Feeling pretty good after the 30 minute AMRAP yesterday. Went in at 8pm for Open Gym to do the following gem I concocted. Brent did it all with me and then Kevin joined us for the WOD when he was done coaching the class.
Warm-up
400m Run
PVC Pass-thrus
Strength
Back Squats
Week #5 of the squat program. Things are getting heavy! I warmed up with 5@95#, 5@135#, and 3@185#.
6 @ 220#
6 @ 235#
6 @ 250#
4 @ 265#
3 @ 280#
6 @ 235#
The 6 reps at 250# might have been the toughest part of this and I was wondering how in the world I was going to get the next two sets done, but they were actually easier.
Push Press
5×5 @ 165# and then did MAX reps on the 5th set, getting 7.
These felt really heavy, especially with my calves getting more sore from 153 box jumps yesterday. Glad we picked this weight though.
WOD
21-15-9
Row calories
Goblet Squats (53# KB)
T2B
Went out a little too hot on the rower and had to back off. Never set the KB done during my goblet squats. Kept my T2B around sets of 6 so I didn’t rip. Finished in 6:57. Pretty good WOD where you could keep pushing the whole way. Got a little rest during the T2B before jumping back up.
This weekend was all about home improvement projects. My Dad came down and we got a lot accomplished. Took all day Saturday to tear out a deck and two walkways. Then on Sunday we scraped up glue from a floor I removed, laid down luan, and started laying new flooring. I did a bunch more work on the floor yesterday and only have one closet to finish up. So while I had 3 rest days from CrossFit, my body got plenty of work; my knees feel like someone hit them with a baseball bat.
Old deck
Looking from the kitchen to the front door
Looking from the kitchen to the bathroom and garage
Ready to get back at it today. Missing Monday kind of screws up my week because I had to fit in back squats today, but I’ll adjust. Worked out in my garage around 11am.
Back Squats
Week 4 of the squat program and things are getting interesting! I warmed up with 5 @ 45# and 5@ 95# and then went right into the working sets. It was a big jump, but I knew it wasn’t going to be easy so I didn’t want to burn out by doing another warm-up set.
10 @ 185#
8 @ 205#
6 @ 220#
6 @ 235#
6 @ 250#
4 @ 265#
Last two sets were brutal. A couple of months ago 255# was my 5RM, so I think this program is working.
Push Presses
I knew I wanted to push press today, but had no idea what I would do. After finishing the back squats, I came up with this on the fly. Something new to try. I didn’t originally have the MAX set on there, but once I got about half way through and was feeling ok, I figured I’d give it a shot. Warmed up with 5 @ 45# and 5 @ 95#.
7 @ 105#
7 @ 115#
7 @ 125#
7 @ 135#
7 @ 145#
MAX @ 155# (8 reps)
Overall this session felt better than I expected considering the shit I put my body through the last few days. During my warm-up squats I wasn’t sure I would be able to do much because my knees were feeling pretty messed up.
Went to Survival Fitness for open gym at 8pm for a second session of the day.
Warm-up
500m Row
10/10 Leg Swings (F-B, S-S)
Strength
10:00 EMOM
Evens: 3 Weighted Pull-ups
Odds: 3 Weighted Dips
I used a weight belt for both, with a KB attached. For pull-ups I went 25-25-25-30-30 and should have pushed it a little higher on the last two sets. Wasn’t easy, but should have struggled more. On dips I used 25-30-35-40-53. Could have pushed more there too.
WOD
I loaded up the small sled with three 45# plates, attached some straps around my shoulders and did a bunch of long drags with it. In between, I was doing some jumps into the middle of 2 big stacked tires and exploding out of the middle for a 2nd jump right away. Not a super intense night, but I was pretty much on my own and got to try a couple of new things.
Saturday was a planned rest day and I did a bunch of work around the house, including tearing out a floor. I woke up feeling “off” on Sunday with a headache and it quickly turned to an achy body with no energy. Felt like the flu. Needless to say I didn’t do any training. Went to bed at 8 and slept for 12 hours. Today has been better as the day progresses, but I took a sick day from work to rest.
Since I’m feeling better tonight, I decided to see if I could get in my back squats for the week. Warmed up with 5 reps on the empty bar and then 5 at 135#. My working sets today called for:
6 @ 185
6 @ 205
6 @ 220
6 @ 235
6 @ 250
Was a bit rough in the last two sets, but I got through it. Hopefully I’m back close to 100% tomorrow.
