row – Page 68 – Nick Momrik's Fitness Logs

Squat Volume

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.

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.

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.

* 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.

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.

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.

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.

Snatches and OHS

I was planning to rest through the day and hit up the WOD tonight, but then I got up this morning and was feeling good. The leg workout from Tuesday never really hit me hard. So I went in at 9am to get in my workout, with the plans to go for a hike or golf tomorrow.

Warm-up

2 Rounds

10 PVC Pass-thrus
10 PVC OHS w/ 3-2-X-2 Tempo
10s Tri/Shoulder Stretch w/ PVC behind back
10 PVC Sotts Press

1x Burgener Warm-up with an unloaded barbell

Strength

5 Rounds

1 Full Snatch
4 OHS w/ 3-2-X-2 Tempo

Considering the shoulder burn I got doing tempo OHS with the PVC, I knew this was going to be a world of hurt. Started out really light with 65#, then went 75#, 85#, 100#, and 110#. The last 2 reps were kind of wobbly at the top, but my midline and legs were tight. Anything heavier probably wouldn’t have gone for 4 reps. That’s a long time to be holding the load overhead. If you think about it, it’s about 2 seconds for the full snatch and getting set for the OHS, then 8 seconds for each rep, which totals a good 34 seconds or more. Emily kept yelling at me to really push my knees out going down into the OHS, so that was a big concentration point for me to work on today. For the full snatches I really tried to focus on getting full hip extension, especially being lighter weights.

WOD

4 Rounds

10 Hang Power Snatch (95#)
200m Run
25 Chest-to-deck Push-ups
250m Row

Fun one. I did the first 10 snatches unbroken, then 7-3, 7-3, and unbroken again in the 4th round. Should have fought to go unbroken each round. My push-ups weren’t too bad today due to having 3-4 minutes between each set. I finished in 16:42.

Call Me Julie

I don’t think the leg burning workout from Tuesday night had hit me yet, so I went in for the 9am figuring I could then go in at night on Thursday and enjoy the longer rest.

Warm-up

500m Row
2 Rounds
- 20/20 Band walks
- 15 Band Presses
- 10/10 Hitchhikers
- 10/10 T-stabilizations

Strength

5×5 Push Presses with 2-1-X-2 Tempo

The tempo work on for pressing doesn’t seem quite as taxing as it does for squats. I did a set with the bar to get the feel for it, then went 95#, 115#, 135#, 150#, and 165#. Couldn’t have gone any higher. Got really unstable at the top in the last two reps, but got it done.

WOD

7 Rounds

7 HSPU
7 K2E
21 DU (unbroken)

I knew the limiter would be the HSPU, but didn’t think they would get as hard as they did. I guess I didn’t realize how little rest there really was between sets. I was solid for the first 3 rounds going unbroken and right around 1 minute per round. Even the 4th and 5th rounds weren’t too bad, but 6 and 7 were brutal for HSPU. And then I get all the way to my last rep and I failed half way up. Felt a little like Julie Foucher trying to do her deficit HSPU last year at the Games. All of my K2E were unbroken and I didn’t miss a single DU. Finished in 10:48.

Home WOD

Needed to do something at night sitting at home. I’ve been meaning to do a little burpee testing to see where I’m at, so game on.

50 Burpees (Touch 6″ target above reach)

I can touch the ceiling with my fingertips standing up, so I slapped the ceiling with both hands making it 6-8 inches. Might have started out a little too fast because the last 20 reps were brutal. Took me 2:39 to finish, which nearly beats my normal PR for 50 burpees in 2:33. Jumping up to the target is a lot tougher and I could really feel the burn in my quads right around 25-30 reps. Yesterday’s big leg workout is probably starting to hit me as well.

In last years Open WOD 12.1 I did 92 of these in 7 minutes. I’d say I’ve improved some since then. I’m kind of curious to know if by starting out slower I would have been able to keep a steadier pace and get done quicker. Might have to play around with pacing once or twice in the next couple of weeks before the Open. I’ll bet they are going to have a burpee WOD again since it was a pretty good way to kick of the Games season in 2012.

