Working on Muscle-Ups

Feeling good today. Pecs are still sore from the competition. Was up early so headed in to work on muscle-ups before the 9am class.

I started out with rings hanging low from a pull-up bar so I could get in some reps working the transition with my feet bent under me and on my toes. Then I moved over to a set of rings I could grab on to while standing flat-footed and worked the strict transition. I kept missing because I’d let the rings get too wide and I was too slow in the turn-over. I nailed a few of them though. Just from that bit of work, my wrists started to rub raw. Need to try to do this once or twice a week.

Warm-up

  • 4/4 World’s Greatest Stretch
  • 15 No Push-up Burpees
  • 200m Run
  • 100m Run Backwards
  • 200m Carioca (100m each direction)
  • 300m Run
  • 3 Rounds:
    • 10 Evil Wheels
    • 5/5 Glute Bridge March
    • 10s Glute Bridge Hold

I worked up quite a sweat with the evil wheels.

WOD

  • 30 Box Jumps (30″)
  • 20 Full Cleans (155#)
  • 30 K2E
  • 20 Single-arm Push Press (53# KB)
  • 30 Sit-ups
  • 20 Alt Pistols
  • 30 Burpee Box Jumps (30″)

Damn those cleans sucked ass and then the burpee box jumps at the end were pretty killer as well. Everything else was smooth sailing for the most part. I did the box jumps unbroken, the K2E in 12-10-8, push presses in sets of 5 per arm, sit-ups unbroken, and pistols with 2 short breaks mainly to get back to balanced. Really had to concentrate on the box jumps at the end. Finished in 16:36.

Olympic Lifting Progress

I’m feeling good after yesterday’s competition. Little sore in my pecks, but not quite sure what that’s from. Went in to the Olympic lifting class at noon.

We started out with snatches. I concentrated on hip extension and Johnny got me really exploding with the hips and punching under the bar. I started at 95# and worked up to 135# doing doubles and then singles. Was hitting them at 135# easily. Didn’t want to go heavier because I wanted to focus on the technique. Felt a lot better today and could feel the speed of the transition instead of kind of floating through that part of the lift.

Moved on to clean and jerks and went for broke. Started at 135# to warm up, then 155#. Switched to singles going 185#, 195#, 215# for a 10# PR, and then finished with a 20# PR at 225#. The clean was really easy and the jerk felt solid, especially after over an hour of lifting. I think I have another 10-20 pounds in my when fresh.

Hike

Went out for a hike late in the afternoon. Wore the 20# weight vest and went 2.05 miles in 1:06:31hike.

44 Minute Competition WOD

Yesterday I rested, but went for a 2 mile recovery walk.

Was up bright and early for event #3 of the Industrial Athlete Championship Series. A bunch of us from CrossFit Full Strength met at the gym at 6:15am and headed out to Mesa.

iacs-event3-full-strength-before

There were 4 events, but it was really just one big workout with short rest/transition periods. It was scored as one total event with total reps for everything combined as your score.

WOD #1

8:00 broken into 4 rounds of 2:00 Fire Hose Drag/Pull and Calorie Row

You will start next to your rower with the fire hose piled next to you. On GO you will grab the hose and run it approx 100 feet. Once you cross the marked line you will turn and pull the remainder of the hose fully across the line. Once the entire hose is across the line you will run back to the start area to your rower machine and row for calories for the remainder of the 2 min. This cycle will repeat 4 times without rest for a total of 8 minutes.

They kind of screwed things up here and allowed you to carry the entire hose if you wanted. That was obviously much easier and after a few Rx heats everyone was doing it. I paced myself and didn’t go all out on the rower with 3 more events to go. Got 105 calories. Looking back and because of how the overall scoring worked, I wish I would have pushed harder.

iacs-event3-rowing

* 4:00 rest

WOD #2

8:00 to complete 100 Wall Balls and max Pull-ups.

There will be medicine balls at the bottom of your squat that you must touch and a target set at 10 feet which you must hit with the ball. All athletes over 6′ tall may use a 25# plate under their touch ball to make a more consistent depth for all athletes.

I was worried about this one the most, but I actually did the best here. I went 40-20-10-10-10-10 on my wall balls and was done in around 4 minutes. Then I got 57 pull-ups, but they were pretty slow going. I never did more than 6 in-a-row and was down to doing 2 or 3 at a time at the end. Adam from our gym knocked out 20+ in his first jump up on the bar. If I could do that I would have smoked this WOD.

* 4:00 rest

WOD #3

8:00 broken into three 2:00 max rep cycles with 1 min rest/recovery.

HR Burpee with lateral jump over parallette bars. You may space your 2 parallette bars according to your desired distance preference. You will begin to the right side of the first bar. On GO you will drop to a HR burpee, recover, and laterally jump with both feet (no stepping) over a single parallette bar. Then you will repeat the process, jump over the second bar, and then hand release burpee again for a total of 3 burpees per pass over the 2 bars. So it’s basically burpee, jump, burpee, jump, burpee – that would be one pass earning 2 points then repeat coming back the other direction as many times as possible. You earn a point each time you jump the parallette bar.

