Other than my lower back I’m feeling good. Went to the 5:30pm class today and with all the rain we got last night it was really humid out.
Warm-up
5 rounds
15s Jumping Jacks
15s Air Squats
15s Mountain Climbers
15s Jump Squats
WOD
20-19-18…3-2-1
Burpees
Russian KBS (53#)
Wow, this one will kill you. I did all of my reps unbroken for both movements and only rested during transitions. I think we had 16 people in class so it was a scramble for KBs. I ended up with a 53#, which was just fine by me. It allowed me to keep a high intensity and maximize my power output. I finished in 25:51 with an ocean of sweat under me.
Finisher
5 rounds
30s Bottom Squat Hold
30s Handstand
30s Plank
This looks rather easy, but it definitely was not, especially being so sweaty. When I went up for my 3rd handstand, the mat started to go flying and I nearly ended up on my head. My arms were even shaving in the 3rd round of plank. Great way to finish of the workout.
I was still kind of sore this morning, but I was able to go in for the 9am class and I felt great after warming up.
Warm-up
5 rounds
1m Bottom Squat Hold
1m Jumping Jacks
WOD
“Helen”
3 rounds
400m Run
21 KBS (53#)
12 Pull-ups
I felt really good in this one. All of the KBS were done unbroken and I broke each round of pull-ups into 2 sets. Finished in 9:30.
Finisher
EMOM 10:00
100m Sprint (50m down and back)
3 Burpees
This may have been tougher than the WOD. Felt good after, but the sprints started feeling slower and slower until the last one where I dug deep.
It sure feels good to be back in the box, especially after only doing one WOD last week leading up to the competition. Maybe all of the rest was really needed though since I had been pushing my body so hard the couple of weeks before.
I went to bed later than normal, so didn’t wake up quite as early as I have been. Still had time to get in my first WOD of the day before my brother and Mom woke up though. I can feel the effects of the weighted step-ups from last night already, so as the day goes on and in to tomorrow it should be interesting.
Warm-up
5 rounds
1m Plank
1m Bottom Squat Hold
WOD
50 reps of each
DUs
Plank Push-ups
Star Jumps
T2B (on rings)
SDLHP (50# KB)
Walking Lunges
V-ups
Push Presses (35# DBs)
KBS (50# KB)
HR Push-ups
DUs
I set a new PR by doing the first 15 T2B unbroken with kipping. The rings on the tree worked out really well. After the first 15 I did them 5 at a time. Push Presses were done in 5 sets of 10, KBS in sets of 20, 15, and 15, and I tried to stick to sets of 10 for the HR Push-ups, but that broke down a bit after 30 reps. My total time was 30:31, but it would have been under 30 had I not turned a single knot into a double when I picked up the rope and tried to fix it. I wasted over 30 seconds getting those out. Ugh!
I’ve been doing a lot of WODs in the 10 minute range, so it was good to get in a long chipper like this. After I get a late breakfast I’ll probably head out for a trip on the kayak and then I plan to do the Hero WOD “Brenton” later today.
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.
Yesterday morning I walked 18 holes of golf and qualified for the Saginaw District Golf Association Invitational Tournament. It got up into the mid or high 90 and was a long day. Perfect timing for a CrossFit rest day! Feeling good and back at it today. When I woke up I knocked out one set of max rep push-ups and decided the Armstrong Pull-up Program just isn’t worth the time. It’s so boring compared to WODs, so I’m done with it.
Matt, the owner of the gym, attended a CrossFit Level 1 Certification over the weekend and will next be working on getting Survival Fitness affiliated as an official CrossFit box next. Pretty exciting stuff. He learned a lot and you could already see it in the way he ran today’s class. I don’t mean anything bad about previous classes by saying that, I just felt like he had more confidence in his teaching of certain movements and pointing out some of our technique issues. It’ll make us all better.
