March 2013 – Page 3 – Nick Momrik's Fitness Logs

Squat Volume

My shoulders, arms, and upper back are feeling spicy today. Went in for the 9am so that I’m free to watch the live stream of Open WOD 13.1 tonight.

Warm-up

4/4 World’s Greatest Stretch
3m Row at 20s/m
2 Rounds
- 16 GHD Sit-ups
- 15 Hip Extensions

I really tried to be explosive with the GHD sit-ups today and lock out the legs. First time doing hip extensions in a long time.

Strength

5 Sets

7-10 Back Squats at 20X1 Tempo
90s Rest

Damn that’s a lot of volume! The tempo is pretty much just normal though, since it takes me about 2 seconds to lower anyway. I did 10 reps each at 135#, 155#, 195#, and 215#. Then jumped up to 235# to really push it on the last set and managed to get 7 before I dumped the bar. At the end I was sweating like I just got done with a 10 minute WOD.

WOD

10:00 AMRAP

7 Wall Balls (20# MB, 10′ target)
7 Push-ups
7 Pull-ups

I did all butterfly pull-ups and am really starting to get the rhythm down. Completed 10 rounds plus 5 more wall balls, pretty much going non-stop. Had to transition from a wall ball and push-up spot over to the pull-up bar each round, otherwise I bet I could have gotten at least another full round in. 70 butterfly pull-ups is a lot higher than any previous day I’ve done. I’m sure glad I remembered to shave my calluses this morning though!

Oh…almost forgot. Zach Lind, the drummer from Jimmy Eat World, was in to WOD today.

Destroyed Upper Body

Went in with a few people at 3:15 to work on our Olympic lifting and then stayed after for the regular class.

Loaded one bar up with 185# for snatch pulls and then used another bar for snatches. Started off doing one snatch pull, one power snatch, and one hang full snatch. I started at 95# and worked my way up to 125# on the snatch work. Then I switched to single full snatches with 135# after the snatch pull for a handful of sets. Probably worked for a solid 40 minutes, taking a few minutes of rest in between each complex. The snatches didn’t feel very good today.

Strength

5×3 Push Presses with 21X2 Tempo

The goal was to hit the 5×5 max from 2 weeks ago in our second set. Since that was going to be 165# for me, I started at 135#. Then went 165#, 170#, 175#, and 185#. Shit that was tough, but I’m glad I jumped 10# on that last set. My old 1RM push press is 190#, but it’s been a long time, so I should obviously be able to beat it pretty good now.

WOD

3 Rounds

400m Run
25 Shoulder to OH (95#)
50 DU
10 Ring Dips

OMG, my upper body was destroyed already in the first round. I did 15 and 10, then 10-9-6, and then probably 6 or 7 sets in the 3rd round, where I was even doing some jerks to get them done. The ring dips were pretty tough too. Finished in 16:09.

Working on Muscle-Ups

Feeling good today. Pecs are still sore from the competition. Was up early so headed in to work on muscle-ups before the 9am class.

I started out with rings hanging low from a pull-up bar so I could get in some reps working the transition with my feet bent under me and on my toes. Then I moved over to a set of rings I could grab on to while standing flat-footed and worked the strict transition. I kept missing because I’d let the rings get too wide and I was too slow in the turn-over. I nailed a few of them though. Just from that bit of work, my wrists started to rub raw. Need to try to do this once or twice a week.

Warm-up

4/4 World’s Greatest Stretch
15 No Push-up Burpees
200m Run
100m Run Backwards
200m Carioca (100m each direction)
300m Run
3 Rounds:
- 10 Evil Wheels
- 5/5 Glute Bridge March
- 10s Glute Bridge Hold

I worked up quite a sweat with the evil wheels.

WOD

30 Box Jumps (30″)
20 Full Cleans (155#)
30 K2E
20 Single-arm Push Press (53# KB)
30 Sit-ups
20 Alt Pistols
30 Burpee Box Jumps (30″)

Damn those cleans sucked ass and then the burpee box jumps at the end were pretty killer as well. Everything else was smooth sailing for the most part. I did the box jumps unbroken, the K2E in 12-10-8, push presses in sets of 5 per arm, sit-ups unbroken, and pistols with 2 short breaks mainly to get back to balanced. Really had to concentrate on the box jumps at the end. Finished in 16:36.

Olympic Lifting Progress

I’m feeling good after yesterday’s competition. Little sore in my pecks, but not quite sure what that’s from. Went in to the Olympic lifting class at noon.

We started out with snatches. I concentrated on hip extension and Johnny got me really exploding with the hips and punching under the bar. I started at 95# and worked up to 135# doing doubles and then singles. Was hitting them at 135# easily. Didn’t want to go heavier because I wanted to focus on the technique. Felt a lot better today and could feel the speed of the transition instead of kind of floating through that part of the lift.

