March 2019 – Page 2 – Nick Momrik's Fitness Logs

Glute Work

My back is feeling a lot better. I’m not putting any load on it, so I stayed home from the gym. Out in the garage just before 4pm.

Engine Builder – Speed

3 Rounds

4:00 Airdyne (AD2)
90s Rest

My goal was ~85 RPM and it was a success. Calories per interval were 152-152-155.

Accessory

4 Sets

15 Hip Thrusts
15 Banded Pull-throughs (green)

I learned that hip thrusts are when you elevate your torso on a bench or box, which gives you a deeper range of motion. First time trying pull-throughs and it takes a set or two to understand how to balance so you don’t keep tipping over backwards. Curious to see if my ass will be sore from these.

Conditioning

4 Rounds

200m Ski Erg
20 Plyo Lunges
20 Alternating Leg V-ups

Quick one. I tried to get my pace down to 1:50/500m and hold there. Took me 7:51 to finish.

Endurance is Improving

Back to work today after the week of vacation. Feeling pretty good after yesterday’s workouts.

Engine Builder – Endurance

24:00 Airdyne (AD2)

On March 9th when I did 22 minutes, I held 68-70 RPM to keep my heart rate in the 70-75% zone, so I was expecting a similar pace today. It was taking a long time for my HR to go up and I ended up holding 73-75 RPM through the workout. Maybe my back was really affecting me before.

Today ended up being 666 (👹) cals – 8.77 miles. That’s 27.75 calories per minute compared to 24.36, which is 14% better. According to WHOOP, my average HR was lower today too; 124 compared to 131. Those differences are nuts, plus it was two minutes longer.

Sunday Bro Session

Good to be home and get a good night of sleep. I’m already missing the great San Diego food though. I put on almost three pounds, but that may all be water weight from so many carbs. WHOOP was saying that I burned around 4,000 or more calories most days I was out there because of all the extra walking I was doing. My recovery score is low again at 36% after no workouts yesterday, but the travel home from SD.

Strength

Bench Press

10×45#
10×95
3×135
3×175
3×205
3×225
3×240
3×250

My best triple is 255 almost exactly two years ago, so I’m happy to hit this today. If I can’t work on my lower body lifts, at least I’m getting my bench press back and can make another run at 300.

Conditioning

15:00 AMRAP

5 Strict C2B Pull-ups
10 Hand Release Push-ups
15 Hollow Rocks
20 Side Plank Jumps

I did all singles on the chest to bars and was surprised at how great they felt through the entire workout. Push-ups were all unbroken sets and didn’t slow down much. The side plank jumps were the gasser. This was a deceiving workout. I did 8 rounds plus 5 pull-ups.

Accessory

4 Sets

5 Jefferson Curls (45#)
10 Glute Bridges (3s hold)

New movement with the Jeffersons. Damn good stretch down the posterior chain and especially in my hamstrings at the bottom. The Oly coach out in San Diego said I might have weak glutes that result in my back tweaks, so I’ll try adding in more accessory work like this. I guess the rehab stuff I did last year had a good amount of glute work, so I’ll have to go back and look at that too.

Dumbbell Curls – 21s

7-7-7 @ 25#
7-7-7 @ 25#
7-7-7 @ 20#

That lighter third set felt pretty easy now, but the next two sessions will be all with 25s before switching up to one of the alternative 21s workouts.

Engine Builder – Endurance

While watching Michigan vs. Michigan State I thought I’d add an extra cardio session since all I have planned for tomorrow is 24 minutes on the Airdyne.

24:00 Row

The plan was to hold an easy 2:05 / 500m pace and I was spot on the entire way. Finished with 366 cals – 5,760 meters.

2019-03-17-24min-row

19.4

My shins we getting show from the hike last night already. My HRV and recover score are the highest recorded so I should be ready to crush this workout.

My percentile rankings for 19.3 turned out to be exactly the same as 19.1 (when rounded to 1 decimal place) in both the Open and Masters divisions. Looking at scores and tiebreak times of some fit people I know, my HSPU strategy worked amazingly well. I’ve been doing singles when workouts have strict pull-ups and may have to play around with this type of strategy for other movements.

I wish my back had been healthy, which would have allowed me to get through the first two movements quicker and have even more time for HSPU. That’ll be a fun workout to redo later this year. The high ranking in 19.3 gave me another good boost in the overall rankings. My best 3 week start to an Open by far.

