the workout. For those of you that don't know what 15.5's rep scheme, it looks a little something like this. 27-27-21-21-15-15-9-9, starting with a calorie row movement, and then thrusters (65lbs for me). Justin put up 15:35. I stared using some basic math through the movements. I figured it would take 1 minute for the 15 and 9 rep calorie rows, and 2 minutes for the other two, so that was 6 minutes... The thrusters I counted on taking 4 minutes, then 3, 2, and finally 1 as the reps got lower. Adds up to 16 minutes... so as long as I'm faster than the times I just figured out, I'll be good.
Clock strikes 5, and I'm out. Got to the hotel, checked in, changed, and off to the box. My rental this week is a pickup truck, I finally feel like I fit in with everyone else in Sussex County, DE... another story for another day (basically it's like they've all got a "truck" of some kind). I get to Unlocked in plenty of time, get inside and start warming up. My plan was to workout during the same time as the class... didn't put enough thought into it, I needed someone to count, and there was only one coach... derp! So I elect to wait till the class is done, and do it while Jeff (who's coaching) is doing his workout. Win-win all around.
The workout for the class sucked. I'm not sure who's got it better, me doing 15.5 with no time cap, or them doing an 18 minute AMRAP of strict press, box jump overs and weighted overhead situps... I watched the carnage unfold. Sweat, swearing, and feats of sustained intensity. Everyone put in an incredible first 10-12 minutes, then the fatigue started hitting. To the classes credit, no one got real sloppy with any of the movements. Finally, 18 minutes is over, and the only sounds is people sucking eggs. Maybe I don't have it better? Either way, it's go time.... well, not quite. I didn't just jump right into it, I waited for Jeff to get ready, wanted someone else to suffer with me, even if we were doing different workouts.
This Tyson quote was going through my head all the way up until the first pull of the rower... I had my plan, I was going to smash this... then the suck started.
The one positive on the flight back on Friday was I got to catch up on my Mens Health. The issue I was reading had Bieber on the cover (for reference), and there was an article in there on breathing, the diaphragm, and how most of us are all kinds of 'doing it wrong'. I couldn't find it online to link it, but it was a very interesting read, one with information I want to incorporate into my life and workouts... just wish I had started by this workout, might have helped me.
My rowing is usually pretty strong, it was just ok tonight. Problem is, I wasn't giving it that full lean back 'calorie rowing' pull. Those tend to mess up my breathing more than regular rowing... I still did a few anyway, but I mainly tried to focus on just getting it done. 27 calories takes a while with the 'just get it done' approach, let me tell ya. I was somewhere around 80 or 90 seconds when I got done with the rowing, ahead of my curve, but not by much. Took a few seconds to get my brearings, and up the bar went, then down I went. 1. 2, 3... 10, 11, 12.... I think I stopped at 12. Not to shabby for my first set. Problem was, now I was breathing that shallow stuff, only filling the top half of my lungs. I forced myself to take a few big gulps of air, and then go again. You'd think 12 in the first go, I'd be doing alright, but man, it felt like it took forever to get to 27. I didn't even bother to look at the clock... till I got done with the second set of rowing, which I had to stop at least twice during to just take a full breath. It was somewhere around 5 minutes and change, not bad, keep moving.
The plan was out the window, and thoughts of how I was going to break it up were gone, it was just do as much as you can, as fast as you can. A few times I tried to not drop the weight, but leave it in a hang position.... Taran told me to have fun with that, and I see why after trying it a few times. Sitting under load, even in that position with only 65lbs, is difficult. I finally get done with that set, "halfway done". Man. Half way... thats it, I've still got two sets to go. Really, my memory of the last two isn't super sharp. Everything seemed slow...everything was slow. I've got several people not named Ali (who's counting for me) yelling and cheering... I'm the only one doing 15.5...it's my first time, they know it and are being encouraging. The only thing I really recall besides the encouragement, was my form, and it was atrocious. I mean at the bottom of the squat, I'm sure half the time my back was rounded, elbows pointing down... very poor, but I was getting the reps in, and for me, thats all I was concerned about.
The last 9 reps were both the easiest, and hardest. Knowing I was almost done, made me want to slack a little more. I know I took some extra breaths in there. Broke up the thrusters into 3-3-3, done. I didn't want/need to puke like others, but I did, on this rare occasion, go and lay down. Didn't last long, didn't feel right, so I staggered back up to my feet, trying to catch my breath. This was my first workout with the new wraps, and they performed like champs. I tried to warm up without them, and my wrists were howling in protest... so I'm pretty well just going to wear them all the time for a little bit, till things get better.
14:38. Not a terrible time, not a world class time either. It's my time, and I'll take it. I could have done better, I know I stopped too many times to breathe, and I'd love to say my breathing was my #1 issue, but I think my mentality is still #1. I pushed harder though this because I had someone I wanted to catch, not because I was pushing just for myself. I think I still would have beat him regardless. I didn't bother looking at the clock after the 11th minutes, was too focused on the task at hand. My problem is that there were a number of times where I hit the number of reps I was aiming for, and I put the bar down, I didn't push for that little bit of extra. I really need to find that in the coming weeks/months.
The aftermath of this has been something else. After I'd cleaned everything up (well Randy helped with a lot of it now that I think of it), and went to change into my everyday shoes, I started shaking. Not like debilitating shaking, but shaking non the less. It lasted for a while too. I'd like to imagine that it was my bodys response to "getting punched in the face" and having the audacity to keep going. Either way, it was something that while isn't a first time, it's unique enough that I notice and make note of it.
I drank a Kill Cliff, ate a Kill Cliff bar, and just tried to control my self... 15.5... you suck. Took a lot more out of me than I realized. The shakes continued off and on till I got to Wal-Mart for some groceries... then it was just pain and inflammation in my knee/calf on my right side... I swear I'm not falling apart, but it feels like it sometimes. I ate a lot of stuff after that workout, most good, some not so much... I'm hoping, maybe praying that I'll be able to walk tomorrow. Find out soon enough.
I wanted to post my final Open score, but it hasn't updated yet with where I fell. Anxious to see and compare. Until then.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
4:51
Wasn't feeling life yesterday... and part of that is the lack of sleep, the other part I feel was diet. I've been eating poorly this week, but not in the traditional "ah dang, that pizza just jumped in my mouth" poorly, but more of the I didn't eat enough calories poorly. Before dinner yesterday, I had 2 or 3 of the little giant steamers (around 100 calories each), a Styrofoam plate of sugar snap peas, an apple, 2 monster rehabs (10 calories each), and a 3 egg omelet from the hospital. Writing it all out, it looks like a lot, but I think that was maybe 1200 calories. I'm working too hard to not get the nutritional benefits from food.
I really didn't feel like going in last night, I wont say I felt sick, but I was feeling pretty rundown. Probably shouldn't have gone to be honest. Got there, and my game plan was to row for the entire workout, till the last person was done with the WOD. Figured it would be 10 to 15 minutes, and that would work, I haven't rowed that long... ever, so it would work for a good working rest day.
Do the group warmup... but still don't feel very warmed up. It's a single WOD experience today, no delegated strength or METCON, but one "big" workout. Deadlifts, some double unders, some running and finishing with situps. So everyone is getting ready, I've got my rower out, and we're off... I took it easy, and then, like what normally happens, I get over 600m and I'm thinking about the sprint to get to 1k. Happened again, didn't hit my PR, but didn't miss it by much. Kept rowing after that, then at 4:51, I stopped. Pain... strain... something. My knee, or more specifically, the ligaments behind my knee on the inside (don't know the name) felt..... wrong.
So I stopped. Didn't even get my full day off workout in. And now I'm limping. This sucks. I put up the rower, and I help clean up peoples barbells. Not very happy about it.
Still limping a little today, took some ibuprofen, hope it goes away before 15.5 on Friday. We'll see.
I really didn't feel like going in last night, I wont say I felt sick, but I was feeling pretty rundown. Probably shouldn't have gone to be honest. Got there, and my game plan was to row for the entire workout, till the last person was done with the WOD. Figured it would be 10 to 15 minutes, and that would work, I haven't rowed that long... ever, so it would work for a good working rest day.
Do the group warmup... but still don't feel very warmed up. It's a single WOD experience today, no delegated strength or METCON, but one "big" workout. Deadlifts, some double unders, some running and finishing with situps. So everyone is getting ready, I've got my rower out, and we're off... I took it easy, and then, like what normally happens, I get over 600m and I'm thinking about the sprint to get to 1k. Happened again, didn't hit my PR, but didn't miss it by much. Kept rowing after that, then at 4:51, I stopped. Pain... strain... something. My knee, or more specifically, the ligaments behind my knee on the inside (don't know the name) felt..... wrong.
So I stopped. Didn't even get my full day off workout in. And now I'm limping. This sucks. I put up the rower, and I help clean up peoples barbells. Not very happy about it.
Still limping a little today, took some ibuprofen, hope it goes away before 15.5 on Friday. We'll see.
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Got my wrist wraps...after the WOD I needed them for.
Man, I really need to get back to a getting a good nights sleep. Less than 7 hours Monday night, and around 6 hours last night, and I can certainly tell today, I feel it, and it feels me... kinda sad really, moving on. Ug. Decided to forgo Unlocked last night, and made the trek to Diamond State to see some old friends...and do wallballs. Totally for the wallballs.
Everyone likes to receive a complement. Not long after getting in and getting some hello's going, Coach Randi comes up and tells me I'm looking good. I must have been sucking in my gut, but she said it twice, and frankly, it felt effing awesome to hear, regardless of how I feel about it, something is shining through to others, and thats pretty sweet. Thanks Randi!
Hopping right into it, I didn't do a very good warmup, chatted with more folks instead of rowing running, and then hopped into the group warmup. Shame on me. In that same breath, I'm glad I did it, it's nice to catch up with the family.
Got through our warmups and started working towards a heavy full (squat) clean and then another front squat following (don't know if this complex has a name). My wrists are tender from Monday, so I wanted to borrow some wraps from Andy... should say I was going to borrow some, but he got occupied with some with some brand new folks and their lifting, and really, I can't blame him, you gotta take care of the new people.
With a large class, we partnered up to get through the strength part (the clean). My man Dustin Simmons was here this week, and we partnered up... always worried about partner WODs with Dustin, especially after the first time. Oh well, no time to worry. We started packing on the plates pretty quick and it got pretty heavy. I have to be honest, I wasn't mentally strong enough for it. It got heavy, and I used my fear of my wrist to stop trying once it got heavy. Dustin kept going, and pulled some heavier weight. I don't know how far he got, I was busy having a small pity party. I really wanted to hit a PR last night. Oh well, I'll settle for matching my PR with a bummy wrist. :) In other words I'm not THAT upset. Did get some wraps from Dicks Sporting Goods tonight. Let you know what I think after a few uses. They were inexpensive, hopefully that doesn't mean they're cheap.