My body is feeling a little beat up today, but planned to rest tomorrow anyway, so might as well hit it hard. Matt, Cora, Kevin, and I trained at 10:30am.
Warm-up
500m Row
PVC Pass-thrus
Back squat and shoulder press warm-up with light weights
Strength
Second week of the squat program, so while everyone did the 5 sets of 3 back squats around 90%, I did 4 sets of 8 with increasing weight.
10:00 EMOM MOFO
Evens: 3 Back Squats (90% of 1RM)
Odds: 3 Shoulder Presses (90% of 1RM)
I did my first 3 sets of back squats on time, took off the 4th round of back squats to rest for my heaviest set, and finished it on the 5th round. I had to do 8 reps each set, using 185, 205, 220, and 235. Pretty rough. On shoulder presses, 90% calls for 145#, but I don’t think that would be possible for me, so I used 135# for the first 4 sets and 140# for my final set.
Strength WOD
This one comes from some of the CrossFit Level 1 Seminar Staff. They absolutely crushed it. I think Khalipa did it in 4:17.
For time:
10 Shoulder Presses
15 OHS
20 Push Presses
25 Front Squats
30 Push Jerks
35 Back Squats
Rx is 115/75 for this one. My time was 14:03. Great barbell work there.
Conditioning WOD
Just keep moving in this one.
12:00 AMRAP
10 Jingle Jangles
10 V-ups
10 HR Push-ups
10 OH Walking Lunges (45/25)
I completed 7 full rounds, 10 jingle jangles, 10 v-ups, and 1 push-up for 7+21.
Finisher
Tabata Mash-up
Ring L-sit
Ball Slams (15#)
I did knee tuck sits each round.
Took us about an hour and 40 minutes to complete everything today. I have a feeling the legs are going to be wrecked for a couple of days.
Worked out at 10:30 this morning with Cora, Matt, and Kevin. First day of training for the 2014 CrossFit Games Open. 🙂 I’ll have a post up in the next couple of days detailing how I did in the 2013 Open and what I learned about myself.
I warmed up with 20 cal on the Air Dyne and then worked up with some lighter weights on the back squat and shoulder press.
I’m starting a 6 week squat program where I’ll be doing back squats once a week and front squats once a week. It’s a volume program I got off of Burgener’s site. They all did 5×5 Back Squats at 80%, but I had 3 sets of 10, so my timing wasn’t exactly every minute on the minute since I had the 2nd and 4th round of back squats off, but my rounds were longer too because of higher reps.
Really tough work with those reps at the percentages. I was out of breath after 10 reps of 220# and 125# was perfect for the shoulder presses.
WOD #1
5:00 Partner AMRAP
21 cal Air Dyne
Wall Balls (20# MB, 10′ target) until partner is done
I worked with Matt. We got 95 calories and 114 wall balls.
WOD #2
5:00 AMRAP
Box Jumps (24″) with 5 unbroken C2B EMOTM starting at 1:00 (so 4 sets of them)
I didn’t rebound my box jumps until the last 20 seconds or so because I figured I’d be smoked after the previous work and with a long 5 minutes. I think I went 20-13-14-14-19 during each minute for a total of 80. I should have rebounded from the beginning.
Core
10:00 EMOTM
20s MAX OHS (95#)
20s Ring L-sit
I got 8-9-8-9-9 on my OHS. Lost balance with 4 or 5 seconds left in that third round and had to bump the bar, so missed out on another rep or two there. The OHS felt really good today though.
Earlier this week I came up with a great idea to combine the Bear Complex with a Curtis P and add an OHS. I decided to call it the Grizzly Bear Complex. It goes like this…
Perform 10 touch-n-go doubles of the following complex.
Clean
Front Squat
Lunge
Lunge
Shoulder to Overhead
Back Squat
Shoulder to Overhead
Overhead Squat
Notes:
Rest 90 seconds to 2 minutes between each set.
Start with a light load. Increase the weight each set. The last 3 sets should be hard!
Combining movements is allowed. For example you can do a squat clean and a back squat thruster.
It works well to switch to a wide snatch grip before the back squat so that you can do a thruster and go right into the OHS.
After the OHS on the first rep you may want to drop to the back so you can switch to a clean width grip. Then do a short press just to get the bar over your head and back to the front rack, ready to go into the TnG for rep 2
I was able to round-up Kevin and Jason to give it a go at 8pm. I warmed up with a 500m row and some DU.
