Tag: Plank

Wiped Out by Floor Wipers

I’m absolutely wrecked from the last week of WODs and today was my 5th day in a row. I don’t like going to 9am when I went to 8pm because that’s a short recovery, but with heat indices approaching 105 today and a heat advisory until midnight, I knew I wouldn’t go in tonight if I wanted. Working out in the morning also gives me extra rest to hit up the 4:15 and then open gym tomorrow before I head out-of-town for the weekend.

Warm-up

  • 100 Jumping Jacks
  • 100 Butt Kicks
  • 5 rounds
    • 1m Plank
    • 1m Bottom Squat Hold

I made it through each of the 5 plank minutes without breaking down by concentrating on a tight core and ass as well as consistent deep breathing. In the bottom squat holds I’m really fighting for better position of the back and keeping my chest up. These holds were really needed after the last few days of squat movements.

WOD

  • 21-15-9 Floor Wipers (45# DBs)
  • 12-9-6 Man Makers (45# DBs)
  • 400m Run

This was the first time doing floor wipers and I really liked them. Great core work due to the combination of holding up the weights and moving the legs as one unit without having them touch the ground. I broke the rounds down to 12+9, 9+6, and 9. Man Makers are absolutely brutal but I felt better here than I did when we did 50 of them for time. Having some wrist sweat bands really helps to keep my hands from getting soaked with sweat. I really tried to push it on the last 400m and finished in 23:31.

Time to chill in the AC for the rest of the day while I work.

Double Me

Last night I went for a 3.65 mile brisk walk to break in the Nike Free shoes and just relax. This morning I had the first round of the Saginaw District Golf Association Invitational Tournament, so walked 18 holes on the course. I shot terrible!

Warm-up


8:00 AMRAP

  • 10 PVC Shoulder Pass-thrus
  • 40 Lateral Hops (20 each leg)
  • 30s Plank

I have no idea how many rounds I did. Didn’t count since it was the warm-up and the pass-thrus are not something to rush through.

WOD

4 rounds

  • 20 Pull-ups
  • 30 KBS (53#)
  • 40 Box Jumps (24″)

I finished in 21:50. I’ve really been struggling with my pull-ups lately, but they came back around today. I concentrated on really snapping my hips and pushing away from the bar at the top, which I’ve been forgetting to do. For the box jumps I rebounded off the floor on well over half of the reps.

Finisher

Death by Burpees

I finished off the round of 12 with over 30 seconds left in that minute and then Cari turned off the clock for the end of class. Not exactly sure why since it was open gym right after. Would have been nice to see how far I could get, but I guess I won’t complain about doing less burpees since I did 115 of them yesterday and that’s another 78 today.

Open Gym

First thing on my agenda was to set a deadlift PR. I did the following:

  • 10x 135#
  • 5x 225#
  • 5x 265#
  • 3x 305#
  • 1x 335# (matching PR)
  • 1x 355# (new PR)
  • FAIL at 365#
  • 1x 365# (new PR)

BAM! That’s more that twice my body weight and a 30# PR. Hell yeah!

After that I worked on snatches for a while, doing some small sets with 85#, some small sets with 105#, and a few singles at 125#. Then I moved back down to 85# and worked on the squat snatch for a while. I have no idea how many sets or reps I did of any of this. I was more concerned with working on some technique.

I was going to start some work on butterfly pull-ups, but my hands were already pretty sore from the 80 pull-ups and deadlifting. With the 2nd round of the tournament tomorrow, I need to be able to swing a golf club. So I got out the prowler instead. Loaded it up with four 45# plates and did a 30 yard (?) high push followed by a low push back. Did that 5 times, with plenty of rest in between each down and back, before my legs just couldn’t do the low push anymore.

I was ready to head home, but Casey was doing some strict shoulder presses, so I jumped in with him.

