Month: February 2019

Oats & Whey

Threw together some overnight oats last night and they may become my go-to breakfast. Except for pancake Sundays of course! My back has been really tight all morning, which is a surprise since I didn’t feel anything over the last few days of workouts. Looking back I did feel tight after the stretching on Thursday. Maybe it’s the cumulative effect of pushing hard for 3 days. Hopefully today’s cardio will loosen it up. I was out to the garage by noon and I did not use the heater.

Accessory

Dumbbell Curl 21s

  • 7-7-7 @ 15#
  • 7-7-7 @ 15#
  • 7-7-7 @ 20#

I guess I’ll do these twice a week, trying to increase the weight of one set every other session.

Conditioning

4 Rounds

  • 3:00 cal Airdyne (AD2)
  • 1:00 Rest
  • 3:00 cal Row
  • 1:00 Rest

My goals were to hit 80 cals (70-75 RPM) on the Airdyne and 60 cals (>1,200 cal/hr) on the rower every round. These are paces I want to be able to sustain for 60-90 efforts during 15-20 minute metcons.

I felt good about my mental and physical effort. Was able to get negative splits, which is always a win. Went 82-84-85-86 on the AD and 60-61-61-62 on the rower (#gram). My hoodie came off after round 2 and probably should have after round 1 because it was a thick one. After I finished, I checked my Tesla and it was 41° in there, so I bet the garage was in the high 30s.

Picked this new BSN protein powder (buy one get one 50% off at bodybuilding.com) based on flavor reviews, so I’m excited to try them. I’ve been using MusclePharm for a few years and am getting close to finishing a supply that had been saved up (months past the expiration date) in the closet when I wasn’t taking protein powders.

Dive Bombs

Last night my legs felt tired and I could feel my shoulders a bit today. Went to the 4pm class.

Warm-up

10:00 AMRAP

  • 10 Divebomb Push-ups
  • 10 Kip Swings
  • 10 Tuck jumps
  • 5/5 Half kneeling single arm DB press (30#)
  • 1:00 Row

I don’t remember those divebomb push-ups being so hard when I did them in P90X a long time ago! Got through two rounds and five push-ups.

  • 10 Hanging Knee Raises
  • 6 Kip Swing + Press Down
  • 6 Knees to Chest
  • 6 T2B

Conditioning

12:00 AMRAP

  • 12 Push Presses (95#)
  • 12 Toes to Bars
  • 12 Box Jumps (24″)

My hands were happy this was T2B programmed instead of pull-ups after the C2B I did yesterday. I had the grips on, but didn’t use the finger holes, which actually works really well for T2B. Something I’ve noticed with the Ben Smith programming and now NCFit is that they program push presses a lot instead of push jerks (or shoulder to overhead, where it’s your choice). Should pay off when it’s time to do jerks.

This workout seemed familiar, but the closest I could find was Open 12.3 which was 18 minutes of 15 box jumps, 12 shoulder to overhead (115#), and 9 T2B. Based on my best score for that a few years ago, I thought 7 rounds was possible.

I didn’t quite get it. Finished six rounds, the push presses, and the T2B for a score of 6+24. The push presses were all unbroken and they did get challenging in the last two rounds. I played it too safe with 3×4 T2B every round and might have been able to do 2×6. I should have jumped down from the box too. Those little changes would have made a big difference.

This definitely had the feel of an Open workout and I feel like I gave it an effort worthy of an Open workout. I was able to post the top male score of the day, which is rare. My hands need a rest after 70 C2B yesterday and today’s 84 T2B plus a lot of other swings and warm-up reps on the bar.

Midline & Posterior

2 Sets

  • 1:00 Hollow Flutter Kicks
  • 30s Rest
  • 1:00 Russian Twists (45#)
  • 30s Rest
  • 1:00 Hip Thrusts
  • 30s Rest

I made it through the entire first minute without stopping, which was hard! Pushed more on the 2nd set of twists than the first. The hip thrusts were unbroken for both minutes. Didn’t count any reps though.