Moving on, it was looking to be a nasty ascending ladder AMRAP for 12 minutes... but again, we had a large class, so it became another partner workout... now I'm worried. New workout, 12 minutes, 4 of each movement, as soon as your done, partner goes. 4 wallballs, 4 deadlifts, 4 boxjumps (or stepups). I looked around, told Dustin I wanted to beat the girls (his wife and Dr. J). Had a goal, and then I didn't even check my work against that goal the whole workout, more on that in a second.
Dustin went first, FLEW through the thing. My first though was "oh shit"... I Jumped right into the wallballs. Felt different than 15.2, but it's still 20lbs, and I knew this was going to be a fight. Deadlifts weren't too bad at 135, and the stepups... I had to drop the box on its side (from 24" that Dustin was doing) to 20"... and it still seemed tall as heck. Done with round one. I didn't even bother looking at the clock, I'm pretty sure we got it done in less than a minute. As he started the 2nd round, I got the box back up to where he could jump, and by the time I turn around, he's already flying through the deadlifts and I practically have to jump out of his way before he gets to the box jumps. More expletives are going through my head. After two rounds I'm breathing hard, but the workout (as designed) I might add, is pushing me to make sure my partner isn't waiting around for long, and it's clearly pushing Simmons.
After 3 rounds, I'm hurting, but still moving at a decent pace, Dusty... hardly slowed a step. I've noticed something now, he demolishes these deadlifts... and they aren't bad for me weight wise, but damn I'm slow. Something I've learned fairly recently is that you move as fast as you train, and I've been training way too slow, and every time I tried to go faster, my form would get ugly, like real ugly. Rounded back... crappy pulls... etc etc. So I kept going slow. After 4 rounds, my breath is ragged, and I want this to be over. 5 rounds, and my quads start burning, I'm suffering all over now. 6 rounds, and I'm autopilot, trying not to think about the pain. Round 7 was bout the same, then I looked at the clock. 8 minutes and change gone? That it?!?! Dang!
Typically it's survival of the fittest, but for me it's just survival at this point. I'm going as fast as I can now, it hurts, it burns, it sucks. I get done with round 10... less than a minute left, good, we're almost done. Dustin flys through at nearly the same speed as the first round... 3 seconds left on the clock, I got in 1 more wallball before time was called. I'm spent. Happy I didn't just say welp, we're done, but I actually grabbed the ball and tossed it. Also pleased that I 'Stopped Stopping', I'm getting better, slowly, but surely.
Great workout, but man that sucked more than I thought it would. Funny story, I'd love to have another shot at it, in a few months. This was no where near as bad as our first partner WOD, and frankly, I think we've made a breakthrough in it. I'm not as fast as he is, but I'm not as slow as I used to be. Reminds me, he paid me a complement today as well, while doing the cleans, he made a comment about my mobility, he was suitably impressed. I guess I move pretty good for a big guy ;)
We didn't beat the girls. They got us by 7 or 10 movements, I don't remember. Thats probably my biggest disappointment of the evening. I never did look over and check our progress against my goal. If I had, I might have gone a little faster... maybe. #getfaster
Parting thought for the morning, and something I meant to post last time... I've finally gotten to the place where I don't have to eat crappy food just because I bough it. I had a sandwich I got from the grocery store last night, and after a few bites, decided it was just too dang much bread, and stopped eating it, got something else on the way back from the box. Used to just finish the food regardless, but frankly, I've got goals to meet, and that way of thinking isn't going to cut it anymore.
Everyone likes to receive a complement. Not long after getting in and getting some hello's going, Coach Randi comes up and tells me I'm looking good. I must have been sucking in my gut, but she said it twice, and frankly, it felt effing awesome to hear, regardless of how I feel about it, something is shining through to others, and thats pretty sweet. Thanks Randi!
Hopping right into it, I didn't do a very good warmup, chatted with more folks instead of rowing running, and then hopped into the group warmup. Shame on me. In that same breath, I'm glad I did it, it's nice to catch up with the family.
Got through our warmups and started working towards a heavy full (squat) clean and then another front squat following (don't know if this complex has a name). My wrists are tender from Monday, so I wanted to borrow some wraps from Andy... should say I was going to borrow some, but he got occupied with some with some brand new folks and their lifting, and really, I can't blame him, you gotta take care of the new people.
With a large class, we partnered up to get through the strength part (the clean). My man Dustin Simmons was here this week, and we partnered up... always worried about partner WODs with Dustin, especially after the first time. Oh well, no time to worry. We started packing on the plates pretty quick and it got pretty heavy. I have to be honest, I wasn't mentally strong enough for it. It got heavy, and I used my fear of my wrist to stop trying once it got heavy. Dustin kept going, and pulled some heavier weight. I don't know how far he got, I was busy having a small pity party. I really wanted to hit a PR last night. Oh well, I'll settle for matching my PR with a bummy wrist. :) In other words I'm not THAT upset. Did get some wraps from Dicks Sporting Goods tonight. Let you know what I think after a few uses. They were inexpensive, hopefully that doesn't mean they're cheap.
Moving on, it was looking to be a nasty ascending ladder AMRAP for 12 minutes... but again, we had a large class, so it became another partner workout... now I'm worried. New workout, 12 minutes, 4 of each movement, as soon as your done, partner goes. 4 wallballs, 4 deadlifts, 4 boxjumps (or stepups). I looked around, told Dustin I wanted to beat the girls (his wife and Dr. J). Had a goal, and then I didn't even check my work against that goal the whole workout, more on that in a second.
Dustin went first, FLEW through the thing. My first though was "oh shit"... I Jumped right into the wallballs. Felt different than 15.2, but it's still 20lbs, and I knew this was going to be a fight. Deadlifts weren't too bad at 135, and the stepups... I had to drop the box on its side (from 24" that Dustin was doing) to 20"... and it still seemed tall as heck. Done with round one. I didn't even bother looking at the clock, I'm pretty sure we got it done in less than a minute. As he started the 2nd round, I got the box back up to where he could jump, and by the time I turn around, he's already flying through the deadlifts and I practically have to jump out of his way before he gets to the box jumps. More expletives are going through my head. After two rounds I'm breathing hard, but the workout (as designed) I might add, is pushing me to make sure my partner isn't waiting around for long, and it's clearly pushing Simmons.
After 3 rounds, I'm hurting, but still moving at a decent pace, Dusty... hardly slowed a step. I've noticed something now, he demolishes these deadlifts... and they aren't bad for me weight wise, but damn I'm slow. Something I've learned fairly recently is that you move as fast as you train, and I've been training way too slow, and every time I tried to go faster, my form would get ugly, like real ugly. Rounded back... crappy pulls... etc etc. So I kept going slow. After 4 rounds, my breath is ragged, and I want this to be over. 5 rounds, and my quads start burning, I'm suffering all over now. 6 rounds, and I'm autopilot, trying not to think about the pain. Round 7 was bout the same, then I looked at the clock. 8 minutes and change gone? That it?!?! Dang!
Typically it's survival of the fittest, but for me it's just survival at this point. I'm going as fast as I can now, it hurts, it burns, it sucks. I get done with round 10... less than a minute left, good, we're almost done. Dustin flys through at nearly the same speed as the first round... 3 seconds left on the clock, I got in 1 more wallball before time was called. I'm spent. Happy I didn't just say welp, we're done, but I actually grabbed the ball and tossed it. Also pleased that I 'Stopped Stopping', I'm getting better, slowly, but surely.
Great workout, but man that sucked more than I thought it would. Funny story, I'd love to have another shot at it, in a few months. This was no where near as bad as our first partner WOD, and frankly, I think we've made a breakthrough in it. I'm not as fast as he is, but I'm not as slow as I used to be. Reminds me, he paid me a complement today as well, while doing the cleans, he made a comment about my mobility, he was suitably impressed. I guess I move pretty good for a big guy ;)
We didn't beat the girls. They got us by 7 or 10 movements, I don't remember. Thats probably my biggest disappointment of the evening. I never did look over and check our progress against my goal. If I had, I might have gone a little faster... maybe. #getfaster
Parting thought for the morning, and something I meant to post last time... I've finally gotten to the place where I don't have to eat crappy food just because I bough it. I had a sandwich I got from the grocery store last night, and after a few bites, decided it was just too dang much bread, and stopped eating it, got something else on the way back from the box. Used to just finish the food regardless, but frankly, I've got goals to meet, and that way of thinking isn't going to cut it anymore.
Monday, March 23, 2015
How did he do that?
Man alive what a day. Little bit of personal info, when I get less than 5 hours sleep, that alarm is downright discombobulating. Or maybe it's because I fell back asleep shortly before the alarm went off... but it takes me probably 20 seconds to find my bearings to shut it of, or at least quite it down. I guess it would help to tell you that the alarm is my phone... for whatever reason, it's rocket science.
All that to say not a lot of sleep coming out today... and then there was the flight. The flight attendants must have been super skinny vegans, because this flight was hot. I was asleep shortly after liftoff, and it was fine, then I woke up, nearly sweating... rest of the flight was meh! Fast forward to 5pm, and it's go time. I've been waiting all weekend for another shot at 15.4.
I get to the box, get my warmup in... and then I wait. Handful of folks are re-doing 15.4, the rest are doing the class. I'm warmed up now, I've got my bars ready, and then I went and counted for Big Ticket, he was trying to do it Rx. The man gave it every effort over 8 minutes, came up with a goose egg. I felt bad for him, but he tried, and got damn close several time. Brian DeLeon put up 94 I think (made that 185 power clean look easy), quite the number having seen it in person. Laura Navarre rounded out this group, not sure how many she did, but I think she beat her husband Jeremy....or at least thats the way I heard it. :)
Michele and I are up to do it next. She's going RX, I'm doing scaled again. This time I've got some (not my own yet...) wrist wraps. My first warmup set didn't feel good at all... and frankly, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to do anything today, but putting the wraps on, and things felt better, so we're ready to go. First round was fast, 10 unbroken on the press, and I can't remember, but I think I did 10 unbroken on the cleans. Great start. Then things got rough. Frankly, I didn't keep a good track of when I dropped the bar... but I did start dropping the bar. Ali P was counting my reps, and occasionally saying things like "use your hips" or "DIP!". It helped, I'm sure of it.
