Tag: Thruster

Thrusters Suck

After working out yesterday morning I felt pretty good, until I did the rowing intervals before dinner. After that everything seemed to hurt. Sort of “meh” today, with definite soreness in my hamstrings. I heard about the workout this morning and thought about skipping out because I hate thrusters and knew how bad the WOD would suck. But you can’t improve on a movement if you skip out on it, so I forced myself to go in for the 5:30pm class.

I was there pretty early so had a chance to do a bunch of PVC pass-thrus and around the worlds to warm up my shoulders.

Warm-up

4 Rounds

  • 15s Jumping Jacks
  • 15s Air Squats
  • 15s Mountain Climbers
  • 15s Jump Squats

4 Rounds

  • 15s Plank
  • 15s Supermans
  • 15s Right Side Plank
  • 15s Left Side Plank

Strength

Find 1RM Shoulder Press

  • 10 @ 45#
  • 5 @ 75#
  • 2 @ 95#
  • 1 @ 115#
  • 1 @ 135#
  • 1 @ 145#
  • 1 @ 155#
  • Fail at 165#
  • 1 @ 155#

Looking back, I probably did too many warm-up reps. I never do it like that. 160# is my previous PR, so went for a new one even though 155# was pretty damn hard. I’ll take hitting 155# twice for the day though. Sounded like most people were doing pretty bad as well because of other work we’d done this week.

WOD

20:00 EMOM

  • 8 Thrusters (65#)
  • 3 Burpees

The Rx weights for the thrusters were 95/65, which is nearly impossible to do. I used 65# and couldn’t even do it all. After the 14th minute, I had to drop down to only 6 thrusters each minute so I could keep doing 3 burpees. Did all 8 and 3 reps in the final minute though because getting 30 seconds of rest no longer mattered.

55 thrusters and 55 back squat thrusters with 115# on Monday, 140 wall balls yesterday, and 150 thrusters with 65# today. I fucking hope we’re done with that movement for the week! 🙂

Gun Show Finisher

5 Sets

  • 20 DB Curls (10 each arm)
  • MAX Diamond Push-ups
  • 60s Rest

For the curls I used 15#, 20#, 25#, 30#, and 35#. The last set was a struggle to finish. I got 16, 15, 16, 15, and 12 reps on the push-ups. After this and all of the shoulder work, I can barely move my arms.

Definitely not doing a WOD tomorrow, but will most likely go in for the OLY class to work on the clean & jerk.

What a Bear!

Kind of tired this morning, but went to 9am to get it done.

Warm-up

4 Rounds

  • 15s Jumping Jacks
  • 15s Air Squats
  • 15s Mountain Climbers
  • 15s Jump Squats

4 Rounds

  • 15s Plank
  • 15s Supermans
  • 15s Right Side Plank
  • 15s Left Side Plank

Strength

Find 1RM Front Squat

After hitting my previous 1 rep max (235#) for 3 reps last week, I was looking for a nice PR today. Warmed up with 6 reps at 135# and then went 185#, 215#, 235#, 245#, and 255# for a 20# PR. It was pretty easy too.

WOD

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1

  • Modified Bear Complex (Clean Thruster + Back Squat Thruster)
  • 2x DU

I went Rx with 115# and finished just under the time limit with 25:45. Pretty happy with that because a long barbell complex in far from my strength and I held my own. I’ll be feeling that one in my legs for a few days.

Road Work Circuit

I’m feeling pretty good after yesterday’s WOD and then the explosive training we did at night. Little sore in a lot of places, but nothing bad. Went to the 11am today and 14 of us were there to get our sweat on.

Warm-up

Matt called this a road work circuit, with the goal being to keep your heart rate in the 130-150 range, but work hard enough to get a sweat on.

5 Rounds

  • 1m Russian KBS (40# KB)
  • 1m Lateral Step Overs (12″ box)
  • 1m Air Squats
  • 1m Jump Rope
  • 1m Jingle Jangles
  • 1m Rest

It was kind of hard not to push the pace, but at the same time nice to work at a steady pace. I started out a little slow and my heart rate was less than 130, so I stepped it up a bit and each round it went up progressively, while still staying below the high-end of the range. Solid long “warm-up” that would be harder than most fitness classes out there.