Skill

Stayed after and started working on my handstand walking on the open floor. I could get up and take a couple of steps, but wasn’t getting my legs with the forward lean, so I kept falling back down the way I went up. I’ll have to keep working on it.

EMOM AMRAPs

Finally ventured out to the gym today after being at home for a couple of days with the weather. Went to the 4pm class.

Warm-up

5 Rounds

  • 30s Double Dumbbell Curls (12#)
  • 30s Piked Shoulder Taps
  • 30s Single Leg Plank
  • 30s Hollow Hold

Everyone was making fun of me for my light curls!

Conditioning

  • 10:00 EMOM (alt)
    • AMRAP: 4 Alt. Lunges + 4 Push-ups
    • Row
  • 3:00 Rest
  • 10:00 EMOM (alt)
    • AMRAP: 4 Air Squat + 4 DB Push Press (35#)
    • Row

I managed to get 4 rounds each minute on both AMRAPs. In the first 10 minutes I felt good on the rower, averaging > 1,300 cal/hour, and getting 99 calories. The second 10 minutes was much harder with the air squats and push presses; they took all the power out of my legs for the row. I struggled to hit 1,200 cal/hr after the first row and totaled 88 calories.

I guess the NCFit programming has already started to ramp down for the Open (or at least on Thursdays). It actually said to row at a moderate pace for this but I wanted to go hard because there are still plenty of gains to get in the next 5 weeks, before the end of the Open. 🙂

Mobility

  • 1:00/1:00 Pigeon
  • 2:00 Saddle
  • 1:00/1:00 Dragon
  • 2:00 Seated Fold Forward

This made my back tight!

Gymnastics

7:00 EMOM

  • 2×5 C2B

Had weird rhythms in some of my sets of 5 but never came off the bar. With my extra gymnastics work usually I go until I have to break a set, but 70 reps was plenty. Stop before a tore hand happens. When I had the correct rhythm, the reps were so much easier, even in the final minute. Watch, there will be pull-ups programmed tomorrow!

Steaming

I started getting a headache on Monday night and still had a bit of it when I woke up on Tuesday. This seems to be happening now that I’m pushing myself harder in workouts. My body definitely told me it was a rest day yesterday, though I did get exercise clearing snow several times throughout the day.

Today I decided to stay home and do a garage workout instead of being out on the roads. We got a lot of snow.

Warm-up

3 Rounds

  • 200m Ski Erg
  • 10 Good Mornings (45#)
  • 5 Inchworms

Strength

Deadlift (Build to Workout Weight)

  • 10×45#
  • 10×135
  • 6×185
  • 3×225
  • 3×255

Conditioning

5 Rounds

  • 3 Deadlifts (275#)
  • 15 Thrusters (45#)
  • 12 Bar-facing Burpees

Came up with this based on the gym’s programmed workout which is an alternating EMOM of 3 heavy (athlete choice) deadlifts, 20 wall balls, and a 200m run (or 50 seconds of shuttle runs). Figured I’d get rid of the extra resting by making it a straight 5 rounds. No place for wall balls in the garage so empty bar thrusters sounded like a good swap. Obviously not running in the garage and wanted to get in more bar-facing burpees before the Open anyway.

I didn’t wear a belt in the warm-ups or the workout because it would get in the way for the burpees. Had thought about doing 315 when I first saw the gym’s workout, which probably would have been fine in the EMOM, but glad I cut back for this. I was resting too much before picking up the deadlift each time. Thrusters were at a controlled pace each round because the burpees were really jacking my heart rate. Was able to stick to my burpee technique and keep a pretty good pace every round on them. Finished in 11:01.

 

Accessory

DB Curl 21s

Remembered to stick to 7 reps for each part today. Did two sets with 15s and a set with 20s.

Skill

3:00 AMRAP

  • Double Unders

Started with 83 unbroken and had one or two other decent sets, but too many misses. Ended up with 253.

TEN!

My shoulders and triceps are feeling yesterday. Last night my legs felt fatigued and I was tired in general. Didn’t seem to sleep great, but I’m also feeling tired today. Went to the 4pm class.