Somewhere along the way, I became aware that I was at my last attempts number, and then I was past it. Which is awesome, but I was out of gas. I pushed, pulled, dipped, cleaned, dirtied... and then I stopped. 8:01 on the clock, times up. Tally up the damage, and I ended up with 10 reps over what I did on Friday. I'll take it. Can't tell you if I was more tired then or now... may, be about the same? Not sure. The wraps, the coaching, and motivation of wanting to beat a few peoples scores gave me the juice to put a bit more up.
I knew I had more in the tank after the first time, and I might even have a little more still after this time... I think I slowed down after I hit my original score, knowing I had plenty of time to improve my score. I feel like that zapped some of my drive for sure. Oh well, I know this will come back around at some point over the next 12 months, and I'm looking forward to it, I might have a clean 100 in me still.
I improved 10, Michelle preformed her own magic, and she did 14 more, which is awesome. Funny story, we both had 75 the first time. If only I'd pushed for 4 more... that would have been a cool story.
Alright, so back to Big Ticket. I hate this guy. I mean I love him, he's awesome, but I hate him. Lemmie explain. After his efforts at 15.4 Rx, while I was doing my 15.4, he was doing the WOD. As I'm putting up my stuff, Ali, Michelle... both? People we're asking him what he was going to do with the open since you can't put up a 0. Ticket...idk if he got goaded enough, maybe his competitive fire got stoke... maybe a bit of both? Either way, he relents, he'll do it scaled. Now keep in mind, he's tried to do HSPU's, and he's done a WOD already.
Time starts, and he blows through the first two sets in like 47 seconds. I'm sure it's not a record, but it's fast enough, faster than me for sure. So he's plodding along, starts slowing down, stopping, taking breaks. He eventually gets to 65, drops the bar, and goes and sits down. Michelle (his fiance) and I are both kinda flabbergasted. I mean this dude just stopped, and sat down. Everyone is like WTF are you doing, get up and get back on that bar. Dude is like "man I'm tired". We finally get him back on the bar, he's had like a minute breather with something like 2 and a half minutes left. Keep in mind, he was at 65. In the final bit, this dude does whole 10 rep unbroken sets again. He grabbed another 30 reps before he was done.
He tried the workout RX... did another workout... took a minute break in the middle... and he still beat me. I can't tell you how conflicted I am. On one hand, I'm a little disheartened and pissed, but that was short lived... what I really want to figure out, is how to get that effort out of him on a more consistent basis. Now, I'm not his coach, and I'm not sure what his goals are, but he's got something deeper in there, and if he can find a way to harness it, there isn't anything stopping him from being an absolute monster.
Alright, enough about Ticket....enough about me too... why does it take me hours to write these? Oh, I know, tv's on in the background...SQUIRREL!
All that to say not a lot of sleep coming out today... and then there was the flight. The flight attendants must have been super skinny vegans, because this flight was hot. I was asleep shortly after liftoff, and it was fine, then I woke up, nearly sweating... rest of the flight was meh! Fast forward to 5pm, and it's go time. I've been waiting all weekend for another shot at 15.4.
I get to the box, get my warmup in... and then I wait. Handful of folks are re-doing 15.4, the rest are doing the class. I'm warmed up now, I've got my bars ready, and then I went and counted for Big Ticket, he was trying to do it Rx. The man gave it every effort over 8 minutes, came up with a goose egg. I felt bad for him, but he tried, and got damn close several time. Brian DeLeon put up 94 I think (made that 185 power clean look easy), quite the number having seen it in person. Laura Navarre rounded out this group, not sure how many she did, but I think she beat her husband Jeremy....or at least thats the way I heard it. :)
Michele and I are up to do it next. She's going RX, I'm doing scaled again. This time I've got some (not my own yet...) wrist wraps. My first warmup set didn't feel good at all... and frankly, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to do anything today, but putting the wraps on, and things felt better, so we're ready to go. First round was fast, 10 unbroken on the press, and I can't remember, but I think I did 10 unbroken on the cleans. Great start. Then things got rough. Frankly, I didn't keep a good track of when I dropped the bar... but I did start dropping the bar. Ali P was counting my reps, and occasionally saying things like "use your hips" or "DIP!". It helped, I'm sure of it.
Somewhere along the way, I became aware that I was at my last attempts number, and then I was past it. Which is awesome, but I was out of gas. I pushed, pulled, dipped, cleaned, dirtied... and then I stopped. 8:01 on the clock, times up. Tally up the damage, and I ended up with 10 reps over what I did on Friday. I'll take it. Can't tell you if I was more tired then or now... may, be about the same? Not sure. The wraps, the coaching, and motivation of wanting to beat a few peoples scores gave me the juice to put a bit more up.
I knew I had more in the tank after the first time, and I might even have a little more still after this time... I think I slowed down after I hit my original score, knowing I had plenty of time to improve my score. I feel like that zapped some of my drive for sure. Oh well, I know this will come back around at some point over the next 12 months, and I'm looking forward to it, I might have a clean 100 in me still.
I improved 10, Michelle preformed her own magic, and she did 14 more, which is awesome. Funny story, we both had 75 the first time. If only I'd pushed for 4 more... that would have been a cool story.
Alright, so back to Big Ticket. I hate this guy. I mean I love him, he's awesome, but I hate him. Lemmie explain. After his efforts at 15.4 Rx, while I was doing my 15.4, he was doing the WOD. As I'm putting up my stuff, Ali, Michelle... both? People we're asking him what he was going to do with the open since you can't put up a 0. Ticket...idk if he got goaded enough, maybe his competitive fire got stoke... maybe a bit of both? Either way, he relents, he'll do it scaled. Now keep in mind, he's tried to do HSPU's, and he's done a WOD already.
Time starts, and he blows through the first two sets in like 47 seconds. I'm sure it's not a record, but it's fast enough, faster than me for sure. So he's plodding along, starts slowing down, stopping, taking breaks. He eventually gets to 65, drops the bar, and goes and sits down. Michelle (his fiance) and I are both kinda flabbergasted. I mean this dude just stopped, and sat down. Everyone is like WTF are you doing, get up and get back on that bar. Dude is like "man I'm tired". We finally get him back on the bar, he's had like a minute breather with something like 2 and a half minutes left. Keep in mind, he was at 65. In the final bit, this dude does whole 10 rep unbroken sets again. He grabbed another 30 reps before he was done.
He tried the workout RX... did another workout... took a minute break in the middle... and he still beat me. I can't tell you how conflicted I am. On one hand, I'm a little disheartened and pissed, but that was short lived... what I really want to figure out, is how to get that effort out of him on a more consistent basis. Now, I'm not his coach, and I'm not sure what his goals are, but he's got something deeper in there, and if he can find a way to harness it, there isn't anything stopping him from being an absolute monster.
Alright, enough about Ticket....enough about me too... why does it take me hours to write these? Oh, I know, tv's on in the background...SQUIRREL!
Friday, March 20, 2015
15.4
The aftermath is ugly. My wrists are back to being super tender..... and really, I'm not surprised, two of the movements from the day I first irritated them were on todays workout. Push press, and (power) cleans. Brian did have a 'loaner' set of wrist wraps that he had me try on... and they felt lovely. Like I kinda wish I was wearing them now level of lovely. I will be doing this workout again, and I will have wrist wraps. Not that I think the wraps will help my score, but I think they'll save my wrists from another night of pain and suffering.
15.4 scaled is 10 push press at 95lbs, 10 power cleans at 115. Neither are max efforts, but 95lbs has been my standard overhead weight for a while, and 115 on a clean isn't going to break my bank, it's not exactly light either.... in other words, this should be a good workout, something that pushes me but wont break me.
I didn't warmup with the rest of the 530 class. I got there early and worked my normal warmup, then warmed up for the workout on my own. Not sure if that hurt, helped, or impacted my score, but I felt ready to go when we started. I jumped right in, Brian said before the start, the goal should be 5 or 6 rounds. This is almost DOUBLE what I thought I was going to do... I was aiming for 50, 60, or maybe 75... 5 rounds would be awesome. He encouraged us to do the push press all unbroken.... having done plenty of wods at 95lbs overheard, I'm suddenly concerned. Too late now, it's go time.
First round was fast, I DID get my push press unbroken. Felt good, but that last one was a little bit of a struggle. No time to dwell, turn around and grab the clean. I dropped the bar almost every clean the whole workout. Don't know if this is a bad idea or not, figure it saves a little on the impact of taking it to the ground, but there is the lost time from having to grab the bar again... might have to do some touch and go next attempt, but back to this one.... second set of push press, and I got to 7 before I dropped the bar. Jill is counting me, but she's also coaching at be a bit. "Get back to the bar", "Stop stepping so far back", "Lets go, you got this". Helped me a few times for sure, and I stopped taking steps back from the bar.
Third round saw me breaking up the push press 4-3-3, and that last set of 3 was rough, I left the bar in the air for the last press, just to make sure I was good. At this point I'm sucking air so bad, taking lots of mini breaks... and I mean mini, two deep breaths then back at it. I don't know where they happened, but a few of these cleans were ugly... like that "u g l y you aint got no alibi; you ugly" type of ugly. But they counted! The last set of push press I got in went 3-3-2-2. Survival was the name of the game. I only looked at the clock twice in the workout, one time was around 4:40something, and then again before that last set of 2 on the press. Turned and grabbed the bar and banged out 3 touch and go, thought I had heard someone way 10 seconds so I pushed through them. Then I looked over my shoulder, 7 seconds left. Dammit! So I pulled two more before being done. Chest heaving, I'm done, and I feel great/awful.
I doubt I'm the only person who can find that extra gear at the end... and I need to harness that next time I go. Push harder throughout, but also watch the clock a little more. I ended up with 75. More than I initially though, but having done it, I want more. Texted Dave P, he beat me. Checked in on Justin, he beat me too. Can't be having that. The vid Justin was kind enough to put online showed his cleans, and he was touch and go. If that was his later rounds, he's doing alright, but if that was just him in the beginning, then I know I can beat him. He posted a 77... so it's definitely manageable. I'm aiming for 82. I think I'm going to get it done at Unlocked too. Looking forward to it.
Eating has been good, not great since I got home. I was FAMISHED coming off the plane. I had a steamer yesterday morning, then nothing till the airport, so I got a smoothie/shake thing from Java Juice. Held me over till I got home... 4 pieces of cold pizza as soon as I got home, then it was out the door. The silver lining is that it was a medium pizza. LOL Today was good, not great. Dinner they had some sort of spaghetti, and after 15.4, I didn't care, I pushed pretty hard, I'll be back in the box tomorrow most likely, so I ate it. I'll admit it... it was Gooooooood too.
Last thought of the night... the lifters are half dead. The tongue on the shoe that is ripping is at the halfway point to being clean off. I hope they make it to July.
