Nick Momrik

1 Open WOD Left

Yesterday my hands ached from the ring work. Got a great night of sleep and felt good this morning.

Warm-up

Bottom Squat Hold
Shoulder Stretching
Power Cleans
- 5×45#
- 5×95#
- 3×135#

Conditioning

CrossFit Open Workout 11.5 – 20:00 AMRAP

5 Power Cleans (145#)
10 T2B
15 Wall Balls (20#, 10′)

There were only 2 Open workouts I haven’t done and this was one of them, so now only 11.4 is left to try. Did all singles on the cleans, toes to bar were 4-3-3 every round except an unbroken 7 to finish, and unbroken every round for wall balls (hurt). Saw that around 10 rounds was the 90th percentile on BTWB and was ahead of that pace through 5 rounds, but slowing down. Started to take some 5-10 second breathers in between movements through the second half of the workout, which cost me. Ended up with 9 rounds plus the cleans and 7 of the T2B. Probably could have gone 5-5 on the T2B and saved a lot of time. Grinder of a workout though.

Midline

6 Sets

4 Good Mornings
4 Evil Wheels

Did 2 sets with each weight of 145-155-165#. Tried out something new for the evil wheels and I liked it. Makes it more like the ab roller devices, adding a stability element since the plate wants to roll one to the sides a little.

Skill Conditioning

8 Rounds (Tabata)

20s Double Unders
10s Rest

Had 2 misses, but managed a new PR (by 6 reps) with 286 dubs. Three hundo should be possible if I can get rid of the misses.

Mighty Muscle-ups

Didn’t get much sleep trying to watch CJ’s session in the American Open last night, though the feed cut out for me so I completely missed all of the clean & jerks. Got some upper body feels from all of the snatching yesterday and legs feel a little tired. In at 9am for the first muscle-up day of the gymnastics program.

Skill WOD (Hustle & Flow) Week 1 Day 3

Warm-up

3 sets

5 Bar Work
(Hold and pause 2 sec at each position with no form breaks and no momentum)
- Dead Hang
- Lat Active Hollow
- Tight Arch
1 Skin the Cat
7 Straddle V-ups
10s GHD Hanging Bridge Stretch

Thought it would be harder than it was to do all of that holding on the bar in one set. Wasn’t bad. Straddle v-ups are very awkward.

Skill A – 4 Supersets

1 Ring Swing + Pull-up w/ swing + MU
2 Box Hip Kip Drill
3 Banded Hip Drill

First set of the complex was odd, but got the hang of it and smoothed out the transition from pull-up into muscle for the rest of the sets. Wasted a bunch of time setting up for this part and figuring out what to do. The banded drill programmed didn’t work worth a shit for us so we did the Gymnastics WOD version. with a band through the rings.

Skill Test – 3 sets

1 rep of complex is:

MU + 2 Strict Ring Dips (after the MU dip lockout)

First two sets are 3 reps of the complex and then the 3rd set is for max reps. I got 5 on my max set. Those dips add up!

Strength Accessory – 3 sets

Lower to Hold (3s) Front Lever on Box

Completely missed that we were supposed to do 3 of these each set. I thought it was “too easy” in the sense that it wasn’t a lot of work. Pretty sure I’ll never be able to hold an actual front lever in my life, but the strength transfer should help other stuff and I’m guessing that’s the idea.

Bonus Complex

Set 1: 3 Ring Pull-up + 3 Toes to Rings + 4 MU
Set 2: 3+3+5
Sets 3+: Keep adding 1 MU until failure

I wasn’t real confident going into this after only getting 5 in the skill test and already feeling pretty smoked in my shoulders and arms. But I got sets 1 and 2 done and got 5 muscle-ups again is the 3rd set.

Snatch After Snatch

My chest is a little tight later in the day, but otherwise not sore from the 100 bench press yesterday. Lifted with Alex tonight. Warmed up with 3×8 Reverse Hyper (210#) and then into some squats.

Back Squat

10x20kg
6×70 (pause)
5×100 (pause)
3×120 (pause)
2×130
2×140
2×150
2×155
2×160 (PR)

Haven’t had that on a bar since the day I had my PR with 360# about 1.5 years ago. Led with my butt on the second rep so it was a good place to stop and was a 2RM PR anyway. Staying patient with the gainz.

