Was feeling good until doing jump rope in the warm-up and then I could feel my lower back tightening up from those deadlifts yesterday. Went in for the noon class.
Warm-up
3m Jump Rope
2 Rounds:
10 Ring Rows
10 Burpees
10 PVC Pass-thrus
2×6/6 Turkish Get-ups
I used a 35# KB for my first set of 6 on each side. Then Emily told mo to try them with a barbell. I did 4 on the right side with an 18# bar which was too light. Switched to a 35# bar and did 4 more, then 6 on the left side. Using a bar adds another level of control to the movement and was a nice change.
WOD
100 DU
Split this up any way you want:
100 Pull-ups
100 Walking Lunges
100 Push-ups
100 DU
I got through the first 100 DU is about 1:10, then I did 10 rounds of 10s. All pull-ups were done without coming off the bar and no breaks on the lunges. I had to reset my rhythm a few times on the butterfly, but I think that is the best I’ve ever done pull-ups in my life. I did 3 unbroken sets of push-ups (all chest to deck) and then 6-4 until the last set where I forced myself to go unbroken again. The last 100 DU were a little struggle since I pushed so hard through the middle hundreds. Finished in 15:56, which crushed the best time of the day.
Yesterday morning I walked 9 holes of golf and then went for a 3.15 mile hike in 58:38. I’ve been sore from doing “Karen” in 13.3, but nowhere near the DOMS I’ve experienced from previous run-ins with that bitch. Went it an noon.
Warm-up
2m Row
2 Rounds:
5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
10 Air Squats
Burgener Warm-up (empty bar)
I did strict pull-ups to work on my strength and did slow quality chest to deck push-ups.
OLY
7 Sets
Power Snatch
Hang Power Snatch
High Hang Power Snatch
90s Rest
Each set was done without putting the bar down. Great time to work on the hip extension like last week’s drilling on full cleans. I’m beginning to love the high hang lifts because without the hips you can’t move any weight. It really forces you to be explosive and use your hips, especially being the 3rd lift in the complex. I did 2 sets at 75# and then went up 10# each set, to finish at 125#. I’m really happy to be able to land those three lifts at that weight because my 1RM is still only 155#. My technique was better today than it ever has been and I was getting a lot of hip extension, making the bar move so much faster.
WOD
4 Rounds
400m Run
20 Deadlifts (185#)
30 Sit-ups
This was a fun little WOD, with the 20 deadlifts becoming a real challenge. I did 12-8 in the 3rd round to save myself a bit and then really pushed the run in the last round and pushed hard on the deadlifts because I was trying to catch Lance. Ended up 8 seconds behind him, with my time being 15:18.
Originally a few of us planned to do 13.3 on Friday, but our quads were still blown up from Wednesday’s squats. Better to take the extra day of rest and hit it hard today. Adam and I did it side-by-side, which helped us to push each other throughout the entire workout.
Bruising from the rings. Is much darker than the picture shows.
12:00 AMRAP
150 Wall Balls (20# MB, 10′ target)
90 DU
30 MU
My strategy going in was to do sets of 25 to start, then drop down to 20s, 15s, and 10s when I needed to, depending on feel. I think I did 2 sets of 25, a set of 20, and then the rest was a blur. When I broke a set, I stood up against the wall with the ball on my chest, in order to rest my arms and not have to do extra work to pick the ball back up. My strategy couldn’t have worked any better and my splits were even better than I was expecting.
I crushed my “Karen” PR by over 2 and a half minutes, finishing in 6:14. Grabbed a quick swig of water because my mouth was so dry, and knocked out 40 DU. I think I did 3 more sets to finish them out with a split of 8:19. More water and deep breathing. I didn’t even get up on the rings until close to 9:00 on the clock because I wanted to rest and make the most of every attempt. A failed MU is really taxing on the system. I managed to get 7 MU with one failure. After I got my first one I was so happy and the rest was gravy! I’ve never even done 7 MU in one day, let alone in a WOD. Hell, this was my first time even doing a MU in a WOD. Last year I had about 10 or 15 seconds to attempt a MU so this is a huge improvement for me.