15.4 scaled is 10 push press at 95lbs, 10 power cleans at 115. Neither are max efforts, but 95lbs has been my standard overhead weight for a while, and 115 on a clean isn't going to break my bank, it's not exactly light either.... in other words, this should be a good workout, something that pushes me but wont break me.
I didn't warmup with the rest of the 530 class. I got there early and worked my normal warmup, then warmed up for the workout on my own. Not sure if that hurt, helped, or impacted my score, but I felt ready to go when we started. I jumped right in, Brian said before the start, the goal should be 5 or 6 rounds. This is almost DOUBLE what I thought I was going to do... I was aiming for 50, 60, or maybe 75... 5 rounds would be awesome. He encouraged us to do the push press all unbroken.... having done plenty of wods at 95lbs overheard, I'm suddenly concerned. Too late now, it's go time.
First round was fast, I DID get my push press unbroken. Felt good, but that last one was a little bit of a struggle. No time to dwell, turn around and grab the clean. I dropped the bar almost every clean the whole workout. Don't know if this is a bad idea or not, figure it saves a little on the impact of taking it to the ground, but there is the lost time from having to grab the bar again... might have to do some touch and go next attempt, but back to this one.... second set of push press, and I got to 7 before I dropped the bar. Jill is counting me, but she's also coaching at be a bit. "Get back to the bar", "Stop stepping so far back", "Lets go, you got this". Helped me a few times for sure, and I stopped taking steps back from the bar.
Third round saw me breaking up the push press 4-3-3, and that last set of 3 was rough, I left the bar in the air for the last press, just to make sure I was good. At this point I'm sucking air so bad, taking lots of mini breaks... and I mean mini, two deep breaths then back at it. I don't know where they happened, but a few of these cleans were ugly... like that "u g l y you aint got no alibi; you ugly" type of ugly. But they counted! The last set of push press I got in went 3-3-2-2. Survival was the name of the game. I only looked at the clock twice in the workout, one time was around 4:40something, and then again before that last set of 2 on the press. Turned and grabbed the bar and banged out 3 touch and go, thought I had heard someone way 10 seconds so I pushed through them. Then I looked over my shoulder, 7 seconds left. Dammit! So I pulled two more before being done. Chest heaving, I'm done, and I feel great/awful.
I doubt I'm the only person who can find that extra gear at the end... and I need to harness that next time I go. Push harder throughout, but also watch the clock a little more. I ended up with 75. More than I initially though, but having done it, I want more. Texted Dave P, he beat me. Checked in on Justin, he beat me too. Can't be having that. The vid Justin was kind enough to put online showed his cleans, and he was touch and go. If that was his later rounds, he's doing alright, but if that was just him in the beginning, then I know I can beat him. He posted a 77... so it's definitely manageable. I'm aiming for 82. I think I'm going to get it done at Unlocked too. Looking forward to it.
Eating has been good, not great since I got home. I was FAMISHED coming off the plane. I had a steamer yesterday morning, then nothing till the airport, so I got a smoothie/shake thing from Java Juice. Held me over till I got home... 4 pieces of cold pizza as soon as I got home, then it was out the door. The silver lining is that it was a medium pizza. LOL Today was good, not great. Dinner they had some sort of spaghetti, and after 15.4, I didn't care, I pushed pretty hard, I'll be back in the box tomorrow most likely, so I ate it. I'll admit it... it was Gooooooood too.
Last thought of the night... the lifters are half dead. The tongue on the shoe that is ripping is at the halfway point to being clean off. I hope they make it to July.
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Short and sweat, cause we ain't doing sweet around here right now.
Tonight was fun. I forget what the workout was named online, but the whiteboard called it a Monster Tabata. 4 stations, 4 rounds, 40 seconds work with 20 rest. I really don't like these... cause the rest is a lie. LOL. Diving right into it, 4 stations, situps, slam balls (or ball slams if you're Ali), calorie rows, and Russian twists. There were just enough of us that we couldn't all be on the same things at once, and while I was really thinking about the rower, the fact that that would have put the Russian twists and THEN situps... so no... There isn't much to describe with the workout... the ball slam and twists were rough, I struggled holding the slam ball, might be dry hands? Ended up with a 181, lowest score in the box, not by much though, and I was RX, so I'm happy with the score.
On to other things, my wrist... still tender, but I rolled it out a lot on a lax ball between work calls... so it hurts to touch it, I'm hoping a night of sleep and a day of rest will take care of it. Thought about doing the 0545 WOD tomorrow before I fly home, but I saw HSPU's and clean and jerks... and I'd like to have a wrist to use for 15.4, whatever it is.
Had a chance to bust up the diet today, got a dinner invite with some of Unlockeds finest. I really wanted to go, but I'm sticking to the paleo principles of my previous success. Staying strong, plus, I had already ordered some food from Carla...and aside from the iHop omelet yesterday, it's the best thing I've had all week.
Thats all I've got for now, got some work to do before bed. :)
On to other things, my wrist... still tender, but I rolled it out a lot on a lax ball between work calls... so it hurts to touch it, I'm hoping a night of sleep and a day of rest will take care of it. Thought about doing the 0545 WOD tomorrow before I fly home, but I saw HSPU's and clean and jerks... and I'd like to have a wrist to use for 15.4, whatever it is.
Had a chance to bust up the diet today, got a dinner invite with some of Unlockeds finest. I really wanted to go, but I'm sticking to the paleo principles of my previous success. Staying strong, plus, I had already ordered some food from Carla...and aside from the iHop omelet yesterday, it's the best thing I've had all week.
Thats all I've got for now, got some work to do before bed. :)
You know you're tired when....
Been a long couple of days. I didn't get back to 15.3 again, those New Balance (NBs) just destroy my quads when I do wallballs in them. I'm certain they mess up my form... they have to, my lifters don't leave me like that, so something changes when I use them... and speaking of the lifters, WOD I did yesterday, had some jumping in it.... did better with the lifters on than I did with the NBs.
Moving on, don't have a lot of time to update this today... would have done it last night, but I got back from the box, went to iHop, had a chicken fajita omlette, got back to the hotel room, fell on the bed, didn't wake up till 2, changed into pj's and went right back to sleep, hence the title you know you're tired when...
Actually did yesterdays WOD at 0545. Nice and early. I got back to DE around 10pm on Monday, and didn't have a chance to work out then, and I knew I wasn't going to sleep all that well, so I decided to set the alarm early... and I was right. I didn't sleep all that well... at all.... sucked really, but oh well. Got to the box, pretty quick WOD, which suited my needs for Tuesday morning just fine. Unlocked is utilizing the Jim Wendler 5-3-1 method for power cleans, and that was the strength part. 5 @ 75, 3 @ 85, and max reps at 95% of the training max. I actually did them as squat cleans... I want to get better at those, so I did it as those. Only got two done on the max before I let go of the bar, probably had a bit more in the tank. Looking back today on it, I'm glad I did... later last night when I went back to the box (who wants to just sit in a hotel room?), my wrists were a little sore... still working on them.
Second part of the WOD was this workout that means a little something to everyone who's done it. I guess it was part of a competition at a local affiliate when everyone had just started, and they all sucked at it. 5 deadlifts at 225, 14 double unders 5 rounds. For them in Rehoboth, not a single person got done with 4 rounds by the 5th minute. Last night, most everyone had it beat in less than half that allotted time... impressive to see the gains. For me, I did the deadlifts at 205, and tried to hit 28 singles. Took me 5:59. Got tired on the singles, but was able to do more of them, consistently, in the lifters.... should have worn them for 15.3... anyway.
That was it. Short WOD, was able to get back, get the grocery shopping done in the morning... good start to the day yesterday.
"Quick" updates/shoutouts
Thanks Dave P for the texts when I wasn't around. At one point he asked if I was injured due to the fact I hadn't posted in about a week. Nice to know people read this, and that they care. Doesn't surprise me in the least, but it does remind me of that old business axiom I've heard many times.... "people don't care how much you know till they know how much you care".
Paleo reboot is going pretty well, it's not perfect, but it's miles better than it was before.
Getting off the punch cards at Unlocked, going to become a full fledged member. Financially I can't keep going upstate DE every week to see CFDS, going to have to cut it to bi-weekly at best, which sucks for seeing them, but I'm in great hands at Unlocked, and from a WOD standpoint, this adds a bit more consistency to my workouts.
Got some good conversation in with the Navarres, got some info I needed about the shirts they make/sell, and the website in general. Good peoples, give them a look.
I'd have more to tell you, but I'm back at work from 3 weeks home on paternity leave, and life is busy at the moment :)
Moving on, don't have a lot of time to update this today... would have done it last night, but I got back from the box, went to iHop, had a chicken fajita omlette, got back to the hotel room, fell on the bed, didn't wake up till 2, changed into pj's and went right back to sleep, hence the title you know you're tired when...
Actually did yesterdays WOD at 0545. Nice and early. I got back to DE around 10pm on Monday, and didn't have a chance to work out then, and I knew I wasn't going to sleep all that well, so I decided to set the alarm early... and I was right. I didn't sleep all that well... at all.... sucked really, but oh well. Got to the box, pretty quick WOD, which suited my needs for Tuesday morning just fine. Unlocked is utilizing the Jim Wendler 5-3-1 method for power cleans, and that was the strength part. 5 @ 75, 3 @ 85, and max reps at 95% of the training max. I actually did them as squat cleans... I want to get better at those, so I did it as those. Only got two done on the max before I let go of the bar, probably had a bit more in the tank. Looking back today on it, I'm glad I did... later last night when I went back to the box (who wants to just sit in a hotel room?), my wrists were a little sore... still working on them.
Second part of the WOD was this workout that means a little something to everyone who's done it. I guess it was part of a competition at a local affiliate when everyone had just started, and they all sucked at it. 5 deadlifts at 225, 14 double unders 5 rounds. For them in Rehoboth, not a single person got done with 4 rounds by the 5th minute. Last night, most everyone had it beat in less than half that allotted time... impressive to see the gains. For me, I did the deadlifts at 205, and tried to hit 28 singles. Took me 5:59. Got tired on the singles, but was able to do more of them, consistently, in the lifters.... should have worn them for 15.3... anyway.
That was it. Short WOD, was able to get back, get the grocery shopping done in the morning... good start to the day yesterday.
"Quick" updates/shoutouts
Thanks Dave P for the texts when I wasn't around. At one point he asked if I was injured due to the fact I hadn't posted in about a week. Nice to know people read this, and that they care. Doesn't surprise me in the least, but it does remind me of that old business axiom I've heard many times.... "people don't care how much you know till they know how much you care".