19.3

Open Men: 16,844 / 158,253 (89.4%)
Masters 35-39 Men: 2,551 / 32,191 (92.1%)

Overall

Open Men: 13,469 / 185,039 (92.7%)
Masters 35-39 Men: 1,818 / 37,422 (95.1%)

Note: I forgot to mention it in previous ranking updates, but I only count against people who posted a score for the workout or have at least one score for overall placing. The iOS app looks like it calculates percentiles based on everyone registered, but there are always plenty of people who never post a score.

Warm-up

5:00 Assault Bike
Spent a lot of time laying on a lacrosse ball!
Snatches
Bar-facing Burpees
Kip Swings
2:00 Assault Bike (to raise HR)

CrossFit Games Open Workout 19.4

3 Rounds
- 10 Snatch (95#)
- 12 Bar-facing Burpees
3:00 Rest
3 Rounds
- 10 Bar Muscle-ups
- 12 Bar-facing Burpees

Was really hoping I’d be fine with the snatches today after not picking up a barbell since last Wednesday. When we got to the gym it was painful bending over in to position to start a snatch with a PVC pipe! Laying on the lacrosse ball really opening things up for me though. Debated waiting until Sunday or Monday to do the workout.

Going in I was hoping to get some bar muscle-ups in the third round. I had to be really careful with the snatches though and you can see that with how long it takes me to pick up the bar and get my first rep. I did 6-4 on the snatches each round with normal powers. Felt like my burpees were getting slower each of the first three rounds. I finished with a tiebreak of 4:22.

Felt fine when I first got on the bar and did 5 bar muscle-ups and wanted to get 5 more, but could feel things going south already. I did 3-2 to finish. After the burpees I did a double and 8 singles with too much rest between each one, but I did not want to miss and each rep was a struggle. Got my second round of burpees done and had about 10 seconds left, but I knew I didn’t have it in me to get another bar muscle-up so I collapsed to the ground. It wasn’t worth risking a fly off the bar moment. So I finished 5 rounds for 110 reps. Early ranking on BTWB is only the 79th percentile.

19-4

I did another five minutes on the Assault Bike to cool down.

I worked out my splits on the workout. Here are the times each movement ended and then in parens are the times (in seconds) per movement, including transition/rest.

0:33 – 1:20 (33-47)
2:00 – 2:52 (40-52)
3:34 – 4:22 (42-48)

8:10 – 9:06 (48-56)
11:06 – 11:53 (120-47)

Initial observations:

My snatches were slower than normal because I had to be extra careful with my back.
I should have gone unbroken on the last round of snatches and pushed the burpees after.
Overall pretty consistent with the burpees.
The second round of bar muscle-ups were the workout. It took me two minutes to get through them.
I should have jumped up to try for a muscle-up at the end.

While heats of the workout were going I jumped on the rower since tomorrow will be a travel day.

Engine Builder – Max Aerobic Power

12 Rounds

500m Row
1:00 Rest

I did 1:49.9 twice, 1:49.8 four times, another 1:49.9, and five at 1:49.8 to finish. Consistent!

My back was getting really tight sitting around the gym while everyone did the workout. Glad I ended up doing 19.4 though so I have more time to recover for 19.5 next week.

SD Hike

My hips and calves started feeling sore yesterday evening. Must have been from all of the walking. Woke up to my first WHOOP recovery score in the red at 25%. It says I slept well but my HRV is much lower than it has been.

Hiked 2.6 miles in 1:14:39.

1904

I actually recovered really well after the travel due to some periods of deep sleep even though I wasn’t in bed as long as I’d like. I did a lot of walking this morning and got a lot of sun, then went to CrossFit 1904, where Bryan coaches and trains, by 3pm.

My back is getting a lot better each day and I haven’t had a shot of pain that stops me in my tracks so far today. Didn’t want to lift anything and risk tweaking it again, but I could bench press.

Strength

Bench Press

10×45#
10×95
5×135
5×165
5×195
5×215
5×225
5×235

Up five pounds from the last time I did sets of fives.

Conditioning

5 Rounds each (I go you go)

10 cals Assault Bike
10 Burpees
10 Strict pull-ups

I was able to push it on the Assault Bike, my back felt pretty good on the burpees and then I did quick singles for all of the pull-ups. We finished in 15:57.

My back is tight after the work, but was able to get in a good sweat without tweaking things more.

I hope 19.4 is something I can do on Friday!

SD

Thought about doing one of the engine builder workouts yesterday, but with my WHOOP recovery score still only up to 46% and my back feeling shitty it became a rest day. Needed it. Back in the green with 76% recovery today.

Out in the garage around 10am.