On to 13.4…
Hike
Went out for a quick 1.83 mile hike in 31:08, hoping it limits the typical “Karen quads” that can be brutal for 2-3 days.
All of the squatting from the last two days is catching up to my legs. After the announcement of 13.3 and looking at some videos, I knew I needed to give no-false grip MU a try, so I went in around 8am this morning to open gym.
Warm-up
50-40-30-20-10 DU
30-25-20-15-10 Sit-ups
They were doing “Annie” in class today but doing that many sit-ups would wreck my core a bit, so Emily suggested I cut the number of sit-ups. I only missed a DU near the beginning of the 50 and right away in the 20, otherwise all unbroken. Finished in 5:30, so would have been a PR “Annie” for me had I done the extra 50 sit-ups.
Skill
I raised the rings and jumped on! First I did some hip to ring pulls with a kip to get a feel for the motion I’d need. Felt good. Then I went for it and tried the no-false grip MU. Got up there no problem and felt a lot easier than when I’ve done them with the false grip. I have a hard time supporting myself in the false grip, and even more so when I start swinging with the kip. I did a total of 4 or 5 singles and never had a miss. The only thing that sucks a bit is my wrists are in a bad position when I’m over the rings, so then I have to adjust. But I have the strength now where it’s not a huge deal to do. I’ll live with that instead of having to fight with the false grip.
I’m feeling good after so many heavy squat cleans yesterday. Good thing too because we have a lot of squat volume today. I went in a little early to loosen up and work on some MU. Then I did the 9am.
Warm-up
500m Row
3 Rounds (25# KB)
10/10 Satellite (Around the waste, let hips sway)
10/10 Halo (Hold KB upside down by handle, go around head, rotate right side up behind head)
10/10 Figure 8 (Through legs, pass to other hand, wrap around and up to chest, slap with other hand, and then through legs the other way)
Had never done those KB moves. Nice change of pace to the warm-up.
Strength
10:00 EMOM
2 Thrusters
I went 95#, 115#, 125#, 135#, 140#, 145#, 150#, 155#, 165#, and 180#. Tried to also focus on hip extension in the clean to start each round.
WOD
20 Back Squats
10 T2B
20 Front Squats
10 T2B
20 Thrusters
20 T2B
20 Front Squats
20 Back Squats
I used 95#, which was Rx. If I would have been thinking I would have asked if I could substitute OHS for the front squats since I did so many yesterday with the squat cleans. We think the 20 T2B was a typo in the WOD typed up on the web site, but rolled with it. I finished in 9:31.
I was feeling good today. Pretty well recovered from 13.2. Went in at 3:15 for some Olympic lifting and then stayed for the WOD with the 4:15 class.
Warm-up
500m Row
PVC Pass-thrus
A few empty bar clean progressions
OLY
We started out doing a complex:
Clean
Hang Clean
High Hang Clean
Everything was a full squat clean. I started off with 115# to loosen up and then went 145#, 155#, 165#, 175#, and finished at 195# due to Gayle’s push. The high hang cleans were really forcing me to get into a better full extension. For the first time I started to feel like I was coming out to meet the bar at the right time instead of it hitting so low, just above my knees. Gayle made this cool collage out of one of the videos during the complex and it proves I was finally getting some full extension!
Next, we moved on to doing doubles, with the goal of going EMOM for 10 minutes, but as we added weight, rest more often. Gayle told me to throw 205# on the bar to start. Ok, who am I to argue. She got me to full extension today which has never happened before. I was sticking to EMOM here and went 3 sets at 205#. Then I went up to 210# and stuck to EMOM for 3 sets there as well. Bumped it up to 215# for the next 3 sets and started to take 90s or 2 minutes of rest between sets because after 2 reps I was close to fainting a few times. You know you’re working hard when that happens!