Warm-up

3 Rounds

  • 250m Row
  • 10 PVC Pass Thrus
  • 10 PVC OHS
  • 10 KB Glute Bridges (35#)
  • 20s Handstand Hold

3 Sets

  • 5 OHS (45#, 3111 tempo)

Strength

10:00 EMOM

  • 3×95#
  • 3×115
  • 3×135
  • 3×145
  • 3×155
  • 3×165
  • 2×165
  • 3x3x155

I started with a squat snatch until 165 when I started to power it and then do the squats. We were supposed to stay with a weight for the last five sets, but I failed the last rep of the 2nd set of those. Whoops! Didn’t realize my back was so tight from yesterday until getting into these lifts.

Conditioning

5 Rounds

  • 30 Ball Slams (30#)
  • 20 Bear Hug Lunges (30#)

Was really dreading 150 ball slams with tired shoulders. After two rounds I settled in (or went numb?) and tried to chase down Michelle and Kyle by not resting at all between movements the rest of the way. Finished in 9:47.

Gymnastics

Had planned these muscle-ups well before knowing what today’s workout would be. A fatigued state is a good time to work on shit like this though. Makes it easier in the middle of a workout. I think the last time I tried a max sets of muscle-ups was 2015 and I’ve been stuck on a PR of 9 since doing it a couple of times that year. I was confident I could break finally get double digits, but wasn’t convinced it was going to happen after the type of workout I just finished. I did give myself 15-20 minutes to recover though.

E3M – 4 Sets

  • MAX Unbroken Muscle-ups

My first few reps were all over the place before I found my swing; then I felt good. Got 10 finally and didn’t use my hips enough for the 11th. Shit like that happens when I focus on a specific number so much. Curious what I can do fresh. My other sets felt good as well and I made sure to use my hips through all of them. Surprised myself by not decreasing too much. I ended up with 10-7-6-6.

There is a storm rolling in overnight, so tomorrow will be a garage workout or maybe a rest day if I need it.

Barbell Chipper

Went out to a Brazilian steakhouse last night and ate so much meat that I still felt full this morning. I knew I needed the carbs though so I powered through my Sunday pancakes.

Warm-up

  • Bottom Squat Hold
  • Dead Hang
  • Various barbell reps
    • 45#
    • 75#
    • 95#

Conditioning

  • 10 Shoulder Presses (115#)
  • 15 Overhead Squats
  • 20 Push Presses
  • 25 Front Squats
  • 30 Push Jerks
  • 35 Back Squats

I definitely have a love/hate for this workout. I love the beauty of its design and effectiveness, but I really hate the mental battle during the workout.

My strength is down, but my cardio seems to be up, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I started with 8 presses. Then did 2 presses, put it on my back for a grip reset, and 10 overhead squats. Then 5 OHS and dropped it for a quick breather instead of trying a fancy grip reset. I think I did 12 push presses, then 8 plus 5 front squats. Two sets of 10 front squats with 5 push jerks tacked on to the 2nd set. The push jerks seemed much harder than they should have been and I think I went 7-5-6-7 for the rest of them. I didn’t stop on the back squats, but they were pretty slow. Finished in 10:07 to keep the PR streak going on this one. Really happy with the effort.

  1. 4/15/2013 – 14:03
  2. 7/21/2014 – 13:34
  3. 9/3/2015 – 10:33
  4. 2/10/2019 – 10:07

Screen Shot 2019-02-10 at 2.11.41 PM

I programmed an 8:00 rest before starting a bodyweight metcon.

10 Rounds

  • 7 Burpees
  • 7 Knees to Elbows

This felt much worse than I was expecting. It seems like I always say that when K2E are involved; I’d rather do toes to bars. All the shoulder fatigue really carried over to the burpees. Took me 8:59 to get done. Wouldn’t mind trying this one again sometime when I’m fresh, especially since I got it from the BTWB Bodyweight Fitness Level workouts.

Midline

Stacked Plate Passes

The five of us lined up and passed plates down the line and then back. We went through it three times rotating positions to make sure everyone sat on the end at least once. I took double duty. The plate stack was 10-10-15-25-10-25-15-10-10.