* 1:00 rest

Sit-ups from the ground. There will be no supports, ab mats, or feet holding. The movement standard is touch the ground behind your head while laying on the ground then sit up and touch the ground directly in front of your feet. pressed together if desired.

* 1:00 rest

Parallette bars pass throughs. In this exercise you will earn one point each time your feet extend and heel strike the ground in front of your body. The movement standard is to touch the ground in front with knees in full extension and heels on ground then behind with knees fully extended while striking the toes to the ground. You will be holding your own weight up on the parallette bars and are NOT permitted to touch the ground underneath your body or walk through in any form.

I got 26 burpees, 64 sit-ups, and 25 pass throughs. When the guy announced we were only 30 secounds through burpees I couldn’t believe it because I was already dead. I tried to keep a steady pace and just keep moving on them. They were by far the worst. I smoked through the sit-ups and struggled my way through the pass throughs.

* 4:00 rest

WOD #4

8:00 Keg carry with short Wall Clears

In this event you will carry a keg filled at 100# (Men’s RX), 75# (Women’s RX, Men’s Scaled, and Men’s Masters) and 50# (Women’s Scaled and Women’s Masters) to a wall approx 25m away. You will then leave the keg and run back to the start line, touch line, and run back to the keg. You will then lift the keg over the wall, jump the wall, and continue to carry the keg to the next wall where you will again set down the keg, run back to the first wall, jump wall, run back to start line, touch line, run forward to wall, jump wall, return to keg, clear keg over 2nd wall, jump wall, and carry keg to turn around line approx 25m. Keep repeating the process for total distance covered.

This final WOD was kind of a joke because of the scoring. You got a rep/point for each time you threw the keg over a wall. At the end, the spread in the men’s Rx divisions was 8 to 14 reps. That was a shit ton of work for so few reps, compared to all of the other WODs where I got over 100 reps in each. I ended up with 12 points here.

I’ve been worried about my cardio the last couple of weeks and this was a good test. I’m really happy with the outcome. I got 389 points and finished in 8th place out of 43 men in the Rx division. There were some beasts here and I held my own.

iacs-event3-full-strength-after

Clean Work

Not feeling too bad this morning, but legs are feeling those tempo back squats from Tuesday. Went in for the 9am so that I have 2 full days of rest before the competition on Saturday.

Warm-up

  • 500m Row
  • 10/10 Scorpions
  • 10/10 Flamingos
  • 50′ Frog Hop
  • 2×5 Extremely slow Clean Deadlift up to shrug and triple extension (95#)

Strength

Clean Complex

  • Power Clean from high hang
  • Power Clean from above knee
  • Power Clean from ground
  • 90s Rest

I really tried to work on my hip extension, which is probably my weakest point in the Olympic lifts. I did 6 sets of the complex, going 115#, 125#, 135#, 145#, 155#, and 165#. We had plenty of time in class, so we moved on to doing some heavy singles.

Heavy Power Clean Singles

  • 185#
  • 205# (matching PR)
  • 215# (new PR, easy!)
  • 230# (fail)
  • 230# (Plenty high enough, little slow getting the elbows under, but fought for it.

That was a 25# PR on my power clean over the 205# set back in October and now it’s higher than my 225# squat clean max. I’m still not even getting full hip extension though, so plenty more in the tank if I can keep improving my technique.

WOD

12:00 AMRAP

  • 7 Clean & Jerk (135#)
  • 7 C2B Pull-ups
  • 7 Burpees

This one was a fight and I ended up ripping both of my thumbs. I guess I need to start taping them again, especially for high rep clean work. I finished 5 full rounds and an extra clean and jerk.

Above Rx

My legs are pretty beat up from the tempo work this week. That was some heavy lifting! Took a longer rest and went in at 5:15pm tonight. The WOD didn’t look too bad and no strength work so I was kind of looking forward to an easier day. I should have known better!

Warm-up

  • 5/5 World’s Greatest Stretch
  • 2/2 10s Samson Stretch
  • 1/1 minute Hip Flexor Stetch
  • 2×3/3 Turkish Get-ups

The hip flexor stretch was new and pretty rough. For the Turkish Get-ups I used a 35# KB and then a 40# KB.

WOD

5 Rounds

  • 40 DU (unbroken)
  • 30 Chest-to-deck Push-ups
  • 20 OH Walking Lunges (45# Plate)
  • 10 Ring Dips

That’s the Rx+ version of the WOD Gayle challenged us to do. It ups the DU to unbroken, push-ups to chest-to-deck, walking lunges to weighted OH lunges, and dips on a box or rack to ring dips. Shit the bed! So much for an easier day. I knew the push-ups would be absolutely brutal and of course they were after the 2nd round. I messed up a few times on my DU early in a round, but was solid with them until messing up at 33 in the 5th round. I think I let out an F-bomb. I pushed through the walking lunges as much as I could and then the ring dips were pretty brutal for me today. Finished in 22:36.

Being forced to do unbroken DU in WODs has dramatically improved them for me though. You concentrate so much more because you don’t want to do the work all over again.

Still a Little Cloudy

My head it still a little cloudy this morning, even after going to bed by 9pm. Oh well, shake it off with a workout at 9am right?