Engine Builder – Interval

5 Rounds

2:30 Airdyne (AD2)
2:00 Rest

I replaced 50 calories each interval with 2:30 since I can only see calories 1/5 of the time on the monitor. I’d have to convert 50 to some higher number anyway to account for the AD2’s quicker calorie accumulation. Last week I couldn’t hold 85 RPM for intervals of three minutes with 30 second rests, but was confident I could for this and I did. My calories were 97, 99, 98, 95, 100 and distances were 1.06, 1.06, 1.06, 1.04, 1.07 miles. It felt good to push that pace.

Accessory

Dumbbell Curls – 21s

7-7-7 @ 25#
7-7-7 @ 25#
7-7-7 @ 20#

When I get through two sessions at all 25s I think I’ll try one of the alternate 21s workouts.

Gymnastics Strength

8 Rounds (Tabata)

20s HR Push-ups
10s Rest

Didn’t let myself rest during the work sets or I should say not any extra beyond the breath I had to start taking before pressing up. My numbers were something like 14-12-10-8-8-7-7-6 for a total of 72 reps, which is 6 fewer than a month ago. That was the first day I did 21s though and only used 10-15-20# for the three sets.

Now I’m off for San Diego. I wonder what my recovery score will look like in the morning after flying across the country and trying to sleep with the three hour time difference.

Another Tweak!

Here are my updating rankings after 19.2. I’m switching to using a percentile, which is standard compared to saying “top X%” like I have in the past. Last weekend I spent a lot of time creating an epic spreadsheet of my results in every Open and each workout. Cool data to have going forward.

19.2

Open Men: 21,830/164,227 (86.7%)
Masters 35-39 Men: 3,457/33,391 (89.6%)

Overall

Open Men: 16,760/183,948 (90.9%)
Masters 35-39 Men: 2,402/37,204 (93.5%)

My placing in the workout was down a bit from 19.2, but good enough to rise in the overall standings for both divisions. Getting even one clean at 225# would have been a huge jump in the rankings for that workout. It still turns out to be my best two-week start to an Open. Let’s keep it rolling…

Warm-up

5:00 Assault Bike
Dead Hang
Banded lat opener
Lunges
Step-ups
OH DB Hold

WHOOP said my recovery had only gone up from 37% to 44% with almost 9 hours of sleep last. I felt great this morning and my back had recovered quite well. I was moving well through warm-ups. Then I went to move my dumbbell across the gym and TWEAK as I stood up. Fuck!

Conditioning

CrossFit Games Open Workout 19.3

200′ Dumbbell Overhead Walking Lunge (50#)
50 Dumbbell Box Step-ups (50#, 24″)
50 Strict Handstand Push-ups
200′ Handstand Walk

Details:

10:00 time cap.
Lunges and handstand walk are 25′ lengths with a 5′ section for each rep.
Step-ups must alternate legs.
HSPU use a 24×36″ box for hands, though the fingers may extend past the line.

My plan was to switch hands every 50 feet of lunges. I was fine starting out with my left arm, but with my right shoulder bothering me lately I could only go 25 feet, so I switched the dumbbell every 25 feet the rest of the way. Got through those in 2:41.

I went right to the corner of the box and got in to it. I felt my back on every box step-up, which was fucking horrible. I kept trying to figure out if there was a way I could step-up to limit the shot of pain, but there wasn’t. I supported the dumbbell over a shoulder with one hand under the head of it. I think I moved it side to side after 16, 30, and 40 reps. My tiebreak was 6:42. Ugh, four minutes is a lifetime on that movement.

By the way, I have to mention how stupid the alternating step-up standard is. It slows everyone down and it’s nearly impossible for both the judge and the athlete to keep track of since it’s not an efficient or fast way to do step-ups.

I wanted to do doubles for the HSPU as long as possible with no more than a 5 count rest. Unfortunately my back affected me coming off the wall too, but I adjusted that easily to not affect my timing or anything. I got through 8 or 10 reps doing doubles when I started to feel the second rep getting slow so I changed to singles with shorter rest. That worked surprisingly well and I was able to quickly get back on the wall for another rep. Squeezed out a double before the buzzer for 31 strict handstand push-ups!

I had no expectation of finishing those 50 even though I would have loved to get just 5 feet of handstand walking since I’ve been working on the skill. Maybe next year.