WOD

12:00 AMRAP

  • 12 Box Jumps (32″)
  • 6 Thrusters (75#)
  • 6 Burpees

This is actually based off the hero WOD “Rahoi” but due to space and box availability we had to switch it up. We don’t have the room for bar-facing burpees so we just did normal ones and our supply of 24″ boxes ran out quick so I went with the 32″ box. Since my box was so high, I scaled the thruster weight down from 95# to try to even it out a bit. You can’t really even out those box jumps though. The level of concentration and effort needed to keep jumping on that box is so much more than a 24″. The jump down off the box is really taxing too. Thrusters were probably too easy at 75# so it’s time to start stepping up my game on those. I was able to do 5 complete rounds plus 12 box jumps, 6 thrusters, and 3 of the burpees for a 5 + 21 score.

Mini Vacation

Took the next few days off work and will head up north later today. Went in for the 9am to get my WOD on.

Warm-up

50-40-30-20-10

  • Russian Twists (30# KB)
  • Flutter Kicks (x4 counts)

WOD

  • 12:00 EMOTM (do both)
    • 5 Thrusters (85#)
    • 7 Star Jumps
  • NO REST! Can start the next phase as soon as you are ready.
  • 5 Rounds
    • 9 Burpee Power Clean & Presses (85#)
    • 7 T2B
    • 5 Weighted Lunges for each leg (85#)

The thrusters weren’t as bad as expected, but the star jumps really got hard to jump in those last few minutes. I think I was completing the combo in about 21 seconds each minute. I did take a bit of rest before jumping into the next portion of the WOD. In the first two rounds I was doing the burpee power cleans one at a time, which was a waste and really sucked. In the last 3 rounds I figured out I could string them together and turn the clean and press into one motion pretty much without having to straighten my legs and then dip again. That worked better and I broke them down into 5 and 4 the rest of the way. The T2B and weighted lunges were pretty easy and like a break; all were done unbroken. My total time (with the 12:00 in there) was 30:34. Glad I went with 85# instead of the 95# Rx on this one too because it would have been hard to keep up any kind of intensity.

I walked a couple of laps around the 150m rectangle to cool down.

Kevin’s First Class

Went out to the Michigan Tap Room at Stardust last night with some of the Survival Fitness crew. Not feeling the greatest today because of the beer, but I hoped a workout would fix that. Kevin was doing the programming and teaching, so wanted to support him as well. Went in for the 11am.

Warm-up

3 Rounds

  • 50 Russian Twists (30# KB)
  • 40 Bicycles
  • 30s Plank
  • 20 AbMat Sit-ups
  • 10 Inch Worms

Took between 14 and 15 minutes for me to finish this off. Good work for the midline.

WOD

3 Rounds

  • 1m Russian KBS (53#)
  • 1m Over the Shoulder Sandbags
  • 1m Wall Balls (20# MB, 10′ target)
  • 1m Thrusters (75#)
  • 1m Jingle Jangles
  • 1m Rest

This was a good Fight Gone Bad style WOD. My rep counts for each round were 107, 111, and 107 for a 325 total. Staying consistent is a key in a WOD like this. The bulk of my reps came in the KBS and jingle jangles, with thrusters definitely having the lowest counts.

Finisher

Death by Pull-ups (by 2s)

I finished the round of 16 and then got 17 of 18. Total of 89 pull-ups. Last time doing a “death by” for pull-ups was back in May by 3s and I got through the round of 15, which was a total of 45, so that’s quite an improvement. Really happy with how far my pull-ups have come.

Battle of the Boxes

Went down to Sterling Height for the Battle of the Boxes, put on by CrossFit Transformation. There were 32 teams and I haven’t seen the official results yet, but I heard we took 18th place. We were 25th going into the last event, which we rocked!