  • 3x 85#
  • 3x 105#
  • 3x 105#
  • 3x 125#
  • 3x 125#
  • 1x 135#

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was a 10# PR! Looking back at my posts, I had done 125# for 5 reps, but never more than that. I mistakenly thought I had done 145#, but it was the push press. (I had to update this section of the post 4 times because I kept getting the weights wrong)

I’m spent! I got to the box just after 4 for the 4:15 class and left open gym just before 7pm. Three hours of solid work. Tomorrow is going to be a rest day for sure.

Resting Burpees

Not much rest after hitting the 8pm class last night, but I wanted to attend the 9am this morning and give my body all day to rest up for tomorrow. It’s the first round of the Saginaw District Association Invitational Tournament, which I qualified for a couple of weeks ago. My tee time is at 9:20am and then 10:30 on Saturday.

Warm-up

5 rounds

  • 1m Plank
  • 1m V-ups
  • 1m Mountain Climbers
  • 1m K2E
  • 1m Russian Twists (35# KB)
  • 1m Rest

I pushed hard in everything except for the K2E because I didn’t want to mess up my hands for the golf tournament.

WOD

  • 100 DB Squat Clean Thrusters (30# DBs)
  • Every minute on the minute (except for at the beginning), do 5 burpees.

In the past, we’ve been allowed to take a minute off, but after Matt talked to some people at the CrossFit Level 1 course, that’s not what they usually do. You can skip the clean thrusters for a minute, but you have to do the burpees if you want to perform the worked Rx. I figured I’d give it a try.

In the first minute I was able to get 12 reps for a decent start. During each minute I tried to stop doing the clean thrusters with 10-15 seconds left as a little rest period before starting my burpees. It didn’t take long to realize that 5 reps per minute was going to be a good number for me. I went straight through to 50 reps, did the burpees and took the rest of the minute off. Then I did sets of 6-5-4 to get me to 65, where I did my burpees and rested the rest of the minute. I did that again to get to 80 reps, and did my last burpees with rest minute. Then I think I did 6-6-4-4 to finish off with a time of 23:42.

The 100 squat clean thrusters is no joke, but the sneaky hard part of this WOD was the burpees. If you don’t take any minutes off they really add up. I did 23 rounds of 5 burpees for a total of 115. Hell, 100 burpees for time is a WOD on its own! This was one of the tougher WODs, but I really liked it because thrusters are one of my weaknesses.

Update: Wow, this was my 200th post on this blog. What an incredible journey this has been. I can’t wait to see where the next few months go.

DB “Fran”

The Paleo Challenge ends this week and I can’t wait to order a pizza on Thursday! I love eating Paleo, but I need some cheat meals. With that said, I’m glad I’ve stuck to the program for the entire month, with a very minor cheat. I’ve seen incredible results, but I’ll post more about that in a couple of days.

I joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) called Saginaw Meadows with a couple that I’m good friends with. Yesterday was our first pick-up. It’s going to be pretty neat to get fresh, local, organic stuff each week, some of which I’ve never eaten. The first week was pretty small because not much has grown in yet, but each week we’ll be getting more and more food. I used a green onion in a breakfast scramble this morning and made a sauté with some greens and tomatoes I had picked up on Friday from the local Farmer’s Market. Good food!

Warm-up

  • 100 Jumping Jacks
  • 100 Butt Kicks
  • 100 Lateral Hops
  • 100 Mountain Climbers
  • 10 Slow Air Squats
  • 10 Burpees

I think I did this in about 5:26, without pushing too hard. I wanted to save myself for the WOD because I knew I was going to need everything I had to survive.

3 rounds

  • 1m Plank
  • 1m Leg Raises
  • 1m Bicycles
  • 1m Side Plank (30s each side)
  • 1m Boats
  • 1m Rest

These long core circuits are great and they are always much tougher than they look. Does core work every get any easier?