Paleo reboot is going pretty well, it's not perfect, but it's miles better than it was before.
Getting off the punch cards at Unlocked, going to become a full fledged member. Financially I can't keep going upstate DE every week to see CFDS, going to have to cut it to bi-weekly at best, which sucks for seeing them, but I'm in great hands at Unlocked, and from a WOD standpoint, this adds a bit more consistency to my workouts.
Got some good conversation in with the Navarres, got some info I needed about the shirts they make/sell, and the website in general. Good peoples, give them a look.
I'd have more to tell you, but I'm back at work from 3 weeks home on paternity leave, and life is busy at the moment :)
Friday, March 13, 2015
15.3
Welcome back! The wrist was worse than I had thought. I didn't see a specialist or anything, but I'm going to go ahead and call it a mild sprain/strain on my right wrist. Didn't WOD all week, just started feeling sturdy again yesterday.
Look, it was bad, I mean Saturday and Sunday, I did what I could to not use my right wrist at all. Slowly started feeling better... and while I really think wrist wraps are the way to go, I've heard a number of folks have told me that they feel like their wrists are a bit weaker because of the wraps, but they also said they help tremendously... so we'll see.
15.3... nasty.... sucked... disappointment... might do it again on Monday. For me, scaled, it was 50 wallballs at 20lbs to a 9ft target, and 200 single unders. AMRAP style, 14 minutes. I remember doing like 170 singles on a 5 minute clock at Unlocked not too long ago, so I figured I'd do alright, could probably get to the 400's, goal was 501.
Warmup, Coach Brian wanted us to get a bit of a burn going, get the heart rate up. 7 minute AMRAP of 3 ring pulls, 6 pushups, 9 air squats. Bit nervous on the pushups, wasn't sure how the wrist was going to hold up... used knuckles the first time to keep straight wrist. Have to tell you, felt like I had an extra 4" to go to get to the bottom of the pushup. The air squats, in the beginning, are tight....they're always tight. I'm actually glad I did some of these, had I started under the extra load of a whole 20lb WB... I don't think it would have been bad or anything, just glad I did it, got it going. , I'm still not sure how to get properly loose for wallballs, and I guess air squats are the way to go, but I always feel extra tight when I start. Having drank 120oz of water before I started, would have thought that I'd have been properly lubricated in the joints, guess not. Back to the pushups, that second set, I went back to normal, and it felt fine, a little tender right now, after the fact, but not bad like it was.
Ok, 15.3, lets go! I rocked out 13 straight WBs... and then I had to start breaking it up... A LOT. I've been using lighter balls for my WB's so I could go a bit faster in the WODs... and I think those days are done. My capacity for doing WB's was not there for this. Truthfully, I'm irritated about that a little bit. Shouldn't be surprised since I don't use them regularly, at least not yet. I think not working out for a week probably hurt me more than I'd like to admit, but not using 20lbs for WB's is what I'm blaming ;)
So I didn't watch the clock, couldn't see it, didn't want to. I took my time with these WB's. Didn't drop the ball outright all that often, instead I'd lean on the wall with the ball at my chest, or I'd lean with my arms extended. Brian had seen this before, but watching me do it seemed to strike a chord. He mentioned it throughout the workout, and after when I talked with him some more. I guess seeing it live with me was enough that he's going to put that method to some of the elite athletes at the box, for when they retry their scores. Probably save them some energy from not having to pick it up off the ground as they get into round 2 and 3. I'm happy with that, I've contributed!!!! LOL.
I finally got done with the wallballs. Got my new rope out today, finally. Thought I had it adjusted to where I wanted it, but it was just a weeeee bit too long, so after about 20, 25, I stopped and grabbed the screwdriver, moved it back down about an inch, and all was right with the world. I have to tell you, 200 singles never took so long, maybe I should have watched the clock? I think I jumped probably 300 times or more, but having the rope hit under my feet... kinda kills the rep, if know what I mean.
440 lbs is a lot to get up and down 50 times for wallballs. It's a bit more to get up and down for jumping rope after said wall balls. To say I struggled would be kind. I hit more 1 and 2 rep combos that I care to admit. At one point, I turned and looked at the clock. Couldn't believe how much time had gone. Astounded. Knew right then 500 wasn't happening, had to turn this into a chipper. So I'd get 4 here, 7 there, string together 15 a time or two. Had like 30 left with 2 minutes left on the clock. Took damn near the whole 2 minutes to get them too... tons of single reps. :| Got 200 done with about 10 seconds left. Moved right to the WBs, and I got two of them suckers. I did everything I could to push them up.
252 instead of 501. I can't tell you how disappointed I am. Brian was proud of me, said I did a good job... I'm not so sure. It's better than a zero, and better than the people who don't show up... I guess it was ok. I think I might actually try to do it again on Monday. My flight isn't till later in the afternoon, so I might do it on Monday... we'll see. I keep saying might. LOL, the word meant an eventual no in my childhood, probably shouldn't use it here. See how I'm feeling on Monday.
In other news, I've been shite with my food. I mean bad. Texas toast, pasta skillet meals, ding dongs, diet soda (which I despise)... just a lot of junk this week... But thats over. I've got less than 10 months to lose 100lbs. I still think I can manage it. Been eating lots of veggies already, getting ready for the coming week. Talked with Brian, got his input, and I'm aiming for 4 weeks of primarily veggies and meat (paleo), as much as I can stand, then work the other stuff back in after that. I know I wont be perfect, but I can work really hard at doing veggies and meat... stir fry when I get home for sure.
So, eat better, use a heavier wall ball, win. Sounds easy enough.
Look, it was bad, I mean Saturday and Sunday, I did what I could to not use my right wrist at all. Slowly started feeling better... and while I really think wrist wraps are the way to go, I've heard a number of folks have told me that they feel like their wrists are a bit weaker because of the wraps, but they also said they help tremendously... so we'll see.
15.3... nasty.... sucked... disappointment... might do it again on Monday. For me, scaled, it was 50 wallballs at 20lbs to a 9ft target, and 200 single unders. AMRAP style, 14 minutes. I remember doing like 170 singles on a 5 minute clock at Unlocked not too long ago, so I figured I'd do alright, could probably get to the 400's, goal was 501.
Warmup, Coach Brian wanted us to get a bit of a burn going, get the heart rate up. 7 minute AMRAP of 3 ring pulls, 6 pushups, 9 air squats. Bit nervous on the pushups, wasn't sure how the wrist was going to hold up... used knuckles the first time to keep straight wrist. Have to tell you, felt like I had an extra 4" to go to get to the bottom of the pushup. The air squats, in the beginning, are tight....they're always tight. I'm actually glad I did some of these, had I started under the extra load of a whole 20lb WB... I don't think it would have been bad or anything, just glad I did it, got it going. , I'm still not sure how to get properly loose for wallballs, and I guess air squats are the way to go, but I always feel extra tight when I start. Having drank 120oz of water before I started, would have thought that I'd have been properly lubricated in the joints, guess not. Back to the pushups, that second set, I went back to normal, and it felt fine, a little tender right now, after the fact, but not bad like it was.
Ok, 15.3, lets go! I rocked out 13 straight WBs... and then I had to start breaking it up... A LOT. I've been using lighter balls for my WB's so I could go a bit faster in the WODs... and I think those days are done. My capacity for doing WB's was not there for this. Truthfully, I'm irritated about that a little bit. Shouldn't be surprised since I don't use them regularly, at least not yet. I think not working out for a week probably hurt me more than I'd like to admit, but not using 20lbs for WB's is what I'm blaming ;)
So I didn't watch the clock, couldn't see it, didn't want to. I took my time with these WB's. Didn't drop the ball outright all that often, instead I'd lean on the wall with the ball at my chest, or I'd lean with my arms extended. Brian had seen this before, but watching me do it seemed to strike a chord. He mentioned it throughout the workout, and after when I talked with him some more. I guess seeing it live with me was enough that he's going to put that method to some of the elite athletes at the box, for when they retry their scores. Probably save them some energy from not having to pick it up off the ground as they get into round 2 and 3. I'm happy with that, I've contributed!!!! LOL.
I finally got done with the wallballs. Got my new rope out today, finally. Thought I had it adjusted to where I wanted it, but it was just a weeeee bit too long, so after about 20, 25, I stopped and grabbed the screwdriver, moved it back down about an inch, and all was right with the world. I have to tell you, 200 singles never took so long, maybe I should have watched the clock? I think I jumped probably 300 times or more, but having the rope hit under my feet... kinda kills the rep, if know what I mean.
440 lbs is a lot to get up and down 50 times for wallballs. It's a bit more to get up and down for jumping rope after said wall balls. To say I struggled would be kind. I hit more 1 and 2 rep combos that I care to admit. At one point, I turned and looked at the clock. Couldn't believe how much time had gone. Astounded. Knew right then 500 wasn't happening, had to turn this into a chipper. So I'd get 4 here, 7 there, string together 15 a time or two. Had like 30 left with 2 minutes left on the clock. Took damn near the whole 2 minutes to get them too... tons of single reps. :| Got 200 done with about 10 seconds left. Moved right to the WBs, and I got two of them suckers. I did everything I could to push them up.
252 instead of 501. I can't tell you how disappointed I am. Brian was proud of me, said I did a good job... I'm not so sure. It's better than a zero, and better than the people who don't show up... I guess it was ok. I think I might actually try to do it again on Monday. My flight isn't till later in the afternoon, so I might do it on Monday... we'll see. I keep saying might. LOL, the word meant an eventual no in my childhood, probably shouldn't use it here. See how I'm feeling on Monday.
In other news, I've been shite with my food. I mean bad. Texas toast, pasta skillet meals, ding dongs, diet soda (which I despise)... just a lot of junk this week... But thats over. I've got less than 10 months to lose 100lbs. I still think I can manage it. Been eating lots of veggies already, getting ready for the coming week. Talked with Brian, got his input, and I'm aiming for 4 weeks of primarily veggies and meat (paleo), as much as I can stand, then work the other stuff back in after that. I know I wont be perfect, but I can work really hard at doing veggies and meat... stir fry when I get home for sure.
So, eat better, use a heavier wall ball, win. Sounds easy enough.
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Increasing my capacity
Let me just say upfront, that my wrists hurt. I need to invest in some wraps, this WOD dominated my wrists in a bad way... I might mention this again later... so my apologies upfront if I say it too many times.
I'm starting to like this Sat AM workouts, feels like it gets my day started off right. I didn't get enough sleep, but I was awake enough to see it was 0700, and I might as well get up, the extra 2 hours of sleep might or might not happen (I was already hot), so what the heck, leggo!
