Tag: Front Squat

Feeling it a Bit

Tired from a late night at Greek Fest. Legs are fatigued and I’m sore in my upper back from the muscle cleans. Adjusted the Super Sunday workout because the Hero WOD that was planned would not have gone well. Didn’t do much to warm-up other than a bottom squat hold.

Front Squats

  • 10×45#
  • 5×135#
  • 3×185#
  • 6x3x215#

Light day from the Rippletoe program. Felt really good to squat. Focused on speed and driving up with my back.

Conditioning

5 Rounds

  • 20 Russian KBS (70#)
  • 25 Push-ups
  • 30 Air Squats

Wanted something that wasn’t brutal and we could keep moving. I purposely went kind of slow for the first 3 rounds, not wanting to kill myself today. I did my first 4 rounds of push-ups in 10-9-6 and then 10-6-5-4 in the final round with shorter rest. Busted ass in the last round and a half and flew those air squats. Took me 11:54. Considering it was over 5:00 when I finished round 2, that’s more push than I planned on giving today.

Accessory

8x

  • 20s L-sit
  • 30s Rest

Went pretty well today. Got tough in the last 2 rounds but I was keeping my knees high throughout.

2x

  • MAX HS Hold (facing wall)

I did a 2:40 (40s PR!) and a 1:30 with about 3 minutes of rest between.

Run Every Day

I was doing a bunch of yard work today and honestly almost forgot about getting in a run. If I can get up and run the morning of a competition I can run late on the day after. Too close to the end of the month to miss a day. Ran 2.68 miles in 27:40. Didn’t wear any headphones and was a nice night for a run.

2015 June GLBRT

I’ve been sleeping so good lately. Headed out at 7am simple for the sake of keeping the #RunEveryDayJune streak going. Went 1.1 miles in 11:37.

First Great Lakes Bay Regional Throwdown of the year started at 9am. Held at Next Level Fitness this time.

Event 1

8:00 (Simultaneously)

  • Row for distance
  • AMRAP DU

* One person at each thing at a time. Switch out any way you want.

I was on row duty first to get us off to a good start. Went for about 2:30 with 800 meters, got some rest and then jumped in on the dubs. We totaled 721 DU for 4th and 2,267 meters for 8th.

Event 2

10:00

  • Max snatch and C&J for men and women

* One person from each gender does one of the two lifts. Each team has 2 bars.

All 4 of us hit PRs! After 205# being a little shaky to stand up with due to whatever is causing my OHS issue, I fucked the shit out of the bar with 215# and actually power snatched it! That’s 20# more than I’ve ever even attempted to power snatch and a 5# snatch PR. We totaled 740# for 6th place.

Event 3

  • 1:00 AMRAP Muscle-ups (x3 points) – Member A
  • 1:00 AMRAP Wall Balls (20/14#, 10/9′) – Member B
  • 8:00 AMRAP
    • 15 Pull-ups
    • 15 Power cleans (115/80#)
    • 15 HSPU
    • 15 Front Squats (115/80#)
  • 1:00 AMRAP Pistols – Member C
  • 1:00 AMRAP Hand Release Burpee Box Overs (24/20″) – Member D

* Each team member does a 1:00 AMRAP of something and everyone shares the work of the 8:00 AMRAP.

Muscle-ups for me. Nice to get my part out of the way first thing. I went 4-3-3-2 for 12. Same as I got in practice. Their rings were like fucking sand paper! We had 381 “points” with the MU being tripled, which was 8th in the event. I didn’t do any pull-ups and HSPU were much harder than in practice.

When I watched this video I cringed at my lockouts as the minute progressed. Then I went frame-by-frame in Quicktime and I actually hit lockout in every rep, even the final one. Just hard to catch at speed and with my weird double-jointed elbows. I need to work on making the lockouts better though and keep my damn feet and legs together for more power.

Not too long after the event I was blacking out and my hands were all tingly for quite some time. Lucky I had some medical professionals on our teams to help me out and carb me up. Recovered for the final though.

Event 4

  • 25-15-10
    • Deadlifts – Men (205#)
    • Thrusters – Women (55#)
  • 10-15-25
    • Thrusters – Men (75#)
    • Deadlifts – Women (145#)

* EMOM 4 synchronized burpees. One person working at a time. The men do 25 deadlifts (split up any way), then the women do 25 thrusters, then 15s and 10s, before changing weights and swapping movements.

I did the 25 and 10 deadlifts, then the 15 thrusters and the final 4 thrusters after Bryan got interrupted by burpees. The burpees were just an annoying forced break. They were easy. We finished in 6:53, which was 6th place.

The points were so close that we actually dropped from 5th to 7th out of 22 teams after that! Only 7 points out of 4th place though. It was by far the most fun GLBRT I’ve participated in.

Here are the final results with a link to the spreadsheet I whipped up since they didn’t do any sorting of the data. If nothing else, we were consistent. Just needed a higher finisher in one of the full point workouts.

results-GLBRT-june-2015

Practice

HRV dropped 9 points for the second day in a row. Now in the red at 89. I feel good though. Hips and knees didn’t bother me getting out of bed this morning.