All Legs

My hamstrings and triceps and still pretty sore from Sunday. Maybe I shouldn’t have done those extra 300 air squats that night. Took some extra rest today since tempo back squats were on the menu and hit up the 5:15pm class.

Warm-up

500m Row
3/3 World’s Greatest Stretch
2 Rounds
- 10 Inch Worms
- 10 Leg Swings (F-B, S-S, each leg)
- 10 Flamingos (each leg)

Strength

5×5 Back Squats with 3-2-X-1 Tempo

These are never easy. Entirely different ball game from regular squats. I focused on good form through each rep and keeping everything tight by holding my breath until the ascent out of the hole. Used 135#, 165#, 185#, 205#, and 215#. Don’t think I could have gone heavier either. Felt solid in my lifts even though it’s nowhere near the 255# I used for a normal 5 reps recently.

WOD

20 Hang Power Cleans (155#)
30 Box Jumps (30″)
40 OH Weighted Walking Lunges (45# plate)
50 Wall Balls (20#, 10′ target)

Phew! I went 10-5-5 on the cleans, unbroken 30 on the box jumps (but not rebounding), 17-15-8 on the lunges, and 5 sets of 10 for wall balls. Finished in 9:06, one of the top Rx times of the day, but am pissed at myself for the finish. I know my wall balls are a weakness and I pussed out by doing sets of 10. I should have pushed harder for bigger sets, especially starting out.

Finisher

So to punish myself and get in some extra work, I strapped on the 20# weight vest when I got home and did 100 unbroken weighted air squats. They were pretty ugly since my legs were fried, but I did them. Took me 2:29.

I Can Do Butterfly Pull-ups!

Last night while watching TV I knocked out 5 sets of 60 air squats. I didn’t time them or the rest periods. Tried to go as fast as I could for each set and still use good form. I could start to feel fatigue setting in at the end of the 3rd set. I had plans to improve my speed and endurance for air squats and wall balls starting at the beginning of the year. I figured it couldn’t hurt my thrusters either. Then I never put time into it other than workouts in Hawaii, where I had limited equipment anyway. No better time than now with the Open just two and a half weeks away. I’m going to do my best to can get in some fast squat work 2-3 times a week for at least the next few weeks. I could do Tabata squats, minute on/off, throw on the 20# weight vest, and come up with other interesting twists to vary the work. I’m looking forward to see what kind of improvement I can make.

My shoulder area is pretty sore from yesterday and I’m feeling all those air squats in my knees since I did them barefoot on hard tile flooring. I got up and went to the 9am. Another day of 3 WODs with a 10 minute cap on each one and a running 30:00 clock. I’ve really liked this style each time we did it.

Right arm after yesterday's 100 ring push-ups — Right arm after yesterday’s 100 ring push-ups

Warm-up

3m Jump Rope
100 Mountain Climbers
80 Bicycles
30 Supine Knees to Elbows
40 Russian Twists (no weight)
1m Plank

Long warm-up. I made it all 3 minutes on the jump rope without a single miss.

30:00 running clock with a 10:00 limit on each WOD. Finish early and rest until the next 10 minutes start.

WODs

21-15-9 Deadlifts (185#)
75 DUs

Not much of a problem here, although deadlift reps did slow down in the last two sets. My double unders were pretty good. Finished in 5:26.

21-15-9

American KBS (70#)
Row (calories)

Worked on better form for my American swings, especially with the heavy weight. Tried to keep a steady pace during the first two rows so I wouldn’t burn out and then went hard in the last one. Time was 5:02.

21 Pull-ups
400m Run
15 Pull-ups
400m Run
9 Pull-ups

Emily told me to go with butterfly pull-ups for this WOD. I wasn’t convinced I should, but you gotta go for it at some point. I made it through the entire WOD with them and got into a rhythm here and there. Definitely could feel less effort getting up over the bar. Need to keep working on them now and they’ll improve. Took me 7:14 to finish this one.