On one of the reps at 215# I hit the best full extension I’ve ever had and the bar flew so high it caught me really off guard. For my last set, I took a little longer rest and went for broke at 230# which I recently did for a power clean, but have never attempted for a full squat clean and certainly never a double. I got it with an ugly 2nd rep, but fuck I was tired at this point. Gayle got a video of it too.
Now, let’s see if I can get this same feeling with snatches, which I really need it.
I skipped the class warm-up because I was pretty beat from those doubles.
WOD
18:00 AMRAP
200m Row (or 200m Run if all rowers in use)
15 American KBS (53# KB)
10/10 Walking Lunges
5 HSPU
I started out with a run, but then was able to row every round. Did everything unbroken and minimized my kip on the HSPU because it was only 5 at a time; they felt really good. Finished 7 full rounds and was getting on the rower as time ran out.
I’m feeling pretty good today, considering how wrecked I was last night. I’m a little sore in a bunch of different areas, but nothing too bad. Went in for the 4:15.
Warm-up
2m Jump Rope
2 Rounds
40 Mountain Climbers
20 Russian Twists (35# KB)
20 Air Squats
WOD
800-600-400-200m Run
15 Pull-ups
15 HR Push-ups
15 Wall Balls (20# MB, 10′ target
This was a lot tougher than I expected. I went out hard on the 800m run to work on my conditioning and then really tried to work on my butterfly for the pull-ups. First set was a little rough, but I went 9-6, 10-5, and 10-5 in the last three sets. Had never done more than 7 in a row before today and I only stopped each time because of fatigue, not because of rhythm. I focused on keeping my kick going, kept a tighter kick, and kept my feet together. Tried to just power through the push-ups, but they were the slowest part for me. Did each round of wall balls unbroken. Finished in 18:39.
That was a nice recovery WOD after a tough workout for 13.2 yesterday. Back to hitting it hard tomorrow for 2 hours of work.
So here we are, with week 2 of the Open. I was excited when workout 13.2 was announced because it involved 15 box jumps per round. The box jump is my best movement and I can keep rebounding for a long time. I was looking to make up some ground after my disappointing score on 13.1.
After 13.1, I’m in 18,893 (25.7%) out of 73,419 men in the world and 1,292 (28.25%) out of 4,573 men in the South West region. Both are really close to cracking that top 25% so with this probably being my worst workout, I’m revising my goal of being above average (top 50%) to being top 25% in the Open.
Then a day or so later we realized that step-ups were allowed. As the last few days progressed it has been determined that step-ups are the way to go for most people because they save your legs more and really save your lungs. Well, so much for any advantage I had over a lot of people. In the end, step-up with a jump/fall down turned out the way to go for the majority of folks.
I had done a 4 round test of this workout on Friday and finished in 3:52, which I felt was pretty good. Each round was getting a few seconds slower, but not too bad.
I went out flying and kept a sub 1:00 pace through the first 5 rounds. Then I hit the wall hard. It was a struggle to get up on the box for the last 3-4 minutes. I was pushing off my leg for help and resorted to step-downs instead of the jump/fall down. I finished with 8 full rounds plus 5 presses, 10 deadlifts, and 10 step-ups, for a 265 total. I’m happy with that because 20 minutes later I was still dying, so I know I had nothing more to give. This jumps me up nicely in the standings.
I was excited with the announcement of Workout 13.2 for the CrossFit Games Open. Box jumps are probably my best movement so to see them count for half of the reps per round made me happy. I however didn’t realize right away that the standards are allowing a step up this year, where last year they only allowed a step down. The step up is a completely different movement and eliminates most of the advantage rebounding box jumpers have in this workout. It’s confusing why they would allow this for everyone instead of just the oldest Masters division like last year.