Run Every Day

Kept it short, but picked up the pace. Went 1.1 miles in 8:21. The pace charts for RunKeeper are pretty different when you compare it in the iOS app to what is shown on their web page. Who knows which one is more accurate. :-/

Had a team practice scheduled today. Next Saturday we are going to a throwdown between all of the local gyms, where you compete for your gym. Fittest gym takes home the belt. Always a fun time. We ran through a couple of the events and talked strategy.

GLBRT Event 1

8:00 (Simultaneously)

  • Row for distance
  • AMRAP Double-unders

One person at each thing at a time. Switch out any way you want. Wasn’t as bad as I expected this to be.

GLBRT Event 3

  • 1:00 AMRAP Muscle-ups (x3 points) – Member A
  • 1:00 AMRAP Wall Balls (20/14#, 10/9′) – Member B
  • 8:00 AMRAP
    • 15 Pull-ups
    • 15 Power cleans (115/80#)
    • 15 HSPU
    • 15 Front Squats (115/80#)
  • 1:00 AMRAP Pistols – Member C
  • 1:00 AMRAP Hand Release Burpee Box Overs (24/20″) – Member D

So basically each team member does a 1:00 AMRAP of something and then everyone shares the work of the 8:00 AMRAP. Fun workout!

Went really well! It’ll be a fun day of competition with this crew.

Even Pace

Between the run and walking the golf course, I went almost 10 miles on foot yesterday. My hips are feeling a little weird today. Didn’t want to run this morning so that I could save my legs for squatting at the 9am class. Didn’t warm up with much, which may have been part of my problem today. Did some bottom squat hold and that’s about it.

Strength

2 Front Squats + 3 Back Squats

  • 45#
  • 135#
  • 225#
  • 255#
  • 275#
  • 295#

Fuck! The bar felt heavy today. How did I do 2+5 with 315#? Oh yeah, I got hurt.

Conditioning

7:00 AMRAP

  • 10 Wall Balls (20#, 10′)
  • 10 OH Walking Lunges (45#)

Paced myself early. Broke the 4th (?) round of lunges in half with a short breather. Pushed hard in the last round plus. Finished with 6+10.

We rested 3:00 and right into…

10 Rounds

  • 15 American KBS (44#)
  • 5 Push-ups

I knew I didn’t want 150 swings with a 53 pounder. I managed to go unbroken the entire way even though my hands kept wanted to slip off the bell in the last half. I had to push hard in the last 3 rounds to get them done in about 2:30, finishing at 9:54.

That was a tough one!

Run Every Day

Around 5 I headed out for a run. Went 3.12 miles in 30:46. Pacing was pretty even through the run, never over 10:00/mile.

7 Weeks of Squats

Had everyone warm-up with 100 walking lunges today since it’s been so beneficial for me.

Squat Every Day

2 Front Squats + 5 Back Squats

  • 45#
  • 135#
  • 205#
  • 245#
  • 275#
  • 295#
  • 315# (PR)

That ends 7 complete weeks of squatting every day. 49 days! Planned to go 310# for 5# over last week but bumped to 315# and I don’t think it was a great idea. Tweaked my SI joint on the very last rep. Fuck! Made it all the way through 7 weeks with the back feeling great and on the last rep gets me. Hopefully won’t be anything serious. Chiro Dan was just to roll it out a bunch and get some movement in there. The 315# is 20# more than I had done for this complex when I started this “program” or whatever you want to call it, since I was making things up as I went. 315# used to be my max front squat too.

Squatting every day sure was interesting and I think it paid off for me big time. Lifting more than 300,000 pounds over the 7 weeks. These last two weeks were fucking heavy with PRs on 14 of the last 15 days and a Murph PR on that other day. More than ready for a deload!

Gymnastics

I was planning to do some muscle-ups but not with the way my back was feeling. I did 4 sets of 5 strict ring dips every 30 seconds. Then thought that was dumb with 100 push-ups coming up. So I did a 1:30 plank, rested 30 seconds, and did a 1 minute plank.

Conditioning

  • 1,000m Run
  • 100 Push-ups
  • 10 Snatches (135#)

Went hard on the running, finishing at 3:38. Caught my breath a little and then starting doing sets of 5 push-ups at a time. Somewhere around 60-70 I had to cut back to 3s and 4s. Did all singles on the snatches but was pretty quick to get back on the bar. Finished in 9:29.

Squat Day 44

Feeling pretty good this morning post-Murph. HRV confirms it with a 105 reading, up from 98. I had a headache most of the afternoon and night yesterday. I don’t drink much, so maybe it was from the 3 beers. Was in bed early and slept late. Out in the garage around 8:30. Warmed up with 1,000 meters on the Ski Erg (4:57.6).

Coffee Squats

Front Squats

  • 10×45#
  • 4×135#
  • 4×205#
  • 4×235#
  • 4×265#
  • 4×285#
  • 4×300# (PR)

Last two reps were not pretty, but I’ll take it. I’ve seen much worse.