Skill

Worked on my balance and handstand walking. Shoulders were very fatigued, but that’s some of the best time to work on it if you ask me. I think I just need to get away from the wall and get on the open floor because I’m probably adjusting knowing that I have the wall coming up since I’m only doing a few steps out.

Triple Threat

I’m tight in a few areas from the last couple of days. Around 10:30 I took the car out of the garage, fired up the heater, and set out the machines. All I had so far for the day was a cup of coffee. I made my usual workout drink but there was no time in transitions to take a sip.

triple-threat.jpeg

40:00 EMOM (alt)

  • 12 cal Ski Erg
  • 16 cal Row
  • 20 cal Airdyne – AD2
  • 16 cal Row

I tried something different today and put on headphones and listened to Talking Elite Fitness because the machines make too much noise to understand a podcast over the speaker. I generally don’t get in to audio podcasts and would much rather watch a video podcast, but it really helped me zone out; my eyes could focus on the pace and my mind could pay attention to what they were saying.

I only preheated the garage for 15-20 minutes, but it was enough since I would be doing all my work right there. Somewhere around the midpoint I turned off the heat and then it wasn’t much longer before I ditched my hoodie.

I did the maths last night so knew I had to average 960 cal/hr on the ski erg and 1,280 on the rower to finish in 45 seconds. Maybe a little aggressive for active recovery because I had to keep on the gas, but it felt good.

Bagel Bites Beat

My shoulders are feeling something today. Not sure if it’s from so many snatches and/or bar muscle-ups on Wednesday or the double overhead holds yesterday. Went to the 4pm class.

🎶 Lunges in the warm-up 🎶
🎶 Lunges in the strength work 🎶
🎶 Lunges at metcon time 🎶
🎶 With lunges on a Friday, you can lunge all the time 🎶

Sing it to the tune of the Bagel Bites commercial!

Warm-up

7:00 AMRAP

  • 50′ Front Rack KB Carry (35# KBs)
  • 8 Up-Downs
  • 10 Plyo Lunges

Wasted some time putting pants away and another time putting my sweatshirt away. Still made it through 4 rounds plus the carry.

Strength

3 Sets

  • 50′ Front Rack KB Lunges (53# KBs)
  • 1:00 Rest

Conditioning

3 Rounds

  • 500m Row
  • 30 Walking Lunges
  • 20 Burpees
  • 10 cal Assault Bike
  • 1:00 Rest

I averaged around a 1:49 pace on the rower and took right off on my lunges. Felt good on the burpees and tried to push on the bike a little. My rounds were 4:33, 4:34, and 4:35. Good one to just go and don’t stop.

Gymnastics

E90S

  • 3×5 Toes to Bars

As I’ve been doing with the gymnastics volume lately my plan was to go until I had to break. I made 3 rounds taking 35-40 seconds to get through and then had to do 5-5-3-1-1 in the 4th round. Sixty T2B in just over 5 minutes ain’t too bad.

Starting 21s

Decided to exercise at home today because I planned to do some accessory stuff anyway and then I could sub a bunch in the metcon. Was pretty nice in the garage after I warmed it up for 2 hours.

Warm-up

3 Rounds

  • 1:00 Airdyne
  • 10 Goblet Squats (53#)
  • 10 Sumo KB Deadlifts (53#)

I came up with my own warm-up, which was much simpler and shorter. Something felt weird in my knees on the squats but maybe it was because I had my knee sleeves on.

Conditioning

5 Rounds

  • 14 Bar-facing Burpees
  • 1:00 Plank
  • 30s Double DB OH Hold (40# DBs)
  • 30s Hollow Hold
  • 20 Hand-to-hand Kettlebell Swings (53#)
  • 1:00 Rest

At the gym this was programmed with a 200m run to start each round but running inside sucks. That’s part of the reason I stayed home. I replaced the run with the burpees because we haven’t done any of the bar-facing variety in months, which is not good with the Open in 2 weeks. I was feeling good with the movement this summer, so I should easily be able to pick my technique back up. I put in the overhead hold instead of a bar hang since I’ve been doing plenty of gymnastics bar work and my hands are feeling all of the bar muscle-ups I did yesterday. I also replaced 10/10 single arm swings with the H2H version.