Warm-up
1m Bottom Squat Hold
1m Mountain Climbers
1m Bottom Squat Hold
1m PVC Pass-thrus
1m Bottom Squat Hold
1m Lateral hops (30s each leg)
1m Bottom Squat Hold
1m Bicycles
1m Bottom Squat Hold
1m Jumping Jacks
We’ve been doing a lot of these bottom squat holds and I think it’s helping to open up my hips more. Matt pointed out that I had too much of a round in my back though, so I have to fight for a better position.
WOD
Teams of 2 (45:00 limit)
200 Air Squats
100 T2B
150 Burpees
500m Run holding a 20# MB (both people run at the same time and at the pace of the slowest)
150 Box Jumps (24″)
100 Pull-ups
200 Walking Lunge Steps
200 SDLHP (barbell loaded to 95#)
Only 1 person is working at a time except during the run. The goal is to keep a high intensity and hand off to your partner when you start to slow down. The hand off is hard to do, even when you know you are starting to slow, because you want to keep knocking out reps. I attended the 8pm class, which is the last class of the day and no team had completed the WOD all day. The closest anyone got was 49 reps left by a team of 2 of the fittest women at Survival Fitness. I was paired up with Brent, which was a good pairing because we are both near the top of the men at SF. We flew along pretty good, but the pull-ups slowed us down and then the SDLHP were absolutely brutal. I’m sure I’ll be feeling those tomorrow. We pushed it hard through the entire 45 minutes and fell 33 reps shy of completing the WOD, but set the record for the day. With a little better strategy I think we could have finished. Next time!
I was feeling pretty rough as I got out of bed this morning, due to last night’s epic workout. I loosed up after I started moving around the house though. I didn’t do the push-ups for the Armstrong Pull-up Program first thing in the morning because I wanted to save everything I had for the WOD. Went in to the 10am class instead of 11 because it’s supposed to get really hot and humid today.
If you want to donate (everything goes to St. Jude Children’s Hospital), head over to my sponsorship page. Every extra $ helps out the kids and furthers cancer research.
Warm-up
1m Deep Squat Hold
1m PVC Deadlift
1m Deep Squat Hold
1m PVC Clean
1m Deep Squat Hold
1m PVC Shoulder Pass-thrus
1m Deep Squat Hold
1m PVC Snatch
This was a nice warm-up to loosen up for the movements and I’m glad it wasn’t a high cardio one, which saved energy for the actual WOD.
WOD
“Hope”
3 rounds
Burpees
Power snatch (75#)
Box jump (24″) *Rebounding off the top is allowed
Thruster (75#)
Chest to bar Pull-ups
“Hope” has the same format as Fight Gone Bad. In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute. This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. On call of “rotate,” the athlete/s must move to next station immediately for good score. One point is given for each rep.
WOW! This is the toughest WOD I’ve ever done and I didn’t hold anything back. My goal was to get 150 reps, which I had before the 2nd round was over! I managed a total of 235 reps with rounds of 82, 74, and 78, doing everything Rx. Pace and consistency were a key in this WOD. If you started out too fast, you’d wipe yourself out for the movements late in your round or even worse for the 2nd and 3rd rounds. I couldn’t be happier with my performance. During the next class Casey, the stud of Survival Fitness, got 255 reps, so I’m even happier with my rep total. Another Casey, who I paired up with, started out way too fast, but held in there for 211 reps. As far as I know, no other guys did it Rx. I don’t know if any of the women did it Rx, but I would assume Michelle did for 176 reps.
Here I am at the end of the snatch station in round 3.
Since we paired up and did 2 heats, after I was done I counted for my partner, Casey (CA). During the 3rd round my hands started to tingle and it progressively spread up my arms and eventually through most of my body down into my feet. As soon as their heat was over, I refilled my water bottle and started slamming water. I didn’t think I could be too dehydrated at this point, but after watching someone go into shock on Deadliest Catch from dehydration I didn’t want to take any chances. I was getting a little dizzy, so I sat down for a while. I’m glad there was another class right after, because it would not have been smart for me to go home, where I’d be alone if something happened to me. I think I was feeling the effects of pushing my body beyond its limits, which hasn’t happened in a long time. As I rested, I recovered and was able to help clean up the equipment when the 2nd class finished. I was fine to go home on my own at that point. A little scary though, to be honest.