Went for a run in the afternoon. Same route as Friday (other than crossing roads in different places), but was about 1:15 faster. 2.70 miles in 25:54 with an average heart rate of 143. Trying to get my steps/minute up to the recommended 180 too. Went up 1 from 164 to 165, though that’s not right because if you look at the chart below I was never below 165 after the very beginning. Today felt more like a pace I should run at for my aerobic zone; it was harder, but I wasn’t dying and actually didn’t slow down like the last run. Kind of odd because I felt like I was running into the wind almost every direction I went.

 

Memorial Weekend

Got a bunch of yard work done this morning. Actually feeling a little beat up today in my hips and upper body. Pretty sure the upper body is from using kettlebells for those incline bench presses.

Warm-up

  • Crossover Symmetry Activation
  • 500m Row
  • Bottom Squat Hold

Strength

2 Front Squats + 5 Back Squats

  • 45#
  • 135#
  • 205#
  • 245#
  • 270#
  • 290#
  • 305# (PR)

Didn’t feel like I had it in me today as I was working up. Had to fight for that final set. First back squat I wasn’t concentrating and it was ugly. Got focused and gutted out the remaining reps. Ends the 6th week of everyday squats.

Warmup up with 45#, 95#, and 135# and did a few swings to make sure the 70 would be good to use.

Conditioning

30:00 EMOM (alt)

  • 1st: 1 Snatch + 1 OHS (155#)
  • 2nd: 10 Sit-ups
  • 3rd: 15 Russian KBS (70#)

Nice and easy just to get in some work. Didn’t want anything crazy with “Murph” tomorrow. Was able to focus on solid snatches and overhead squats with just one rep of each.

After cooling off I did Crossover Symmetry Iron Scap.

Two Is Better Than One

Picked up my new car last night so didn’t have time for a run. Up early and in the garage just after 7. Warmed up with 5:00 Air Dyne (2.43 km).

Coffee Squats

Front Squats

  • 10×45#
  • 5×135#
  • 5×205#
  • 3×245#
  • 2×275#
  • 2×305#
  • 2×320# (PR)

Well, well, well. My previous max was 315# and I beat it for a double. Booyah! Wore the belt for the last two sets.

Heading out to the golf course. Somewhat easy last few days as far as conditioning goes. None actually. 🙂 I’ve set a squat PR with reps or weight for 6 consecutive days though, so probably not a bad thing going into “Murph” on Monday.

40 days gone by, with 9 left.

Felt like going for a run after work, so after 8 I laced up the Pumps and headed out. Wore the heart rate monitor and connected it to RunKeeper. Nice easy run of 2.71 miles in 27:10 with an average heart rate of 130. My HR was actually pretty steady after it got there, even though my pace got significantly slower in the final mile.

With the 18 holes of walking the course, the Health app in my iPhone puts me at over 10 miles on foot today.

Stitched Up

Went it to the Doc for a minor procedure to remove some cysts from my head yesterday. Should probably take it a little easy today and tomorrow, but fuck that. Just can’t get it wet for 48 hours. Out squatting shortly after 7:30. Warmed up with 5:00 Air Dyne (2.31 km).

Coffee Squats

Pause Front Squat (3s in the hole)

  • 10×45#
  • 5×135#
  • 3×185#
  • 3×225#
  • 3×250#
  • 3×270#
  • 3×280#

Wore the belt for the last 3 sets. Felt like I was starting to break down on that last set so was a good load for the day. Really like taking the videos though because it shows it was better than it felt during the actual work. When I started this little experiment I didn’t expect to be at 38 days in a row and never thought I’d be pause squatting as much as I am. I hadn’t done any pause front squat with more than 275, so hitting 280 for a triple felt pretty boss. All aboard the Gain Train!

Had to lay down for a nap in the evening. I was feeling pretty out of it. Not sure if the squats took a lot out of me in the morning or if my body is just reacting to the surgery. I felt great this morning. Made it to the gym for bench night. Warmed up with Crossover Symmetry Activation.

No B.S. Bench Press

  • 10×45#
  • 5×135#
  • 5×165#
  • 5×195#
  • 4x5x215#
  • AMRAP 205# (12)

Was not feeling strong at all. Matched my AMRAP from the first week of the cycle though. Didn’t even bring my gym bag or other shoes so I wouldn’t be tempted to stick around and for weightlifting. Got in the work and got out. Tomorrow is another day.

310 Triple

Missed out on the HRV check yesterday being out of town. No surprise it’s down to 97, in the red today. Got a solid night of sleep last night, but yesterday was rough with pretty much no sleep and Fran, even though I didn’t have any push in me for it. Out in the garage by 7am since we have a golf meeting before we start our season this morning. Warmed up with 3:00 Air Dyne (1.44 km).

Coffee Squats

Front Squat

  • 10×45#
  • 5×135#
  • 5×185#
  • 5×225#
  • 3×255#
  • 3×275#
  • 3×295#
  • 3×310# (PR)

Starting week 6 of squats and now in the final two weeks. Time to start setting more PRs after yesterday’s first one. 🙂 I put the belt on for the last 3 sets. I had done 310 for a double in a competition and my biggest single is only 315#. Moving up!

Felt like it got ugly but I’m liking the way the reps looked in the video.