IDK if this is becoming a needed norm, but I like the extra 30 minutes + before a workout to get everything loose and ready. My pre-warmup if you will. Do my classic Unlocked warm up of pvc pass throughs, a few good mornings, maybe some around the world things, some spiderman stretching, some of another kind of hip stretch... and I'm good, ready for the world most days... but lately I've been adding on a lot of shoulder mobility, so I'll take a band and wrap it around the pullup part of the rig, then kinda sit back... I don't remember what this is called, but I like to do that one a few times each, then another thing that helps with rack mobility... doorway stretches, some oly wall stretching... I do a lot of stuff, and it's seems to have a good deal of benefit for me.
Workout looked fun when I saw it late last night... I'm ready to get started. Every 2 minutes for 12 minutes, doing 2 front squats (6 sets). 1-2 at 75-80, 3-4 at 80-85, 5-6 at 85-90. Pain point 1 for the wrists as everything gets heavier. The last 3 sets really took the cake, I'd pop off the bar and be shaking my wrists... I did pretty well overall, as it got heavier, the sucken chest, bending over happened a little more. I worked on pushing up from my elbows first, then my heels, and it straightened my up most of the time, but I did have 1 bad one in the whole set that was fugly. Improving!
Next up, power cleans. 1 rep ever 90 seconds, going up by 5% of the 1RM, starting at 60% and going up. At first this was fun, but then it got heavy quick. Last two sets were at 90%. Me, being the dummy I was, jumped by 10 near the end, and my 85 was actually 95... so I had to go get different plates to fix that. I knew it was going to do that... and I did it anyway, and it would have been fine had I hit it, but I didn't, and my body called me on my own BS. Feel good, what next... oh yeah, a timed clean... and I should go ahead and say these are all squat cleans, so more front squattin! After our ladder, we jumped right into this set for time:
3 Squat Cleans @ 80-85% of 1-RM
5 Squat Cleans @ 75-80%
7 Squat Cleans @ 70-75%
I flubbed once in the set of 5, only had 4, and I wanted badly to just move on... but I didn't, I kept with it, and got it, and the 7 done. I was dead last, and I'm dead tired now, my wrists are kaput, I've had a good workout. Oh, there is still time left in the class... oh... damn, now we're at the workout...
This was a great opportunity to dig deep. We broke it up into partners, one is resting while the other one is working, it looked like this:
3 rounds for max reps of:
60 seconds of Kettlebell Swings (70/55 kg)
Rest 60 seconds
60 seconds of Push-Ups
Rest 60 seconds
60 seconds of Box Jump-Overs (24″/20″)
Rest 60 seconds
60 seconds of Push Press (115/75 lbs)
Rest 60 seconds
I went with a 55 on the KBs, and 20" on the box (I miss the 18" at Unlocked), and I wanted to do 95 on the bar. Partnered with this guy Zach, he was all about that 115... whatever, lets do it! I knew that was going to be a problem later, but I did it anyway.
The KB swings were Russian, but 55 is still the heaviest I've done, so this wasn't going to be easy by any stretch. Zach did the full 70, ended up with just under 40, I didn't put it down and I almost hit 30... not a pace I can keep up at this rate. My wrists are smoked and I'm winded... this is going to suck for 3 rounds. My princess pushups were bad... I mean I kept a tight core, so they were good, but by the end of 60 seconds, my arms were wobbling... the "jump overs" or step overs for me... that extra 2" for that box, my goodness. I found myself wishing for something shorter. Finally, out of gas, and it's the push press... I'm coming around to how this is supposed to work, I didn't figure it out in the first round, but by the second, I was pushing my head through at the top of the press, and they looked be... they felt (to me) like they looked better.
Bit of a miscommunication, Zach thought we were done at 1 round. LOL. He lost a good 15 seconds of KB swings before he had his "ah ha" moment. I didn't have the heart to tell him there were more... makes me a bad teammate in some respects, but in my defense, I was still looking for one of my lungs on the floor. Round 2 showed a significant drop in numbers, so round 3 I tried to make it up in some areas. KB swings got broken up.. .really, everything but the box step overs got broken up. The pushups were the worst...maybe worse than the push press. I was doing half the depth I needed, and still nearly failing every single one.
In the end, it sucked... and I'd say it hurt my feelings...but this one didn't hurt my feelings, it just hurt. Alissa Sweetman from CFDS posted about her workout today, using the hashtag #ifeeldisrespected That seems apt for this. I worked harder, and did more weight than I wanted to do, and I pushed out of my comfort zone... I have increased my capacity, my tolerance for harder workouts... I'm getting better, and thats awesome... doesn't help my wrists though. :)
Going to look at wrist straps and a sweatband or two over the coming weeks. I've been given the names of a gal in KC that does the straps, and I think I'm going to pull the trigger on a Halo sweatband... I might even review them and let you know what I think.
I'm starting to like this Sat AM workouts, feels like it gets my day started off right. I didn't get enough sleep, but I was awake enough to see it was 0700, and I might as well get up, the extra 2 hours of sleep might or might not happen (I was already hot), so what the heck, leggo!
IDK if this is becoming a needed norm, but I like the extra 30 minutes + before a workout to get everything loose and ready. My pre-warmup if you will. Do my classic Unlocked warm up of pvc pass throughs, a few good mornings, maybe some around the world things, some spiderman stretching, some of another kind of hip stretch... and I'm good, ready for the world most days... but lately I've been adding on a lot of shoulder mobility, so I'll take a band and wrap it around the pullup part of the rig, then kinda sit back... I don't remember what this is called, but I like to do that one a few times each, then another thing that helps with rack mobility... doorway stretches, some oly wall stretching... I do a lot of stuff, and it's seems to have a good deal of benefit for me.
Workout looked fun when I saw it late last night... I'm ready to get started. Every 2 minutes for 12 minutes, doing 2 front squats (6 sets). 1-2 at 75-80, 3-4 at 80-85, 5-6 at 85-90. Pain point 1 for the wrists as everything gets heavier. The last 3 sets really took the cake, I'd pop off the bar and be shaking my wrists... I did pretty well overall, as it got heavier, the sucken chest, bending over happened a little more. I worked on pushing up from my elbows first, then my heels, and it straightened my up most of the time, but I did have 1 bad one in the whole set that was fugly. Improving!
Next up, power cleans. 1 rep ever 90 seconds, going up by 5% of the 1RM, starting at 60% and going up. At first this was fun, but then it got heavy quick. Last two sets were at 90%. Me, being the dummy I was, jumped by 10 near the end, and my 85 was actually 95... so I had to go get different plates to fix that. I knew it was going to do that... and I did it anyway, and it would have been fine had I hit it, but I didn't, and my body called me on my own BS. Feel good, what next... oh yeah, a timed clean... and I should go ahead and say these are all squat cleans, so more front squattin! After our ladder, we jumped right into this set for time:
3 Squat Cleans @ 80-85% of 1-RM
5 Squat Cleans @ 75-80%
7 Squat Cleans @ 70-75%
I flubbed once in the set of 5, only had 4, and I wanted badly to just move on... but I didn't, I kept with it, and got it, and the 7 done. I was dead last, and I'm dead tired now, my wrists are kaput, I've had a good workout. Oh, there is still time left in the class... oh... damn, now we're at the workout...
This was a great opportunity to dig deep. We broke it up into partners, one is resting while the other one is working, it looked like this:
3 rounds for max reps of:
60 seconds of Kettlebell Swings (70/55 kg)
Rest 60 seconds
60 seconds of Push-Ups
Rest 60 seconds
60 seconds of Box Jump-Overs (24″/20″)
Rest 60 seconds
60 seconds of Push Press (115/75 lbs)
Rest 60 seconds
I went with a 55 on the KBs, and 20" on the box (I miss the 18" at Unlocked), and I wanted to do 95 on the bar. Partnered with this guy Zach, he was all about that 115... whatever, lets do it! I knew that was going to be a problem later, but I did it anyway.
The KB swings were Russian, but 55 is still the heaviest I've done, so this wasn't going to be easy by any stretch. Zach did the full 70, ended up with just under 40, I didn't put it down and I almost hit 30... not a pace I can keep up at this rate. My wrists are smoked and I'm winded... this is going to suck for 3 rounds. My princess pushups were bad... I mean I kept a tight core, so they were good, but by the end of 60 seconds, my arms were wobbling... the "jump overs" or step overs for me... that extra 2" for that box, my goodness. I found myself wishing for something shorter. Finally, out of gas, and it's the push press... I'm coming around to how this is supposed to work, I didn't figure it out in the first round, but by the second, I was pushing my head through at the top of the press, and they looked be... they felt (to me) like they looked better.
Bit of a miscommunication, Zach thought we were done at 1 round. LOL. He lost a good 15 seconds of KB swings before he had his "ah ha" moment. I didn't have the heart to tell him there were more... makes me a bad teammate in some respects, but in my defense, I was still looking for one of my lungs on the floor. Round 2 showed a significant drop in numbers, so round 3 I tried to make it up in some areas. KB swings got broken up.. .really, everything but the box step overs got broken up. The pushups were the worst...maybe worse than the push press. I was doing half the depth I needed, and still nearly failing every single one.
In the end, it sucked... and I'd say it hurt my feelings...but this one didn't hurt my feelings, it just hurt. Alissa Sweetman from CFDS posted about her workout today, using the hashtag #ifeeldisrespected That seems apt for this. I worked harder, and did more weight than I wanted to do, and I pushed out of my comfort zone... I have increased my capacity, my tolerance for harder workouts... I'm getting better, and thats awesome... doesn't help my wrists though. :)
Going to look at wrist straps and a sweatband or two over the coming weeks. I've been given the names of a gal in KC that does the straps, and I think I'm going to pull the trigger on a Halo sweatband... I might even review them and let you know what I think.
Friday, March 6, 2015
15.2
I've said it before, I'll say it again, one of the biggest secrets to CrossFit, and to life in general is just showing up, just showing that consistency. I've read MANY stories already today from peoples 15.2, and just how much they've improved from 14.2. So far my fav has been from coach Dave at Unlocked. He sent me a quick text, more than doubled last years score, thats freaking awesome. I wasn't doing CrossFit last year, so I don't have a 14.2 story. Maybe they'll do this one again next year, and I can compare then to now?
I got home from the grocery store (aka Wal-Mart, a place I loathe) in enough time last night to catch the unveiling of 15.2 from games.crossfit.com and the feed was awful. It's been a long time since I've had something buffer that many times on YouTube. When my feed is able to catch up, I find out that it's a repeat of last year. Cool... what was last year? Haha. I finally see it... ok, that doesn't look awful... Wonder what the scaled option is? I got tired of the buffering, decided to go do something else for a while. Come back to look at the scaled option... Rx for me is 95lbs OHS and chest to bar pullups... so maybe, maaaaybe we'll do jump pullups for scaled. I looked... looked again... nope, no jumping pullups for anyone but the Masters 55 and over... aaaand, oh, hey look, scaled is chin over the bar pullups... Being the smart@ss that I am, I unscientifically measured the distance from my chin to my chest... about 6 inches... give or take. Thanks for the break!