WOD 1

20:00 AMRAP

  • 15 Thrusters (95/65#)
  • 20 KB Swings (53/35#)
  • 50 Double Unders

# of Athletes – 4 (2 men / 2 women)

All 4 athletes will cycle thru this AMRAP for 20 minutes. 3 athletes max will be working at a time, with the 4th resting/waiting to start their next round. Team members cannot move to the next station until the team member in front of them has left that station.
Each team will be given a female bar loaded to 65# and mens bar loaded to 95#, a 53# KB and a 35# KB. BRING YOUR OWN ROPE!!

*Dropping the KB constitutes a 10 burpee penalty to be done immediately before continuing KB swings.

*The 2 athletes that do not compete in this WOD, must compete in WOD 4.

WOD 2

Tug-o-War

# of Athletes – 6 (3 men / 3 women)

This WOD will be scored bracket style, like playoffs or March Madness. It will start with all teams and it will be one game knock out until we crown a champion. Cleats nor gloves are allowed.

The teams that get knocked out round one, will then enter a ball toss event. Each athlete will get 3 attempts to throw as far as possible and the team score will be measured by total distance of each of the athletes furthest throw.

WOD 3

OLY Event

# of Athletes – 6 (3 men / 3 women)

The women will start this event off. They will have 8 minutes to do the following:
Find a 1RM Snatch. *The load on the bar can not decrease.
Find a 1RM Clean & Jerk. *The load on the bar can not decrease.
*The only time the load can decrease is when all athletes complete the snatch and show they are moving to clean & jerk.

Once the girls 8 minutes are up, the guys 8 minutes begin. They will perform the same WOD.

*You don’t have to spend 4 minutes on each, you can spend 7 on one movement and 1 on the other. It’s up to you.

*Highest successful lift from each athlete for each lift will be added together for scoring. It will be scored in 3 ways. Team with the highest snatch, highest clean & jerk, and highest total.

WOD 4

For time and reps:
1) Sand Bag Shuttle Relay (75#, 50#, 25#), MR Front Squats (135/95#), MR Deadlifts (185/115#)

# of Athletes – 4
*The 2 athletes that did not compete in WOD 1, must compete in this event.

The 2 women will start this event off.

Athlete 1 must shuttle sprint each sand bag one length of the field and place the sandbag down. Athletes must show control when putting the sandbag down. No body slamming or throwing it past the line. If your judge feels you weren’t in control, you will perform 10 burpees before you sprint back to start line empty-handed. While Athlete 1 is doing the sandbag shuttle, Athlete 2 is performing max rep front squats (95#). Once Athlete 1 completes the 3 sandbag shuttles they will then start their max rep front squats while Athlete 2 sprints down the field to retrieve all the sandbags. When Athlete 2 returns from the sandbag shuttle the two girls will add 20# to the barbell (making it 115#) and Athlete 2 will then begin max reps deadlifts while Athlete 1 completes the sandbag shuttle for a second time. When Athlete 1 returns she will complete max reps deadlifts while Athlete 2 completes the shuttle run. When Athlete 2 returns from the shuttle run the women are done and then men jump in strip the bar and load it up to 135# then complete the same WOD as the women. Men will increase the bar as a team to 185# to complete the deadlift portion.

WOD will be scored in 3 ways. Shuttle sprint total time, MR deadlifts, and MR front squats.

How did we do?

Event 1 was tough for us because we got caught up on the DUs. I felt good during this WOD and did American KBS with the more of a straight up and down swing for the first time. Made things easier to knock out 20 in a row. My DUs were pretty good but I only got through 2 rounds and the thrusters in my 3rd round. I was actually surprised that we beat 5 other teams is this workout, so their DUs must have been terrible because ours were pretty bad.

The Tug-o-war was a lot of fun. We smoked our first match, but then got it handed right back to us in our second match.

The Olympic lifting event was intense! All 6 of our team members matched or hit now PRs in both the snatch and clean & jerk, which is pretty amazing for such a fast paced event.