My goal was to be able to hit for some heavy OHS, 175# or more. Boy was I underestimating how tough this would get. I started at 75# and went up 10# each set. When I got to 135# in the 7th set, it took everything I had to keep control of the OHS, especially on the 2nd rep. I stuck with 135# for the 8th and 9th and then managed to get 140# on my last set.
I wasn’t sure how the lunges would feel, but they weren’t really too bad. I felt like I got stuck on a couple towards the end, but I think it was more from not concentrating on them than it was from the weight. The OHS was definitely the limiting factor, especially after holding on to that bar for so long. Great complex though and I’ll definitely be willing to try it again some time.
Brent got held up with kids, but showed up as were just finishing our last few sets. Then we did some work with Kevin’s new wheelbarrow drive sled from Again Faster. First we did 5 sets of a 50′ rope pull followed by a 50′ high prowler push. I think we had it loaded with 135# for the first 3 or 4 sets and then added another 45#. After that we converted it into the “wheelbarrow” did 5 down and backs of close to 100m total. At the end of 5 trips I think we had about 400# stacked on it. To finish things off we loaded it with 180# of plates and did a 50′ high prowler push with a low push back. On the 5th set we added another 45#.
Then we ended with a beer. All in all, a fun Friday night.
I went over to Kevin’s for a garage session tonight. He got a bunch of new equipment so I got to try most of it.
4×10 Reverse Hyper
Loaded 70# for the first set and then 120# for the last three. Quite the interesting machine. It made my back really spicy almost immediately.
3×7 GHR
I held a 5# plate on the 2nd and 3rd set. Tried to use a 10# plate on the 3rd set but couldn’t even get 1 rep.
5×5 Seated Good Mornings
Used 75#, 95#, 115#, 125#, and 125#. I’ve only done good mornings a few times and this was the first time doing them seated, which I think I like better than standing.
Earthquake Bar Bench Press
Did 10 reps and then a static hold at the top. Did 50# and 90# with a 20 second hold and then 100# with a 30 second hold. We used steel plates for these. We did try 120# with a mix of plates and KB, but it was not happening because the KB are so unstable.
Back Squats
The plan was to do 5×5 at 75-80% of 1RM, but we were a little too fried from 13.4 this morning and all the back work. We did 5 reps at 135#, 185#, 245#, 225#, and 225#. The first two sets were going to be warm-up sets and then into the sets of 245# but we knew the 5 sets were not going to happen after that first one, so we dropped it down and cut the number of sets short. Then we dropped back down to 135# for a max rep set. Kevin stopped at 20 reps and I stopped at 30, deciding we wanted to be able to walk tomorrow.
We jumped back on the Reverse Hyper for a quick set of 15 with 70# to stretch the back out.
It didn’t seem like that long while we were lifting, but it was a solid 2 hours.
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.
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.
My shoulders, arms, and upper back are feeling spicy today. Went in for the 9am so that I’m free to watch the live stream of Open WOD 13.1 tonight.
Warm-up
4/4 World’s Greatest Stretch
3m Row at 20s/m
2 Rounds
16 GHD Sit-ups
15 Hip Extensions
I really tried to be explosive with the GHD sit-ups today and lock out the legs. First time doing hip extensions in a long time.
Strength
5 Sets
7-10 Back Squats at 20X1 Tempo
90s Rest
Damn that’s a lot of volume! The tempo is pretty much just normal though, since it takes me about 2 seconds to lower anyway. I did 10 reps each at 135#, 155#, 195#, and 215#. Then jumped up to 235# to really push it on the last set and managed to get 7 before I dumped the bar. At the end I was sweating like I just got done with a 10 minute WOD.
WOD
10:00 AMRAP
7 Wall Balls (20# MB, 10′ target)
7 Push-ups
7 Pull-ups
I did all butterfly pull-ups and am really starting to get the rhythm down. Completed 10 rounds plus 5 more wall balls, pretty much going non-stop. Had to transition from a wall ball and push-up spot over to the pull-up bar each round, otherwise I bet I could have gotten at least another full round in. 70 butterfly pull-ups is a lot higher than any previous day I’ve done. I’m sure glad I remembered to shave my calluses this morning though!
Oh…almost forgot. Zach Lind, the drummer from Jimmy Eat World, was in to WOD today.
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