It's ok... this will give the scaled division, and maybe the Rx divisions a clean break... don't know that that is needed, but it's going to stratify the results a bit (I think, we'll see). Oh well, no time to cry about it. Fast forward to today, and I'm at the box early again. I'm still fighting my shoulder muscles/neck area. Been to the chiro twice since Saturday, and I'm better, but not "fixed". Maybe I do need that hotel bed a few nights during the week?
So I spent another 40 minutes or so getting my shoulders and hips ready before class, and then Brian goes over the workout. While going over it, he talks about the scaled options, like jumping pullups and the like... hope! After he was done, I asked him semi privately about that...and he shook his head no, that was more for the people in the class for the workout, not those doing the open... ok, got it. After a little thought, I decided to go Rx, and get the 10 instead of the 6 from scaled.... if I was going for the better workout, jumping pullups and lighter weight and reps in the beginng are the way to go, but since I want to win... lol, sorry, since I want to compete and get the best score, I'm going RX.
Not a lot to say about it, 95lbs is pretty heavy for my OHS. I built up to it pretty quickly, and then I was ready. The lovely Diana Alt agreed to judge me, she was up at the Granite Games judging folks last year. I took my time, and took all 3 minutes to get my 10 in... like I said, it's a heavy weight for me, but I got all 10 in time, then looked at the bar like I was going to try it. I didn't, and unlike a lot of other folks, I have no problem with that. There isn't a single lift, or combo of lifts that I have that make me think I can pull all of this off the ground yet. LOL. Even with you main muscles recruit other muscles to help... no, it's not happening this year. So I'll take my 10 and run. We'll see what Justin gets done.
Speaking of Justin, I may have been harsh in my criticism of him and his response in previous posts. I mean, I feel fine getting grumpy about his response, but my thought that he may be "juicing" look more and more premature, and for that I do apologize. He's been posting more and more stuff on his page, and I think you should give him a FB like, take a look. Two things that he posted recently was a photo of what he's been eating (along with a mention to the Whole 30), and a photo of his time and distance on a rower from rowing for an hour. If this cat is doing that after workouts... or before... in addition to... yeah, if he's doing that in addition to the WOD, then it makes sense that he's melting before our eyes. My man Herm (whom I met at Establish and is now down at On Track) was at the box tonight, and I mentioned this cat, turns out Herm knows the box owner. #smallworld He told me that he think this dude (Justin) spends a lot of time at the box, which would also explain the weight loss. My mistrust looks pretty unfounded, and I'll happily admit I got it wrong, wish the dude the best of luck, and I'm going to try to emulate some of his success. Still going to whoop him in the Open. Wouldn't be surprised if he beats me to being the poster child for CrossFit weight loss. I'm still going to get there, no worries.
I've been pretty lax in my dietary quality control department, and while it doesn't "show" on me, but it shows in my results, or lack thereof. I'm going to try an get that Whole 30 book, thinks it's called It States With Food... or something like that, but I'm going to hunt that down this weekend and give that a whirl. It sounds A LOT like Paleo, so I know I can do it... I just need to re focus, and I think w30 will be a good thing to do it on. 9 months left to lose that 100lbs, time to get to it.
I got home from the grocery store (aka Wal-Mart, a place I loathe) in enough time last night to catch the unveiling of 15.2 from games.crossfit.com and the feed was awful. It's been a long time since I've had something buffer that many times on YouTube. When my feed is able to catch up, I find out that it's a repeat of last year. Cool... what was last year? Haha. I finally see it... ok, that doesn't look awful... Wonder what the scaled option is? I got tired of the buffering, decided to go do something else for a while. Come back to look at the scaled option... Rx for me is 95lbs OHS and chest to bar pullups... so maybe, maaaaybe we'll do jump pullups for scaled. I looked... looked again... nope, no jumping pullups for anyone but the Masters 55 and over... aaaand, oh, hey look, scaled is chin over the bar pullups... Being the smart@ss that I am, I unscientifically measured the distance from my chin to my chest... about 6 inches... give or take. Thanks for the break!
It's ok... this will give the scaled division, and maybe the Rx divisions a clean break... don't know that that is needed, but it's going to stratify the results a bit (I think, we'll see). Oh well, no time to cry about it. Fast forward to today, and I'm at the box early again. I'm still fighting my shoulder muscles/neck area. Been to the chiro twice since Saturday, and I'm better, but not "fixed". Maybe I do need that hotel bed a few nights during the week?
So I spent another 40 minutes or so getting my shoulders and hips ready before class, and then Brian goes over the workout. While going over it, he talks about the scaled options, like jumping pullups and the like... hope! After he was done, I asked him semi privately about that...and he shook his head no, that was more for the people in the class for the workout, not those doing the open... ok, got it. After a little thought, I decided to go Rx, and get the 10 instead of the 6 from scaled.... if I was going for the better workout, jumping pullups and lighter weight and reps in the beginng are the way to go, but since I want to win... lol, sorry, since I want to compete and get the best score, I'm going RX.
Not a lot to say about it, 95lbs is pretty heavy for my OHS. I built up to it pretty quickly, and then I was ready. The lovely Diana Alt agreed to judge me, she was up at the Granite Games judging folks last year. I took my time, and took all 3 minutes to get my 10 in... like I said, it's a heavy weight for me, but I got all 10 in time, then looked at the bar like I was going to try it. I didn't, and unlike a lot of other folks, I have no problem with that. There isn't a single lift, or combo of lifts that I have that make me think I can pull all of this off the ground yet. LOL. Even with you main muscles recruit other muscles to help... no, it's not happening this year. So I'll take my 10 and run. We'll see what Justin gets done.
Speaking of Justin, I may have been harsh in my criticism of him and his response in previous posts. I mean, I feel fine getting grumpy about his response, but my thought that he may be "juicing" look more and more premature, and for that I do apologize. He's been posting more and more stuff on his page, and I think you should give him a FB like, take a look. Two things that he posted recently was a photo of what he's been eating (along with a mention to the Whole 30), and a photo of his time and distance on a rower from rowing for an hour. If this cat is doing that after workouts... or before... in addition to... yeah, if he's doing that in addition to the WOD, then it makes sense that he's melting before our eyes. My man Herm (whom I met at Establish and is now down at On Track) was at the box tonight, and I mentioned this cat, turns out Herm knows the box owner. #smallworld He told me that he think this dude (Justin) spends a lot of time at the box, which would also explain the weight loss. My mistrust looks pretty unfounded, and I'll happily admit I got it wrong, wish the dude the best of luck, and I'm going to try to emulate some of his success. Still going to whoop him in the Open. Wouldn't be surprised if he beats me to being the poster child for CrossFit weight loss. I'm still going to get there, no worries.
I've been pretty lax in my dietary quality control department, and while it doesn't "show" on me, but it shows in my results, or lack thereof. I'm going to try an get that Whole 30 book, thinks it's called It States With Food... or something like that, but I'm going to hunt that down this weekend and give that a whirl. It sounds A LOT like Paleo, so I know I can do it... I just need to re focus, and I think w30 will be a good thing to do it on. 9 months left to lose that 100lbs, time to get to it.
Monday, March 2, 2015
15.1, a eulogy to my hands
Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to... my hands hurt, a lot... or they did, they're better now. The bars at On Track are wrapped in tape, and after the first round of 15.1, I was doing them in sets of 1 and 2. It sucked something fierce. My stated goal was 150 and 150 for 15.1 and 15.1a respectively.
I got to the box well before any class was due to start. My shoulder has given me fits since Saturday, I did get adjusted by @Iamthehealer but it was still sore overall. Spent a lot of time with my own lax ball working it over the weekend... never got 100% feeling good, but I think it did good overall. Back to today, got in nice and early, did a little rowing, some pipe work, then spent a lot of time with bands and doing other stretches. Did a pretty good job too. :) I got my weights, bar, everything setup for my workout, did some light reps to make sure it all felt good. Then I waited.
I think I spend close to 45 minutes warming up, mainly it was me and this guy named Cody. People started trickling in around 415 or so. Some to do the class, others to re do 15.1 for themselves. Still not knowing people, I figured I might have to wait a bit to get someone to judge me... and I was right. Cody and this dude Frank both had someone pretty quick, and I watched them go. Frank killed it, was moving confident and fast, he got 7 rounds. Not bad at all. Watched his C&J as well, strong dude, made it all look easy. Real easy. Finally, my time had come... and I had butterflys. What? Butterfly's, really? Oh yeah. Not major ones mind you, but they were there... the thrill of competition, nice to have that again.
GO!
Grabbed the bar and ripped out 5 quick knee raises (doing scaled now btw, after a talk with the coaches, it seemed like the best option). Dropped, did 4, 4, 2. 10 deadlifts, 5 ground to overhead, done. Round one was pretty good, can't see the clock, but I'm assuming I did it in sub 60 seconds. Hands hurt now. Round 2, sucked. I was doing the knee raises 1 and 2 at a time, I think I might have managed to hold on for a 3 once... it was brutal. My hands hurt... I can't emphasize that enough, it was painful. I'd hop off the bar rubbing both hands together real quick, then jump back up. FINALLY got done... and I'm a little panicked. There is no way I'm getting 5 rounds (150 total reps) at this rate. I turned, banged out the deadlifts and ground to overhead again. Now, I say I turned, I had the bar right behind the rig, so I just needed to do a 180 degree turn, and take a step, and I was moving weight again. No wasted time here fella.
So I address the rig, and Cody (who's being my judge now) has grabbed a bucket of chalk... and I've never been so happy to see chalk in my entire life. It was all powder, but I didn't care. Rubbed my hands together in it, and banged out 4 in a row with no pain. THATS MORE LIKE IT. I got through another set of 4 before grabbing more chalk. Cooking with gas now. Deadlifts are done quick again, I think I had a small break in the ground to overheads... and now might be as good a time as any... I was doing a power clean push press for my ground to overhead. A power snatch would have been faster, but I remember those killing me in previous WODs, so I did this.
