March 2014 – Page 3 – Nick Momrik's Fitness Logs

BlessTheGym Tour/Camp with Kendrick Farris

Had a much-needed massage and rest day yesterday. My legs are as sore as they’ve been in months from the various squatting stuff on Thursday.

Matt and I headed down to New Species CrossFit in Royal Oak this morning for some weightlifting instruction from Kendrick Farris. Two hours this morning spent on the snatch and 2 more hours tomorrow morning for the clean & jerk. He had a really simplified way of teaching the lift, which made a lot of things click for both of us. He also was able to get us into good positions we’ve never really felt before. Well worth the $250 and I have some things to work on. Looking forward to the C&J tomorrow!

We did a lot of drill work with an empty bar and some with just 65#. Then at the end we worked up to 155# and did an easy hang power snatch with it from above the knee. I haven’t done over 135# since the 60 Day Challenge ended over a month ago.

Got back to Saginaw and was going to do 14.2, but C2B pull-ups didn’t feel great on my shoulder, so I’ll give it another day or two to improve. I did pull out the rack and get in my front squats though.

Front Squats

5×135#
5×205#
2×235#
1×255#
1×280#
1×285#
1×290#
1×300#
1×310# (PR Match)

Hell yeah!! I was even wearing my lifting shoes (which I haven’t been wearing) since I was going to wear them for the OHS of 14.2 and I was on the downslope of the floor. I didn’t really like feel of those 2 things though. I felt like it was pushing me forward, which you definitely don’t want in the front squat. Still made the lifts though.

Excited for Thrusters!

My back and hips were sore when I crawled out of bed this morning. I’m thinking it’s from the spinal decompression table since they’ve been ramping up the percentage or whatever setting they use. In for the 9am class.

Warm-up

4 Rounds of Tabata Mash-up

Jingle Jangles
Bear Crawls
Squat Jumps

Strength

Deadlifts

5×135#
5×225#
3×275#
5×295#
3×325#
3×345#
3×365#

Wasn’t going near the 5×1 @ 90+% and aggravating my back again. These felt better than the lifts a couple of weeks ago, so I’d say treatments are working.

Conditioning

E2M

7 Squat Clean Thrusters (“Cluster”)

* You have 1 minute to complete and 1 minute to rest. Start at 135# and add 5# each new set.

I made it through 150# and got stuck in the hole with the 5th rep of 155#. So that’s 4 full sets plus 4 reps. Pretty brutal. Happy to be able to go through that pressing movement though, because yesterday I couldn’t even shoulder press a PVC pipe!

2014-03-06-sq-cl-thrusters

5 Rounds

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

Pull-ups didn’t feel the greatest even doing just the kipping variation instead of butterfly to take some strain off the shoulder by eliminating the bottoming out. I had to break up sets quite a bit after the first 10 unbroken. Finished in 4:55. I could feel some weakness in the shoulder doing wall balls too, but did those unbroken without a problem.

Felt good to be able to participate fully with the class. First time in 2 weeks I haven’t had to substitute any movements.

Over to Kevin’s at 6pm for a squat session.

Reverse Hyper

3x15x50#

Nice and light. Figured it would be good after deadlifts today.

Then I did Crossover Symmetry Activation (8 reps). I used blue (heavy) and yellow (light) for bands, except had to use the lightest green band on my right side for the 90/90 because the yellow was killing my shoulder.

Back Squats

20×45#
8×155#
5×225#
5×255#
3×285#
10:00 EMOM 1×305 (rapid fire!)
10×225#

Worked up a good sweat with the set of 10 at the end.

Finished up with Crossover Symmetry Iron Scap. I used the red bands for Tiger Walk and Bear Hug and green for all of the rest. Super light, but with the injured shoulder it was plenty and I did double the reps for everything.

Weak Shoulder Wednesday

Woke up with a bit of a headache that didn’t go away through the 9am class. Little sore in the low back.

Warm-up

2 Rounds

20 PVC pass-thrus (partial range behind the back because of shoulder pain)
20 Zombie Kicks
20 Russian KBS (44# KB)

Strength

DB Bench Press

10×30#
10×35#
10×40#
10×45#
3x10x60#

Shoulder press was programmed, but I couldn’t even do it with a PVC pipe without shoulder pain.

Accessory

12:00 EMOM

Odds: 30s Handstand Hold
Evens: 10 Pistols

Again, had to substitute handstand holds for the programmed strict HSPU. I got up as close to the wall as I could to be able to get into a better hollow body position. Then I’d keep as little heel on the wall or completely take my heels off the wall as long as I could. Getting better at holding the position.