WOD

DB “Fran”

21-15-9

  • Thrusters (45# DBs)
  • Pull-ups

Here’s one of those heavy upper body workouts where I struggle. We had a 10:00 time limit and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to finish. I’ve never attempted “Fran” before, so I didn’t know what to expect. I wish my intro was with the barbell instead of DBs, but you don’t always get what you want. 🙂 I really struggled to string together pull-ups, which took a lot of extra time. I knew I’d have to break the thrusters down quite a bit, especially in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. My time was 9:05. I’ll take it. It gives me something to shoot for next time.

Finisher

50 Burpees

This was great practice for Thursday when we have to perform the Paleo Challenge benchmark again, which starts out with 5 minutes of burpees. I pushed myself pretty good here and finished in 2:48. In the original benchmark a month ago I did 82 burpees in 5 minutes, so if I can keep up the pace I used today I can beat, especially since I won’t have such a long warm-up and “Fran” to do before.

I’ve only worked out 2 days in a row, but I’m going to take a rest day tomorrow to make sure I’m not too tired or sore for the benchmark test on Thursday. I’ll be walking 18 holes of golf tomorrow morning anyway, so that will get me some exercise.

 

Touchy Tailbone

Rolling out of bed was rough this morning. My lower back is very sore from one-arm snatches and deadlifts yesterday, but even worse, my tailbone feels raw from the 150 sit-ups last night. I can feel them in my abs too, but WOW it hurts to sit! Once I finally got out of bed, I knocked out 3 sets of max push-ups as I went through my morning routine. This may not have been the best idea considering I knew we were doing “Angie” today for the WOD. It’ll make me stronger I guess!

Warm-up

5 rounds

  • 1m Plank
  • 1m Burpees (10 and then rest)

Just last night I was thinking we hadn’t done plank in a while. Funny how that works out. 🙂

WOD

“Angie”

  • 100 Pull-ups
  • 100 Push-ups
  • 100 Sit-ups
  • 100 Air Squats

The one time I’ve done “Angie” Rx was on April 11th and looking back, we had swapped the order of sit-ups and squats. Probably didn’t matter much. My time then was 24:42, with about 12:00 to get through the pull-ups. When I did this, I was still doing “cheater” sit-ups where I only had to touch my shoes. I’m no longer doing those because they’re a joke with my long arms and flexibility. I’ve started getting all the way up so I can reach out past my feet. Originally I was planning to blow that time out of the water, even with harder sit-ups, but the tailbone issue made it rough.

I was feeling pretty good through the pull-ups and completed them in about 8:30, a lot faster than last time. I wore home-made tape grips on both hands which really helped saved my hands since they are in rough shape from the last week. I felt ok on push-ups considering I had already done 100 of them when I woke up. Started with a set of 15, then did 3 or 4 sets of 10. That’s when things started to slow down and sets kept getting smaller and smaller. Sets were all 5 or more though, which is a huge improvement from last time when I was only getting 2-4 at the end.

At this point it was neck and neck between a few of us. Sit-ups absolutely killed me though. They took me forever even with two mats under my ass for padding. Each sit-up hurt like a bitch so I tried as much as possible to come up on the sides of my ass instead of straight up. I powered through and moved on to the squats. Not my best effort in the squats, but I finished in 23:41, which is a PR by 61 seconds. I’m confident I can get sub-20 next time.

Strength

Death by Clean & Jerks

Brent and Ron had already used up all of the 10# bumpers, so I didn’t have much choice but to load up with a couple of 45s and do 135#. I got up through the set of 4 and had to start the set of 5 with no rest. I nearly made it in the minute, but locked out the jerk 1 or 2 seconds after the minute ran out. I took a couple of minutes off and then jumped over to the 115# bar Brent was using and did a minute with 6 reps and a minute with 7 reps to get in some more work.

At some point tonight I’ll do day 4 of the Armstrong Pull-up Program.