Snatch

5x20kg
3×40
3×50
2×60
2×65
2×70
2×75
1×80
1×85
Miss 88
Miss 88
1×88
Miss 90
1×70
Miss 70 (somehow hit my knee on the first pull)
1×70
1×73
1×76
1×79
1×82
1×85
1×88
1×90

Felt a lot more solid in the second wave! Great idea by Alex to drop back down and work up slower. That was a long snatch session!

Benchin’ Bro

Power went out on the entire side of town by the gym, so no evening class like I had planned. Headed out to the garage around 5:30

Warm-up

Crossover Symmetry Activation
Bench Press
- 10×45#
- 5×95#

Strength-ish

100 Bench Press (135#)

Saw this on Instagram the other day and figured it would be fun to try, just wasn’t expecting to do it so soon.

As recommended I started out doing 5 reps every 30 seconds. In the beginning it was consistently like a reverse tabata but then it started to get hard around 50 reps and I could feel myself slowing down. I was getting closer and closer to 15 seconds of work. I made it to 85 reps with the sets of 5 and decided to try and push a little to see if I could get ahead of the E30S pace. So I switched to sets of 3 with shorter rests. Wasn’t easy, but got those 5 sets in to finish at 9:37 on the clock.

Accessory

6 Sets

10 Pendlay Rows (95#, supinated grip)
10 Back Extensions (30#)

Chest and back bro!

Conditioning

Through the 17 weeks of Rowing WOD I was staying away from the Ski Erg. Time to hop back on.

E3M 15:00

300m Ski Erg

Just what the doctor ordered. Times were 59.2, 58.4, 58.8, 59.7, and 59.0. The Fitbit says my heart rate only got up to 131. haha Yeah right! I’ll have to try wearing it higher on my wrist.

Sore Wings

Woke up yesterday with a headache that got worse through the day, before I finally gave in and popped some pills. So fucking sore too! I’m not sure my lats have even been this sore from pull-ups. Triceps are rocked from Kalsu I believe and my biceps are probably sore from the underhand work on Monday. Had planned an active recovery day yesterday with the possibility of squatting, but it was pretty obvious my body was crying for rest.

Was wide awake shortly after 5am so crawled out of bed and got an early start on work. Then went to the 9am class.

Warm-up

Bottom Squat Hold
Shoulder & Upper Back stretching
Air Squats
Jumping Jacks
Toe Touches
Zombie Kicks

Strength: Deadlift

10×45#
6×155
3×265
3×315
3×345
3×375
3×395
3×415
3×435

Yeah! Only 30# shy of my best triple. The slow and steady approach is paying off. Back felt really good today. I put on my belt starting with 345 I think.

Weightlifting

Probably should say it’s more conditioning since not really much technique work involved.

10:00 EMOM

2 Clean & Jerks

I went 155-165-175-185-195-200-205-210-215-220 with squatting and split jerks. I think I powered one rep at 175 or 185. My second split jerk in the heavy rounds was kind of ugly with a lot of flat back foot. Wore the belt and lifting shoes.

Conditioning

6 Rounds

10 Wall Balls (20#, 10′)
10 Plate Snatches (45#)

Looks innocent, right? Nasty shoulder burner though, starting at the end of the 3rd round. I was glad I didn’t use the 25# slam ball and was starting to regret my decision to use the 45# plate. Kept every round unbroken though. Finished in 5:43. According to the Fitbit, my heart rate was up to 144 at the end.

Skill WOD: Hustle & Flow Week 1 Day 2

Headed out to the garage in the afternoon to do this. Shoulders feeling fatigue from this morning.

Warm-up

3 sets

10 Pass-thrus
10 Hollow Rocks
10 Arch Ups
10 Narrow Grip OHS (45#)
10s Bottom of Dip Hold
10 Bridge Rocks

Skill

4 Sets

Freestanding HS Hold
16 Shoulder Taps (heels to wall)
20 Shotguns (Shoot to hollow)

Basically just practiced trying to get up into a freestanding handstand. After a few attempts out in the open I moved over to the wall with a little better success. If I kicked up and hit the wall I took my feet off the wall as quick as I could and tried to balance for a few seconds. Shoulder taps with back to the wall are so much harder. I wasn’t even tapping my shoulders, though I don’t think I was shifting my weight enough until the last set. Will hopefully be easier at the gym with more room.