So I’ve been hearing conflicting reports on whether or not step ups are the better choice, depending on your level of fitness and ability to rebound. I agree that for the less than average CrossFitter, step ups make perfect sense because they won’t kill your lungs like box jumps will. For the average and slightly above CrossFitter, I’m not sure though. For the elite that won’t have to slow down in a 10 minute workout, rebounding box jumps are clearly the correct choice.
So I had to do some testing of my own in order to feel confident going into the WOD on Sunday. Adam opened up the box for me and I headed in at noon to do a little test of my own. I warmed up a bit, but kept it short so Adam could get out of there since I found out he wasn’t going to do anything. Super nice of him to open up the gym for me so I didn’t want to take up more of his day than I had to. I did 4 rounds of the AMRAP without trying to do any certain pacing or anything. Pretty much going all out.
Pretty shitty camera setup for these videos. I should have done them vertically.
I timed out the splits to see where I was losing ground and it definitely wasn’t the box jumps, which were consistent. I need to get faster on the push presses by not over extending so much and getting on that bar and into the first rep sooner. I took a long time setting my hands and then sat in the rack before the first rep. I should be able to rep out the deadlifts faster too, but have to be careful that I get my shoulders behind the bar. It was getting close on some of those reps, which is good for timing, but at the same time you don’t want any no reps on a workout like this.
I’m glad I did this little test because it gave me a feel for the burn and showed a couple of weak areas where I can knock off valuable seconds. If I clean some of those things up and can keep a steady pace through the middle of the 10 minutes, I should be able to put up a pretty good score.
After a few minutes of rest I tried doing some step ups to see how they felt and how slow they were. With just one round of them (alternating legs) I could feel a burn in my legs before I even got to the 15th rep. I didn’t go crazy fast on them and it took about 32 seconds.
Since this alone took 32 seconds and my transition plus the box jumps were taking 30 seconds, I don’t see this as being a go to for me. I may do one or two rounds of step ups (or maybe 5 or 10 reps of the 15) after the 5 minute mark to catch some air, but it has to be worth it for how much longer it’s going to take. I need to take full advantage of my box jump rebounding in this WOD to have a good score.
When I got home, I did a 100 HR Push-up test since it’s been a couple of months and I wanted to test out a new push-up strategy for high reps with resting sooner and never doing more than 10 unbroken. It seems to have worked out because I did them in 5:04, beating my old PR of 5:42 by 38 seconds!
It’s been a couple of rough days with 13.1 on Sunday, 2 sessions on Monday, and a 2 hour session yesterday. I’m feeling a little beat up, but not enough to keep me away from the box today. This morning I went in for the 9am and it was a hard hour.
Warm-up
2m Jump Rope
2 Rounds:
10/10 Leg Swings (F2B, S2S)
10 Flamingos
10 Scorpions
Strength
5-3-1-1-1 Back Squats
I’ve been waiting for a 1RM back squat day and it finally arrived. Last max lift was 285# and I couldn’t wait to join the 300# club. I warmed up with 5 at 45#, 5 at 135#, and 3 at 185#, trying to do fast reps. Then I went into my working sets:
5x 225#
3x 255#
1x 285#
1x 300#
1x 315#
BOOM! Hit a 30# PR and could not have gone a pound heavier.
WOD
7 Rounds
3 Cleans (205#)
21 DU (unbroken)
About a month ago we did a competitor’s WOD very similar to this, but with 4 deficit HSPU instead. I remembered the 185# cleans being really tough, but I decided to go for the Rx today and see how long I could do 205#. I managed to do all 21 of them as power cleans. I did have one miss in the last round when Gayle said something about it barely getting over my knees, so then I thought too much about it. Had a few misses on DU, but thankfully they were all early in counts. Finished in 9:14.
Glad I went in early and got the workout done. Now I can relax and get work done the rest of the day. Rest day tomorrow for sure. I’m excited to see the 13.2 announcement tonight.
Nick Momrik's Fitness Logs 