My burpees felt really good and I got faster each round. I didn’t have the greatest setup for them due to the garage floor being a bit of a mess in the winter, but I made it work. On paper the original version of this workout looked like active recovery, but I was working hard! The static work in a metcon is interesting and rare, but it was a really nice change of pace and far from a walk in the park. My round times were 3:51, 3:42, 3:40, 3:38, and 3:31. BOOM! The only real places to go faster in this workout are the burpees and transitions, so 20 seconds is a lot.

BTW, every time I do a double overhead hold I underestimate it. Glad I didn’t try to use 50 pounders.

Strength

dbs-for-21sDumbbell Curl – 21s

  • Top half of curls
  • Bottom half of curls
  • Full range of motion

I mentioned doing a variation of this on Saturday with my buddy Mo. Found a big weakness for me so I’m going to try to hit them once a week. T Nation has a great article with some other variations and uses of the method. I’m so used to counting to ten for light stuff that I went well past the 7 reps in the first round. Started light, but it’s a start.

  • 10-10-10 @ 10#
  • 7-7-7 @ 15#
  • 7-7-7 @ 20#

Tabata HR Push-ups

Went 13-12-10-10-9-8-8-8 for 78 total reps.

Failure to Break

Had planned an active recovery day yesterday, but when I woke up I could tell right away it should be a rest day. Even though the pump session on Saturday wasn’t intense it worked some muscles I don’t give much attention. I was due for a rest day because my last one was the 26th. I’ll do active recovery on Saturday this week.

Big ice storm last night, but roads were clear enough to make it to the 4pm class.

Warm-up

Line Drills

  • High Knees
  • Butt Kickers
  • Karaokes
  • Single Leg Hops Forward
  • Single Leg Hops Backward
  • Bunny Hops
  • Burpee Broad Jumps

20s Work / 20s Rest

  • Single Unders
  • Backward Singles
  • 10s/10s Single Leg
  • Alternating Legs Singles
  • 2 Singles + 1 DU
  • 1 Single + 1 DU
  • DU

I don’t get how people can practice alternating from singles to doubles. The rhythm is completely different and fucks you up.

Weightlifting

  • 5 High Hang Snatch High Pulls (45#)
  • 5 High Hang Muscle Snatch (45#)
  • 5 Above Knee Muscle Snatch (45#)
  • 5 Above Knee Power Snatch (45#)
  • 5 Below Knee Power Snatch (45#)
  • Power Snatch (work up to moderate/heavy set of 5)
    • 75#
    • 95
    • 115
    • 135
    • 155

Did those sets of power snatches all touch-n-go. Felt good and would have gone for more if we didn’t have so many snatches coming up.

Conditioning

10:00 AMRAP

  • 2-4-6-8-10… Power Snatch (95#)
  • 20 Double Unders

Went unbroken through 6, then 2×4, 2×5, 3×4, 5-5-4, and 4×4 I think. My thumbs felt ready to fall off. I missed two dubs in a round and only did two rounds unbroken I think. So many misses! Finished the 16 snatches and 17 double unders.

Butt Stuff

3 Sets

  • 20/20 Single Leg Hip Thrusts
  • 1:00 Glute Bridge Hold

Feel the burn!

Gymnastics

8:00 EMOM

  • 5 Bar Muscle-ups

Like some of the other stuff I’ve been doing my goal was to go until I had to break a set and that would be my last one. Well… I was able to stay unbroken and stopped there before my hands tore open. Part of me really wanted to get in two more for that 50 total reps, but I think I made the smart move. Took grips off after 3 or 4 rounds because they were bunching up too much and the straps were pulling on my wrists.

This establishes both 30 reps and 40 reps for time, which were 5:17 and 7:16. Feeling really good about my gymnastics endurance! I still haven’t attempted more than 6 unbroken bar muscle-ups, which I could obviously crush now. Maybe I’ll hit a max set in a week or two.

Midline

At 9pm I got the brilliant idea to do 100 sit-ups and this was barely an hour after I ate dinner. Was able to set a 9 second PR by doing it in 2:30.