Skill Test

1st week: Find 1 rep MAX deficit strict HSPU
3 sets of 4-6 strict reps at 70% of max deficit

I didn’t figure out a good way to setup the plates until I had already started on an alternative. Did 3×7 regular strict reps with no deficit and about 2-2:30 of rest between sets. Plenty difficult.

Strength Accessory

3 Sets

8 Seated DB Press (30# DBs)
10 Parallette Push-ups
30s GHD Hollow Hold

Holy fuck was that hold hard! Entire body shaking by 10 seconds in. The seated presses were easy at that weight but I didn’t want to kill myself too much before the AMRAP, which I knew would be tough.

5:00 AMRAP

1-2-3-4-5…

Burpees
HSPU

Went unbroken through 3 and then no more than 2 handstand push-ups in a row. Finished the round of 5 plus 6 burpees and 5 HSPU.

Structured Gymnastics Work

Feeling pretty good after Kalsu. Legs are fine, but my shoulders are fatigued. In at 10am to start a gymnastics program. Jumped on the rowed for an easy 1,000 meters before getting started. I saw the next cycle of the Rowing WOD combines rowing with thrusters. Good time to switch out. 🙂

Going to be following the Skill WOD from Dusty Hyland, starting with a 4-week cycle he calls Hustle & Flow. With the Open about 3 months away it’s a good time to focus on increasing gymnastics strength, technique, and endurance.

Warm-up

3 sets

5 Bar taps – tight
5 Bar taps – dynamic
7 V-ups
10 Pass-thrus
7 GHD Heel Drives
10 Bridge Rocks

I really like the structure of the warm-up and how it gets everything ready, while reinforcing position work.

Shoulder Activation

3 sets: 3 Scap Elevators + 3 Strict Pull-ups
1 set: 1+1

Superset

5 Sets

5 Butterfly Box Drill Circular Rotations
1 Stop Strict Pull-up + 3 Pull-ups (butterfly drill)
5 C2B Pull-ups

Skill Test

3 Pull-ups + 3 C2B + 3 Pull-ups + 3 C2B
2:00 Rest
2 sets
- 70% MAX C2B
- 90s Rest

I figured there was no way I was getting 2 sets of 14 chest-to-bar pull-ups here after all of the other pull-ups already. Got both though!

Strength Accessory

3 Supersets

15s Underhand grip chin hang
8 Supinated Bar Rows

My least favorite part. Did not feel very good on my elbows in either part.

Bonus Complex

Set 1: 2 Strict Pull-ups + 2 Strict C2B + 3 K2E + 3 T2B + 3 Bar MU
Sets 2-3: 2+2+3+3

Damn those are some hard strict pull-ups! It’s programmed as 4 bar muscle-ups in the first set, but I could only get 3. Then you are supposed to keep adding 1 MU every set until failure, trying to get in at least 3 sets of work. Didn’t realize it until a minute or so later, but I ripped my thumb in that first set, so that was the end of the bar muscle-ups for the day. Finished out 3 sets of work.

I was being a good boy and protecting my hands during the big set stuff with my gymnastics grips, but they don’t do anything for your thumbs. I must really grip hard on that bar transitioning from rep to rep of my bar MU. Will have to tape up my thumbs from now on.

With a focused attack it took us an hour to finish. Better than I expected, especially for the first week.

Fuck You “Kalsu”

I’ve been “wanting” to do this one for some time. Today is finally the day.

Warm-up

2×10 Reverse Hyper (210#)
PVC pass-thrus
Bottom Squat Hold
Thrusters
- 5×45#
- 5×95#
- 5×115#

Conditioning

“Kalsu”

EMOM (until 100 thrusters are completed)

5 Burpees
Thrusters (135#)

Some people incorrectly start with thrusters when the clock starts, but that makes no sense.

The goal is to start each minute with 5 burpees, once you finish the burpees you have the rest of the minute to complete as many 135 lbs barbell thrusters as possible. Once the second minute starts you are on the hook for another 5 burpees. Remember, no starting the thrusters until the burpees are completed and it continues.

John Welbourn of CrossFit Football

My goal was to do 5 thrusters every minute. After 7 rounds, I did my burpees and had to rest. Damn that got nasty fast! I think I did 3 more rounds and then rested again. I was at 50 reps and switched to sets of 4. I made it through 7 rounds before resting one more time. Somewhere in there I screwed up my count too because I did 5 sets of 4 to finish. 10×5=50 and 12×4=48. I realized it after I was recovered and thinking about my rounds. Whoops! Too bad, I’m not doing it again. Finished my *98* reps at 24:36 on the clock.