Warm-up

  • 500m Row
  • 2 Rounds
    • 10/10 Scorpions
    • 10s of Leg Swings (s2s, f2b)
    • 10 Wall Squats

Strength

5 Sets

  • 3 Back Squats (32X1 Tempo)
  • 2m Rest

* For the first set use your max weight from the 5×5 32×1 tempo back squats we did last week.

Holy shit that was heavy to start! I went 215#, 225#, 230#, 235#, and 240#. The pause at the bottom is brutal.

After another rest period follow that up with a max rep set at 30X1 tempo with 135#. I fought for 26 reps and then collapsed on the ground. Felt like I just got done with a WOD after that big set.

WOD

30-20-10

  • Row (calories)
  • GHD Sit-ups
  • Thrusters (95#)

Not much left in the tank for this WOD. My legs wouldn’t even work on the rower. Finished in 14:50.

Killed by Tempo Deadlifts

It was nice to skip a day from WODs yesterday and taking a longer rest today as well. Went in for the 5:15pm.

Warm-up

  • 3 min Jump Rope
  • 2 Rounds
    • 3/3 World’s Greatest Stretch
    • 5 Pull-ups
    • 10 Am. KBS (35# KB)

Went 3 minutes straight on the jump rope without a single miss.

Strength

5×5 Deadlifts at 2-1-2-1 Tempo

Pushed it to the limit and it was absolutely brutal. Went 225#, 275#, 305#, 335#, and 365#. It was heavy and I started to round the lower back just a little at the end. Fought to get all 5 reps in and that was definitely the max weight for the tempo. Then not much of a rest before starting the WOD. Forgot to take off the shoes for the deadlifts too.

WOD

  • 50 Am. KBS (53# KB)
  • 25 Pull-ups
  • 150 DU
  • 25 Pull-ups
  • 50 Am. KBS (53# KB)

Went 35 reps and then 15 KBS to finish off at the beginning and worked on butterfly pull-ups. DU were a struggle today, but got through them. The last 50 American KBS were really tough. Finished in 12:05 overall. Was done with the warm-up, strength, and the WOD is less than 45 minutes.

Got home and started to go into a tunnel vision and a headache. I think it was from the tempo deadlifts, which really killed the WOD as well. This is only the 3rd time a CrossFit class has hit me like this. Should have probably gone lighter on the deadlifts, but really pushed them to the limit.

Needed a Break

After 7 straight days and some pretty brutal WODs my body needed to rest today. I went for a really nice slow hike for active recovery. I went to a trail where there isn’t much of an elevation change and no challenging parts to it. The pace was faster than the tougher hikes I do, but the intensity was nowhere near those. It ended up being 3.97 miles in 1:25:32.

165 All Day

Didn’t sleep very well at all last night, which isn’t the greatest for going in to do a competitor’s WOD at 8am. Back is pretty sore from yesterday and my delts are still beat up from the tempo OHS.

Warm-up

  • Row 500m
  • PVC Pass-thrus

WOD

3 rounds

  • 8 Shoulder to OH
  • 14 Pistols (alternate legs for 7 each)

Then 3 Rounds:

  • 8 Front Squats
  • 15 GHD Sit-ups

Then 3 Rounds

  • 4 Ground to OH
  • 15 Pull-ups

The Rx weights for this are 190/125. Ha! It would have taken me forever to finish, so I picked 165# which would still be challenging. Having just done “DT” with 155# last week helped me pick the correct weight for this.

We staggered our starts because there are only 3 GHDs, so I actually started with the 2nd couplet, moved to the third, and finished with the first. Kind of brutal that way because as designed, your upper body gets some rest in the 2nd couplet. The WOD called for 2 rope climbs in the 3rd couplet, but I substituted so I could work on my butterfly pull-ups. They’re getting better!

I finished in 22:38. Even going up to 175# would have been a big jump for all of those overhead movements. Cleaning the bar so many times really wears you out too. Definitely taking a rest day tomorrow!

Go Big

Met up with a group to throwdown at CrossFit Full Strength at 12:30. They all did yesterday’s OHS strength portion, but since I was in yesterday, I did something else for strength.

Warm-up

  • PVC Pass-thrus
  • 500m Row

Strength

5×3 Deadlifts

We didn’t do any heavy deadlifts this week, so I figured it was a good lift to do. I went with 5 at 225 and then 3 at 315#, 365#, 405#, and 425#. My old 1RM was 415#, so I smoked that and did 2 more reps, not just the 1 rep. Feeling strong!

WOD

The gals did yesterday’s WOD and the guys decided to do a benchmark girl.

“Power Elizabeth”
21-15-9

  • Power Cleans (135#)
  • Ring Dips

My first time with “Elizabeth” so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I did the first 11 cleans TnG, then dropped the rest of the reps through 21 and all of the 15, before doing all 9 TnG. The ring dips were a struggle throughout, but I did a lot of sets of 4-6. Finished in 7:09. Next time I do this one, I’ll go TnG for all of the cleans and rest as needed to break up the sets.

My low back is pretty fried after all that.