Conditioning

5 Rounds

20 Power Cleans (115#)
20 Burpees

Put in the power cleans instead of single-arm DB snatches. Power cleans were much more of a suck fest I think, due to grip issues. I tried to keep to sets of 5 as much as I could but did some singles, doubles, and triples in the 2nd half of the workout. Finished in 17:53.

Midline

2 MAX effort Planks

I did one for 47 seconds and one for 49 seconds with minutes of rest in between. Tough without much rest after the metcon.

Another visit to the chiropractor this afternoon and it might be the last one. With the TENS unit I can do a lot of therapy on my own.

14.2 gets announced tomorrow. My prediction is a 12:00 AMRAP of 10 Deadlifts (185/125), 15 Over the bar burpees, 20 Wall Balls with a second idea of 20 Wall Balls and 20 Burpee Box Overs.

Feeling Good!

It’s amazing what some rest and solid sleep does for the body. I feel great today. I had another appointment at the chiropractor yesterday and I think tomorrow will be my last visit. Using the TENS unit is working magic. I hit up the 9am class.

Warm-up

20 Zombie Kicks
20 Air Squats
10/10 Leg Swings (F-B, S-S)
10/10 Hurdles
PVC pass-thrus (not great on the shoulder yet in the back position)

Strength

Back Squat 5×1 @ 90+%

10×45#
5×135#
3×225#
2×275#
1×305#
1×315#
1×325#
1×335#
F @ 340#

Damn! The 335# felt good so I went for a PR matching lift and was strongly thinking about trying 345#. I pushed up past parallel and just couldn’t get through the sticking point.

Skill

14:00 EMOM

Odds: 2 MU
Evens: 30 DU

I missed the 2nd MU in round 2, but got through all the rest of them as doubles. Best muscle-up day I’ve ever had. It’s nice to have some rings up at SF!

Conditioning

10:00 AMRAP

20 Russian KBS (62#)
20 AbMat Sit-ups

Decided not to do American swings because the MU were enough strain on the shoulder for one day. Never stopped and my rounds only got slower by a few seconds. Finished 7 full rounds plus 16 swings.

This workout was the best I’ve felt since coming back to CrossFit classes. I guess pushing through the Open workout yesterday lit a fire in me. I like it!

Was feeling so good, I decided to get in a rowing workout. Went over to Kevin’s while him and Alex were lifting.

3 Rounds

500m Easy/Moderate
1,500m Hard
4:00 Rest

Template:

The easy/moderate pace target is 15-20sec/500m slower than your 2000m PR pace. (2:02-2:07)
The hard pace target is 5-10sec/500m slower than your 2000m PR pace. (1:52-1:57)
Focus on the consistency of your 1500m efforts.

At a total of 6,000 meters for the workout, it was tougher than expected. My round times were roughly 7:55-7:57-7:56, so I’d say that’s pretty consistent.

2014 CrossFit Games Open Workout 14.1

We had a great time at the Arnold Sports Festival this weekend. Saw some impressive lifting by Lidia Valentín and Kendrick Farris, among others. Started to come down with a sinus issues on Saturday though and yesterday was pretty miserable. At least it seems to be under control today. Good thing too, because it would be hard to workout with my nose dripping all over the place.

Warm-up

I did a lot of mobility, stretching, and loosing of my shoulders. Did a slow 5:00 on the Air Dyne, worked up in weight on the snatches. Nothing too crazy.

2014 CrossFit Games Open Workout 14.1

10:00 AMRAP

30 DU
15 Ground to OH

My goal going in was to get 3 rounds in 5:00 and go from there. I did this workout in September and had a bad score of 4+37 (217). I knew I would beat that. I went 6-5-4 on the snatches the entire way and was under 5 minutes for 3 rounds. My double unders kind of fell apart after that though. I finished 5+41 for a score of 266. I’ll take it. This is a workout I would have done again with time, but that’s just not possible. The DU can make such a huge difference and I was not my best with them. The only strategy change I would have made was to use C&J in that 6th round. I think I would have gotten back to the rope and gained precious reps.

Glad it’s over with though and my shoulder wasn’t bothered at all. Now I’m going to get some more sleep all day to kind this head cold. I have another appointment at the chiropractor this afternoon. Oh, this TENS unit I bought is the best investment I’ve made in a long time. I don’t think the shoulder would be healing as fast without it.