Empty Your Gas Tank

After yesterday’s WOD I was going to make today a rest day because I figured I would be fried. I was feeling good all day though. Matt posted the WOD on Facebook and it looked like a fun one so I decided to head in.

Warm-up

5 rounds

  • 1m Bottom Squat Hold
  • 1m Jumping Jacks

The squat holds are way at the bottom with the intent of opening up the hips. You’re not trying to hold a squat for that long.

WOD

20:00 AMRAP

  • 2 SDLHP
  • 2 Burpees
  • 150m Run
  • 4 SDLHP
  • 4 Burpees
  • 150m Run
  • …

Increase SDLHP and Burpees by 2 each round, but the run stays the same.

This one was all about how much gas you had in your tank. I used a 71# KB and was able to finish the round of 18 plus 20 SDLHP and 2 burpees.

Ab Finisher

5 Rounds

  • 1m Plank
  • 1m AbMat Sit-ups

My arms were drenched in sweat, which made it harder than normal to hold the plank. 5 rounds of a minute really adds up too. We counted our sit-ups and knew I could blow the high of the day (228) out of the water. My goal was to beat my 67 reps from the Paleo challenge benchmark WOD in every round. I finished with 356 reps. After we were done and Matt was laughing, I realized I can touch my shoes without even lifting my shoulder blades off the ground, which would still be within the box’s standards, so at least I make it harder than that on myself and get some movement into it.

Prowler Sprints

I wasn’t feeling all that motivated today when I was deciding which class to attend tonight. I’m not sure if the busy day with multiple WODs yesterday or walking 18 holes of golf this morning took a lot out of me. I ended up going to the 5:30pm class and felt fine once I got moving.

Warm-up

3 rounds

  • 1m MB Russian Twists
  • 1m MB V-ups
  • 1m Plank
  • 1m Bicycles
  • 1m “Mystery”
  • 1m Rest

I used a 20# MB for Russian twists and V-ups. Each round, the “Mystery Move” changed; first we did side planks, then flutter kicks, and ended with prayer crunches. I was really feeling a burn during this ab circuit due to the leg lifts I did yesterday.

WOD

50 reps of each

  • Air Squats
  • Burpees
  • Box Jumps
  • KBS (Russian)
  • Close-grip HR Push-ups
  • Plyo Lunges
  • Pull-ups
  • Sit-ups

I used a 24″ box and a 53# KB. Since I flew through everything, I did full sit-ups to make it harder. I finished in 23:22 and then did 12 reps on the GHD as a bonus.

The close-grip HR push-ups were a bit awkward because you have to keep the hands far enough apart that you can lift them off the ground when your chest is laying down. Pull-ups felt really good and my kip is getting dialed in. I need to learn those butterfly pull-ups soon.

Strength

10 Sets

  • High grip Prowler sprint
  • Low grip Prowler sprint
  • Rest

Finally I got to use the Prowler! I probably won’t be too excited when I feel the effects tomorrow. Stayed after class a bit to finish these. The Prowler was loaded with 180# of weights so I’m guessing over 200# total. The distance was probably 25-30 yards each way. The high grip wasn’t too bad, but the low grip took everything I had to get the Prowler moving, was much slower pushing, and got harder each time. Here’s a video of Casey and I. I’m shown first pushing it back to our starting line.

You Never Know What You Might Miss

I was planning to take the day off, but felt good and was itching for a workout, so I went in to the 5:30pm class. I’m glad I did, because we worked on a bunch of new stuff and some things I really need work on.

Warm-up

3 Rounds:

  • 1m Sledge Hammer Slams
  • 1m Ring Push-ups
  • 1m Touch Jumps for Height
  • 1m Plank
  • 1m Wall Squat
  • 1m Prison Squats
  • 1m Rest

This was a nice switch-up from the norm and several new things.