I don’t plan on trying this again anytime soon, but a note for next time is to switch to sets of 4s early when I feel like resting and just try to keep going without the zero thruster minutes.

Accessory

5 Sets

5 Good Mornings (135#)
15 Sit-ups

Originally I had decline push-ups programmed. Haha! No idea what I was thinking. Shoulders were smoked after the 125 burpees and all of those thrusters. Easy decision to change to sit-ups.

More Conditioning

5 Rounds each w/ partner (alt rounds)

20 H2H Russian KBS (53#)
30 Lateral Bar Hops

Nothing crazy here. Did it with Bryan and it took us 8:55.

End of the Cycle

In at 10am this morning to finish out this cycle of the Rowing WOD and then shift focus to gymnastics. Moved around, did some bottom squat holding and pass-thrus to warm-up. Nothing crazy.

Rowing WOD Week 17 Session 2

10:00 AMRAP

Buy-in: 50 Burpees over the rower
MAX distance Row

First 25 burpees were done in about 1:05 and finished off the 50 in 2:44. Was pulling before the 7:00 minute mark. Legs just had nothing left after those jumps back and forth. Was struggling just to keep it under 2:00/500m. Was able to pick up the pace in the last minute or so. Make it 1,829 meters. There was some foot transition practice programmed too but I skipped it.

Looking forward to starting the gymnastics focus on Monday. Why not test something else? 🙂

Weighted Pull-up

A couple of guys at work had done a max weight pull-ups a couple of months ago and it sounded like fun for today. I went 25-35-53-62-70-75-80#.

Conditioning

4 Rounds

2 Legless Rope Climbs (13′)
8 Shuttle Runs (54′)
40 DU

Felt like doing something else and have been wanting to climb the rope. Didn’t even set the clock, just did work. All successful climbs, but had to take some rest between reps. Missed once in the 3rd set of dubs.

Thanksgiving Gainz

Came back from Rogers City this afternoon so I could lift with Alex. Didn’t do much to warm-up other than some bottom squat hold.

Back Squat

10x20kg
5×70 (pauses)
5×100 (pauses)
3×110 (pauses)
3×120 (pauses)
3×130
3×140
3×150
3×155

Just a short second long pause in the hole on those early sets. Lifting kilos I don’t always know what I have on the bar. Quickly got up to the heaviest I’ve had on the bar in a long time. I haven’t had over 305# on my back since July when I did 340 for a single and then a week later tweaked my back during warm-ups. Been a long road back.

The triple at almost 342 pounds is about 3# shy of a 3RM PR. I’ve done 4×340# and 3×345#. I almost stopped after the triple at 150kg but figured I could make one more set with a small jump. Felt good. For a split second after that, I thought about doing some singles like Alex was doing, but I’ll save it for another day. Let my body adjust and build off today.

Split Jerks (behind the neck)

I’ve never really done any substantial weight with theses, but they felt really good once we got going. Bar goes up so smooth. I actually realized I could hold back on my drive because the bar was ending up crashing down on me when I put so much into it.

5x20kg
5×40
3×50
2×70
2×80
2×85
2x2x90
2×95
2×100
2×105

Hang Cleans

5x20kg
5×50
2×55
2×60
2×70
2×80
4x2x85
2×90

These are brutal on the thumbs when you use the Eleiko bar. When you bring the bar back down for the 2nd rep it feels like your thumbs are going to rip off. My second rep in the second set with 85 was rough, but I focused more on my technique and they felt solid after that.

Push Press

5x50kg
5×60
5×70
5×75
5×80
5×85
5×90

Pushed the gas pedal here. 198# on that last set is a PR for a set of 5. All the way up until that set I was taking one rep right into the next one. Surprised me actually after all that other work. Had been lifting 2 hours at this point.

Solid day! It’s a good push for me to lift with Alex.

Bring on the Pie

I’m glad Dad bought the Air Dyne shortly after I got one. Otherwise I’d have to jump on the dreaded treadmill. Did 20 minutes on the AD2 this morning at 70+ RPM. My lungs were fine, but my legs felt sluggish in the first couple of minutes. Luckily the feeling never got worse and I was able to keep up the rate and actually increase slightly. Went 7.06 miles.

Time to eat all the food!