I think I’m going to skip the push-ups for the Armstrong program today, but will try to get the pull-ups done tonight.
My body is pretty freaking sore all over. I haven’t felt like this in a couple of months, so I can tell the WODs have been great and the extra work I’m putting in is paying off . Yesterday I mentioned my tailbone was really sore. Well, it’s more than that. I have two quarter-sized floor burn marks on the sides of my tailbone. No wonder in hurts to sit down! Sorry, no pictures. 😉
Do you ever get bruises in CrossFit and have no idea where they came from? I have one under my right arm and a matching one under my armpit almost all the way to my back. Weird.
I did the push-ups of Armstrong Pull-up Program when I got out of bed this morning. It’s a nice way to start the day. I went in to the noon class today and it was packed with 20 people. Since class was so big we had to skip around during the movements, but it all worked out.
Warm-up
5 rounds
1m Deep Squat Hold
1m Mountain Climbers
I was stiffer than usual from the squat holds and 1 minute is a long time to do mountain climbers in a row, so I had to take 2-3 short breaks for them each round.
WOD
50 of each
DUs
Burpees
MB Snatches (20#)
Push Presses (30# DBs)
Wall Balls (20#)
K2E
Walking Lunges
KBS (53#)
Jumping Pull-ups
Box Jumps (24″)
It was ordered different on the board, but this is the order I ended up doing. I finished in 32:01. Most people did tuck jumps, but I was able to string together a few DUs before we started, so I went with DUs and completed them in 4 sets. I think I need to start practicing them again.
Later tonight I’ll do the nightly pull-ups and then it’s 2 days off from Armstrong Pull-ups. Tomorrow will also be a day off from CrossFit, which I’m really looking forward to. I will get out and walk 18 holes of golf.
Update: I just couldn’t stand sitting around later in the evening even though I went out and walked 9 holes of golf after lunch. I had to lace up the shoes and go out for a run, so I did a 5 minute warm-up, Tabata sprints, and a 5 minute cool down. In 14:14 I covered a total of 1.73 miles.
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.
Stayed with the night class routine I’ve been doing this week.
Warm-up
5 Rounds
1:00 Bottom Squat Hold
1:00 Jumping Jacks
Not too bad, but coming up out of the squat hold after a minute is a little rough. Quads and knees felt a bit locked up each time.
WOD
20:00 AMRAP
5 Suit Case Deadlifts (each side)
10 Burpee Broad jumps
15 Box Jumps
I used an 88# KB for the suit case deadlifts. Not a big fan of those because it’s hard to keep a good position. Burpee broad jumps and box jumps were fine. I used a 24 inch box as usual. I think I got 6 full rounds. It may have been 7, but I’m leaning towards 6. Matt our trainer kept track and I forgot to look at the board after the workout. In addition to the complete rounds I finished the 5 suit case deadlifts on each side and 8 of the broad jump burpees.
Finisher
Jingle Jangles
These are short sprints. Starting off with 3 lengths in the first minute and then rest for the remaining time. Jump up by 3 sprint lengths every minute until you fail to complete the number of sprints. So each minute you are doing more running and getting less recovery. I got through 21, but thought I was one short one of the girls was a bit ahead of me and went another length, so I didn’t get to go up to 24, which started almost immediately.
I am not wearing my Inov-8 Bare-XF 210’s anymore until after the move to the new location. We did the entire workout outside on the pavement and it was brutal on my feet with all of the pounding. The broad jumps were especially bad so I had to shorten them up. Doing the sprints on the pavement with these shoes was no walk in the park either.
Nick Momrik's Fitness Logs 