WOD

  • 10-20-30-40-50 Pistols
  • 5-10-15-20-25 HSPUs
  • 100m-100m-200m-200m-300m Run

I’ve never tried more than 1 or two pistols in a row, so I grabbed a 12″ box to assist me when I couldn’t do them anymore. The round of 10 was kind of rough and I was falling all over the place, but as the rounds went on pistols actually got easier and easier because I learned how to control my body for them. Balance is huge for these one-legged bastards. I made it all the way through the workout doing them Rx on my first day doing them. Total of 75 per leg, which I’m sure to be feeling tomorrow. I started off doing Rx HSPU and knocked out the first 5 strict for a new PR. Next time around I got 9 in a row with a few kipping, blowing away the PR I just set. I think I had to add in an AbMat during the next round and was using 2 AbMats by the end. I was kind of slow, but kept pushing and finished with a time of 31:52.

Strength

Some people stayed after class and did some OHS. I did a set of 5 at 85#, a set of 3 at 105#, a set of 4 at 115#, and then went for a 1RM at 130#. I failed on the first attempt, but tried again and slowed myself down to keep steady. Got it up for a new PR.

If I had taken a rest day I would have missed out on a lot of great stuff today.

Smooth Double Unders

No surprise my legs are sore today after the last two WODs. This morning I drove up to Rogers City to visit the family for the weekend, so I have very limited workout equipment.

Warm-up

Went for a 2.62 mile run in 22:59. Pace was nice and steady throughout the run.

Strength

3 rounds:

  • MAX Push-ups
  • 1m Plank
  • 2m Rest

I set a new PR for unbroken push-ups in the 1st round with 40, then did 25 and 20. The planks were tougher than normal because it was right after push-ups which already work a lot of the same muscles.

WOD

“Annie”
50-40-30-20-10

  • DUs
  • Sit-ups

I haven’t done DUs more than a couple of times since I left Phoenix, but wanted to test myself in something today. “Annie” seemed like a good one because it doesn’t require any special equipment other than the jump rope I keep in my vehicle and it would be a good chance to practice them.

My time was 8:26. I did the best DUs I’ve ever done! The set of 30 was completely unbroken and there were only a couple of streaks where I didn’t string together at least 10 in a row. For the sit-ups I sat on a towel with my feet flat on the ground. I laid back until my shoulder blades hit the ground and sat up until I could touch the top of my shoes without reaching too much.

Walk it Out

Feeling nearly back to 100% today after getting in the workout yesterday and a good night’s sleep last night.

Warm-up

3 rounds:

  • 1m Plank
  • 1m Bicycles
  • 1m Leg Hold
  • 1m Side Plank (30s each side)
  • 1m Mountain Climbers
  • 1m Rest

WOD

7 rounds, decrease pull-ups and push-ups by 3 each round, so 21, 18, 15, 12, 9, 6, 3

  • 100 ft Walking Lunges with DBs
  • 21 Pull-ups
  • 21 HR Push-ups

Total work:

  • About 210 lunges
  • 84 Pull-ups
  • 84 HR Push-ups

I used 35# DBs for the lunges. Whipped through them in round 1, but that caught up to me real quick and I had to take a rest during the rest of the rounds. I started off touching my knees to the ground on each lunge, which turned out to be a mistake because it ends up being a lot of pounding on the knee. I could really feel it as I got into rounds 5 and 6 so I only tried to get down as far as I could without hitting the ground. My total time was 23:42.

I’m getting better and better at pull-ups and (knock on wood) I haven’t ripped a hand wide open in quite some time with kipping pull-ups. A big part of that is learning when not to push too far and get off the bar to take a short rest. I need to learn how to do butterfly pull-ups now.

Strength

Walking sled pulls with three 45# plates on the sled.

Did a down and back holding a chain between our legs. The length was about 30-35 feet in each direction. I think I did 5 or 6 rounds, but didn’t keep track. This was my first time doing anything with a sled. It didn’t feel too bad for a while, but as the rounds went on I could really feel it. Then I got home and could feel it even more!