Moved on to clean and jerks and went for broke. Started at 135# to warm up, then 155#. Switched to singles going 185#, 195#, 215# for a 10# PR, and then finished with a 20# PR at 225#. The clean was really easy and the jerk felt solid, especially after over an hour of lifting. I think I have another 10-20 pounds in my when fresh.

Hike

Went out for a hike late in the afternoon. Wore the 20# weight vest and went 2.05 miles in 1:06:31hike.

44 Minute Competition WOD

Yesterday I rested, but went for a 2 mile recovery walk.

Was up bright and early for event #3 of the Industrial Athlete Championship Series. A bunch of us from CrossFit Full Strength met at the gym at 6:15am and headed out to Mesa.

There were 4 events, but it was really just one big workout with short rest/transition periods. It was scored as one total event with total reps for everything combined as your score.

WOD #1

8:00 broken into 4 rounds of 2:00 Fire Hose Drag/Pull and Calorie Row

You will start next to your rower with the fire hose piled next to you. On GO you will grab the hose and run it approx 100 feet. Once you cross the marked line you will turn and pull the remainder of the hose fully across the line. Once the entire hose is across the line you will run back to the start area to your rower machine and row for calories for the remainder of the 2 min. This cycle will repeat 4 times without rest for a total of 8 minutes.

They kind of screwed things up here and allowed you to carry the entire hose if you wanted. That was obviously much easier and after a few Rx heats everyone was doing it. I paced myself and didn’t go all out on the rower with 3 more events to go. Got 105 calories. Looking back and because of how the overall scoring worked, I wish I would have pushed harder.

* 4:00 rest

WOD #2

8:00 to complete 100 Wall Balls and max Pull-ups.

There will be medicine balls at the bottom of your squat that you must touch and a target set at 10 feet which you must hit with the ball. All athletes over 6′ tall may use a 25# plate under their touch ball to make a more consistent depth for all athletes.

I was worried about this one the most, but I actually did the best here. I went 40-20-10-10-10-10 on my wall balls and was done in around 4 minutes. Then I got 57 pull-ups, but they were pretty slow going. I never did more than 6 in-a-row and was down to doing 2 or 3 at a time at the end. Adam from our gym knocked out 20+ in his first jump up on the bar. If I could do that I would have smoked this WOD.

* 4:00 rest

WOD #3

8:00 broken into three 2:00 max rep cycles with 1 min rest/recovery.

HR Burpee with lateral jump over parallette bars. You may space your 2 parallette bars according to your desired distance preference. You will begin to the right side of the first bar. On GO you will drop to a HR burpee, recover, and laterally jump with both feet (no stepping) over a single parallette bar. Then you will repeat the process, jump over the second bar, and then hand release burpee again for a total of 3 burpees per pass over the 2 bars. So it’s basically burpee, jump, burpee, jump, burpee – that would be one pass earning 2 points then repeat coming back the other direction as many times as possible. You earn a point each time you jump the parallette bar.

* 1:00 rest

Sit-ups from the ground. There will be no supports, ab mats, or feet holding. The movement standard is touch the ground behind your head while laying on the ground then sit up and touch the ground directly in front of your feet. pressed together if desired.

* 1:00 rest

Parallette bars pass throughs. In this exercise you will earn one point each time your feet extend and heel strike the ground in front of your body. The movement standard is to touch the ground in front with knees in full extension and heels on ground then behind with knees fully extended while striking the toes to the ground. You will be holding your own weight up on the parallette bars and are NOT permitted to touch the ground underneath your body or walk through in any form.

I got 26 burpees, 64 sit-ups, and 25 pass throughs. When the guy announced we were only 30 secounds through burpees I couldn’t believe it because I was already dead. I tried to keep a steady pace and just keep moving on them. They were by far the worst. I smoked through the sit-ups and struggled my way through the pass throughs.

* 4:00 rest

WOD #4

8:00 Keg carry with short Wall Clears

In this event you will carry a keg filled at 100# (Men’s RX), 75# (Women’s RX, Men’s Scaled, and Men’s Masters) and 50# (Women’s Scaled and Women’s Masters) to a wall approx 25m away. You will then leave the keg and run back to the start line, touch line, and run back to the keg. You will then lift the keg over the wall, jump the wall, and continue to carry the keg to the next wall where you will again set down the keg, run back to the first wall, jump wall, run back to start line, touch line, run forward to wall, jump wall, return to keg, clear keg over 2nd wall, jump wall, and carry keg to turn around line approx 25m. Keep repeating the process for total distance covered.

This final WOD was kind of a joke because of the scoring. You got a rep/point for each time you threw the keg over a wall. At the end, the spread in the men’s Rx divisions was 8 to 14 reps. That was a shit ton of work for so few reps, compared to all of the other WODs where I got over 100 reps in each. I ended up with 12 points here.

I’ve been worried about my cardio the last couple of weeks and this was a good test. I’m really happy with the outcome. I got 389 points and finished in 8th place out of 43 men in the Rx division. There were some beasts here and I held my own.