Fourth round had it snowing... I'm all about the chalk at this point. Anything to mitigate the pain. Don't recall how I split it up... do recall slowing on my push pressing again. Round 5... at this point I'm panting... holding my breath during movements... everything is all wrong. I was back to breaking up the knee raises to 2-3 at a time, chalks was no longer effective. I was able to get all the raises, all the deadlifts, and my first ground to overhead before I hit 0900 on the timer. Sooooo close. If I'd used chalk sooner, I'd have had my 150, I know it. No time to mourn, I've got 6 minutes to put up my best CnJ.
As soon as I dropped that last ground to overhead, I picked the bar up and CnJ'd it at that weight, so I'd have something in the books should I keel over, collapse a lung, or otherwise fail to get another lift in. I had a good plan on how to bump the weight up over the 6 minutes, but I couldn't remember it at this point. Tired body tired mind. The one thing I did do for myself was get different clamps than the norm.
What most people use at OT
What I used at OT
Ever other box I've been to, has the wire clamps, but they don't have that ridiculous 90 degree bend in them... I hate them. The plastic collars are easily the way to go for me... easily. So I did myself this small favor.
I added and changed weights several times, hit 175 with about a minute left. Added 10 more pounds... couldn't clean it. Well... didn't clean it. I think had I put a bit (maybe A LOT) more effort into getting under the bar, I might have been able to do it.... form form form form form. Sigh. Oh well, 175, after being pretty tired, will work.
As of right now, I'm somewhere in the middle, just under the middle in the scaled division... think 51 or 52 of 100 people, just scaled out to 16k. Not bad at all for my first event in my first open. I'm a little geeked... oh, and I beat my nemesis :D He had 130 and 155 to my 146 175. I'm stronger for now, just need to get that weight off like he has. One day, I'll meet Mr. Null and take a photo, give him proper credit for the extra drive he's giving me to get things done.
15.1 in the books... and I'm happy I did it. Taran, you were right, this was the right call, I'm happy I did it. The community feeling of it is fantastic. Bonus, 2 of my peeps at CFDS are in the top 20 rx. As of yesterday, one Unlocked athlete was top 10 in his division, and a guy I met at Establish who's now down at On Track as of last week also posted a top 20 in Rx... I know some BAMF's. :D Great job to them, to me, and to you if you've decided to do the Open this year!
I got to the box well before any class was due to start. My shoulder has given me fits since Saturday, I did get adjusted by @Iamthehealer but it was still sore overall. Spent a lot of time with my own lax ball working it over the weekend... never got 100% feeling good, but I think it did good overall. Back to today, got in nice and early, did a little rowing, some pipe work, then spent a lot of time with bands and doing other stretches. Did a pretty good job too. :) I got my weights, bar, everything setup for my workout, did some light reps to make sure it all felt good. Then I waited.
I think I spend close to 45 minutes warming up, mainly it was me and this guy named Cody. People started trickling in around 415 or so. Some to do the class, others to re do 15.1 for themselves. Still not knowing people, I figured I might have to wait a bit to get someone to judge me... and I was right. Cody and this dude Frank both had someone pretty quick, and I watched them go. Frank killed it, was moving confident and fast, he got 7 rounds. Not bad at all. Watched his C&J as well, strong dude, made it all look easy. Real easy. Finally, my time had come... and I had butterflys. What? Butterfly's, really? Oh yeah. Not major ones mind you, but they were there... the thrill of competition, nice to have that again.
GO!
Grabbed the bar and ripped out 5 quick knee raises (doing scaled now btw, after a talk with the coaches, it seemed like the best option). Dropped, did 4, 4, 2. 10 deadlifts, 5 ground to overhead, done. Round one was pretty good, can't see the clock, but I'm assuming I did it in sub 60 seconds. Hands hurt now. Round 2, sucked. I was doing the knee raises 1 and 2 at a time, I think I might have managed to hold on for a 3 once... it was brutal. My hands hurt... I can't emphasize that enough, it was painful. I'd hop off the bar rubbing both hands together real quick, then jump back up. FINALLY got done... and I'm a little panicked. There is no way I'm getting 5 rounds (150 total reps) at this rate. I turned, banged out the deadlifts and ground to overhead again. Now, I say I turned, I had the bar right behind the rig, so I just needed to do a 180 degree turn, and take a step, and I was moving weight again. No wasted time here fella.
So I address the rig, and Cody (who's being my judge now) has grabbed a bucket of chalk... and I've never been so happy to see chalk in my entire life. It was all powder, but I didn't care. Rubbed my hands together in it, and banged out 4 in a row with no pain. THATS MORE LIKE IT. I got through another set of 4 before grabbing more chalk. Cooking with gas now. Deadlifts are done quick again, I think I had a small break in the ground to overheads... and now might be as good a time as any... I was doing a power clean push press for my ground to overhead. A power snatch would have been faster, but I remember those killing me in previous WODs, so I did this.
Fourth round had it snowing... I'm all about the chalk at this point. Anything to mitigate the pain. Don't recall how I split it up... do recall slowing on my push pressing again. Round 5... at this point I'm panting... holding my breath during movements... everything is all wrong. I was back to breaking up the knee raises to 2-3 at a time, chalks was no longer effective. I was able to get all the raises, all the deadlifts, and my first ground to overhead before I hit 0900 on the timer. Sooooo close. If I'd used chalk sooner, I'd have had my 150, I know it. No time to mourn, I've got 6 minutes to put up my best CnJ.
As soon as I dropped that last ground to overhead, I picked the bar up and CnJ'd it at that weight, so I'd have something in the books should I keel over, collapse a lung, or otherwise fail to get another lift in. I had a good plan on how to bump the weight up over the 6 minutes, but I couldn't remember it at this point. Tired body tired mind. The one thing I did do for myself was get different clamps than the norm.
What most people use at OT
What I used at OT
I added and changed weights several times, hit 175 with about a minute left. Added 10 more pounds... couldn't clean it. Well... didn't clean it. I think had I put a bit (maybe A LOT) more effort into getting under the bar, I might have been able to do it.... form form form form form. Sigh. Oh well, 175, after being pretty tired, will work.
As of right now, I'm somewhere in the middle, just under the middle in the scaled division... think 51 or 52 of 100 people, just scaled out to 16k. Not bad at all for my first event in my first open. I'm a little geeked... oh, and I beat my nemesis :D He had 130 and 155 to my 146 175. I'm stronger for now, just need to get that weight off like he has. One day, I'll meet Mr. Null and take a photo, give him proper credit for the extra drive he's giving me to get things done.
15.1 in the books... and I'm happy I did it. Taran, you were right, this was the right call, I'm happy I did it. The community feeling of it is fantastic. Bonus, 2 of my peeps at CFDS are in the top 20 rx. As of yesterday, one Unlocked athlete was top 10 in his division, and a guy I met at Establish who's now down at On Track as of last week also posted a top 20 in Rx... I know some BAMF's. :D Great job to them, to me, and to you if you've decided to do the Open this year!
Sunday, March 1, 2015
I have a nemisis!
Didn't get to 15.1 on Friday with almost everyone else... which sucked. Went on Saturday, planned on doing it then. Was talking to the coach about it... and she gave me an "I'm not a morning person" response.... we'll leave it at that, I did what the class was doing, which was a 4 station 2 minute per station rotation. About half way through she changed her mind, told me to use that as my warm up for 15.1 sweet...ish. The stations were hollow rocks, DU's, rowing, and a sled pull. I slowed down a bit for them, but didn't slow down much... kept up a good pace, pulled a good weight on the sleds, etc etc.
After the 24 minutes, the rest of the class did some tabata work, and I started getting my weights ready for 15.1... and there is this tightness in my shoulder. After the class is done, I talk to coach about it, and she'd rather I err on the side of caution, and wait till Monday. I think I could have gone through it... and maybe I should have, cause I'm messed up right now. My shoulder is tight and super aggravated. I think it was the sled pulls... I've never done sled pulls... not sure what it was, but yeah, I'm hurting... and I still haven't done 15.1. I need to get fixed by Monday. Already been to the chiro's once, might go again tonight. Only got one more day, ya know.
To the nemesis part.
Ali had Frasier, Kirk had Kahn, Batman had Joker, Celtics have the Lakers, Ravens have the Steelers, etc etc. I've got Justin Null. :) I mentioned him in a blog a few weeks back, he's got a FB page called building a better Justin. Dude has lost 122lbs in 5 months. ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY TWO in 5 months. Effing ridiculous. Amazing really. I asked him about it on his page, frankly, I want his results too... I got back "hard work and dedication bro" or something like that. C'mon man.
Didn't like the response... I feel like there has to be something to it. Is he eating bags of brussel sprouts? Does he eat Kale shakes 3x a day? Is it pounding bottles of "high energy fat burner" pills? Maybe it's a combination of those things, or none of them? I'm sure living at home and not traveling makes it a lot easier to do, but I suspect there is a little something else... thats A LOT of weight in such a short time.... idk, I was just looking for more is all I'm saying. LOL.
He's already posted his 15.1 score, and I saw it Friday, but I don't recall it off hand...but I'm out to beat it. :) Nemesis is probably a strong word, but he's the guy who's closest to me that I know, or "know", and it's good to have someone to go against.
After the 24 minutes, the rest of the class did some tabata work, and I started getting my weights ready for 15.1... and there is this tightness in my shoulder. After the class is done, I talk to coach about it, and she'd rather I err on the side of caution, and wait till Monday. I think I could have gone through it... and maybe I should have, cause I'm messed up right now. My shoulder is tight and super aggravated. I think it was the sled pulls... I've never done sled pulls... not sure what it was, but yeah, I'm hurting... and I still haven't done 15.1. I need to get fixed by Monday. Already been to the chiro's once, might go again tonight. Only got one more day, ya know.
To the nemesis part.
Ali had Frasier, Kirk had Kahn, Batman had Joker, Celtics have the Lakers, Ravens have the Steelers, etc etc. I've got Justin Null. :) I mentioned him in a blog a few weeks back, he's got a FB page called building a better Justin. Dude has lost 122lbs in 5 months. ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY TWO in 5 months. Effing ridiculous. Amazing really. I asked him about it on his page, frankly, I want his results too... I got back "hard work and dedication bro" or something like that. C'mon man.
Didn't like the response... I feel like there has to be something to it. Is he eating bags of brussel sprouts? Does he eat Kale shakes 3x a day? Is it pounding bottles of "high energy fat burner" pills? Maybe it's a combination of those things, or none of them? I'm sure living at home and not traveling makes it a lot easier to do, but I suspect there is a little something else... thats A LOT of weight in such a short time.... idk, I was just looking for more is all I'm saying. LOL.
He's already posted his 15.1 score, and I saw it Friday, but I don't recall it off hand...but I'm out to beat it. :) Nemesis is probably a strong word, but he's the guy who's closest to me that I know, or "know", and it's good to have someone to go against.
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