Going in to this workout I was hoping to be done with the box around 5:30 or 6:00 at the latest, but the back tweak and shoulder issue really changed that. On BTWB a score of 124 was the 90th percentile so that was my goal (even though I rarely hit that 90+%). My score of 121 almost got there so I’m really happy with the effort. Currently it ranks in the 88th percentile on BTWB, so after more scores come in it’ll be right there with my 87 and 85 ranks for 19.1 and 19.2.

This is my best three-week start to the Open due to consistent placing. I hope I don’t wake up with a really bad back in the morning and it can recover for 19.4. Especially since I’m flying out to San Diego on Tuesday for a little vacation. I’ll be out there for Friday Night Lights and hopefully battle by buddy Bryan.

Strength

Bench Press

10×45#
8×95
8×135
8×155
8×175
8×185
8×195

Don’t need my back to bench. Matches the 8×195 I did in January, which felt good after those strict HSPU.

Got home and putzed around for an hour before hitting my cardio so I could relax for the rest of the day. I’m on vacation all week!

Engine Builder – Speed

2 Rounds

8:00 Airdyne (AD2)
4:00 Rest

Based on recent intervals I hoped to hold 80 RPM for these. I was in the ballpark, seeing 79-80 quite a bit when RPMs came around on the monitor. My calories were 258 and 262 with distances of 3.13 and 3.15 miles.

Too Aggressive

After being at 81% recovery yesterday, WHOOP says I’m down to 37% this morning with my HRV being the lowest it has recorded so far. I slept well and the intervals I did yesterday weren’t terrible, so it feels like a fluke reading. Maybe the sessions were harder on the body than I realized. Maybe my body is responding to the back tweak. Will keep an eye on things.

I had my breakfast this morning and then got started around 10am.

Warm-up

3:00 Row (750m)

Engine Builder – Max Aerobic Power

15 Rounds

40s Row
20s Rest

Three fewer than the 18 intervals of 30/30 on Wednesday, but moving 10 seconds from rest to work is a big difference. Instead of trying to get to a pace of 1:37-1:39/500m by the 5th pull I thought 1:40-1:42 would be a smart move. Turns out it was too aggressive.

I knew I was in trouble at the beginning of round 7. Started too hot in the first 6 and didn’t have any starting power left the rest of the way. Maybe that WHOOP recovery score is right!

Total of 2,868 meters and 219 calories. Averaged 191.2 meters and 1:44.6 / 500m (1,351 cal/hr) pace with a range of 198-187 meters. Intervals were 16, 16, 15, 16, 15, 15, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, and 14 calories and 197, 197, 195, 198, 194, 192, 187, 188, 188, 187, 188, 188, 189, 189, and 191 meters.

Accessory

Dumbbell Curls – 21s

7-7-7 @ 25#
7-7-7 @ 20#
7-7-7 @ 20#

First set felt heavy, but was ok after that. My adjustable dumbbells are definitely more awkward to use than the standard hex heads at the gym.

Engine Builder – Endurance

22:00 Airdyne (AD2)

I tried to stay near 70-75% of max heart rate, which ended up being 68-70 RPM most of the way. There were some weird rises and falls in my HR though. Went 7.57 miles and 536 calories.

Kind of nice to get in two sessions right away.

My back is improving and hopefully it’s good enough for 19.3 tomorrow.

Double Engine

The back tweak from Wednesday turned out to be one. Thankfully it’s not a major one. Yesterday I used my TENS device most of the day. Hopefully it’s a quick recovery so I can do 19.3 on Sunday or Monday. Guess I’ll stick to cardio for a couple of days.

Out in the cold garage by 9am with no food and no warm-up.

Engine Builder – Interval

4 Rounds

3:00 Airdyne (AD2)
30s Rest

Started at 85 RPM but I had to really push to hold 80 by the end of the second interval. Calories were 110-105-103-105. Maybe would do better with at least some warm-up. That 30 seconds was really no time to recover.

In the evening I warmed up with a 3:00 row (760m), increasing my pace every minute. Rested 3:00 before starting.

Engine Builder – Anaerobic

8 Rounds

30s Row
2:30 Rest

In the middle I remembered the other day where I really pushed with my legs to get the flywheel up to speed. Calories were 17-17-17-17-18-18-18-18 and I was getting over 2,400 cal/hr at some points. Looking at my meters and pace shows how I ramped up and found a rhythm.

It was cool to watch my heart rate and see it come down so well between intervals. My highest HR was actually at the end of the warm-up! Also notice that second peak on the way down from the 5th interval. I stood up for a minute to see if I’d recover better and obviously I did not. I started a 5:00 cool down almost immediately after and went 1,055 meters.

Quite a bit different from the biking intervals this morning, which hurt a lot more.