For the snatch, I hit 135, missed 145, hit 145, and hit 155. That’s a 10 pound PR. I had every intention of doing squat snatches but when you’re ripping off reps so fast, you lose you heard. I power snatched that bitch. It was not pretty but I got it. In the clean and jerk, I hit 185# with a squat clean, then hit 205# with a power clean and kind of an ugly jerk. Made a quick attempt at 215 but didn’t give it the power I needed to. We were running low on time, so I gave the rest to Casey and he nailed 225. Best clean I’d ever done was 205, but best clean and jerk was 185, so that’s a 20# PR for the combination that is the OLY lift. I’d never attempted a jerk of more than 185, so was also a 20# PR on a jerk. It’s hard to explain how intense this WOD was because you had to make quick lifts and when you weren’t lifting you had to be ready to increase the weights on the bar or jump in for your next rep.

We did really well in the sandbag sprint and think we finished 2nd or 3rd. Should have done pretty well in the max reps lifts for that even too due to our women. I can’t wait to see the results for this event because we jumped up a lot from it.

It was a long day, but a lot of fun. I did mess up my back again, so not too happy about that.

Flippin’ Tires

Up for the 9am today. I was thinking about just doing some rowing, but I have 48 hours to recover before the competition on Saturday, so I’ll be fine. Not feeling too bad after doing “DT” yesterday.

Warm-up

  • 1m DUs
  • 20 Air Squats
  • 20 Reach to the sky and then down to the toes
  • 20 PVC Pass-thrus
  • 1m DUs

In the second minute of DUs I knocked off 78 unbroken, a new PR. That’s 3 PRs this week on my DUs, up from 44!

Strength

5×20 Weighted Sit-ups

I used 20# KBs, a 45# KB, a 60# DB, 30# DBs, and a 62# KB. Crazy how tough these get and how much you can sweat from doing sit-ups

WOD

42-30-18

  • Thrusters (45# empty bar)
  • HR Push-ups

Holy shoulder burner! I knocked out the first 42 thrusters unbroken, but that may have been a bad idea for the rest of the workout. I did 10 push-ups to start, but then it was pretty much 5 at a time for the rest of the workout with a few streaks of 4s or 6s in there. In the second round of thrusters I broke it down into 10-12-8 and then 10-8 in the final round. Finished in 11:13.

Finisher

10 Rounds

  • Tire Flip
  • 100y Sprint (50y down and back)

After doing CrossFit for nearly a year, these were the first tire flips I’ve ever done. Really liked this finisher.

Extra Strength

After I got home I went out to the garage for some dynamic low box squats. In order to keep my body guessing, I went with lower weights than I’ve been using for these, which also let me have faster reps. My legs were pretty tired from all of the thrusters anyway.

  • 2×2 @ 45#
  • 1×2 @ 75#
  • 1×2 @ 95#
  • 1×2 @ 115#
  • 8×2 @ 135#

Now I rest until Saturday.

PR on the OHS

I went to the 6pm Olympic Lifting class again. Did more drilling on the snatch, some snatch balances, a bit of cleaning, and then starting work on the jerk. Good stuff.

The side of my head is still pretty sore, but the top area feels fine. I really wish I could go off the Vicodin today. At least tomorrow I can finally run water on my head!

Warm-up

  • 30 PVC Pass-thrus
  • 30 Air Squats
  • 30 PVC OHS

Strength

5×1 OHS

Was looking to set a nice PR today and it was not a disappointment. I did a set of 5 with the 45# bar and then did 95#, 115#, 135#, 145#, 155#, and 165#. My previous PR was 145# so after getting 165 I shut it down. The lift felt pretty good but I didn’t want to get greedy.

WOD

21-18-15-12-9-6-3 *

  • OH Lunges (35# Plate)
  • Thrusters (40# DBs)

* After each round do 15 AbMat Sit-ups.

I went a little out of my comfort zone by using 40# DBs for the thrusters, but it worked out pretty well. I finished in 16:55.

First Time Floor Press

A little tired today. Went in for the 4:15pm class.

Warm-up

3 Rounds

  • 1m Bicycles
  • 1m Side Plank (30s each side)
  • 1m Flutter Kicks
  • 30s Rest

I don’t think I’ve even been able to hold on for a straight minute of flutter kicks, but I did it 3 times today. Core strength baby!

Strength

5×5 Floor Press

I’ve never done this before, so didn’t know what to expect. I really liked it. Warmed up with 75# and then did my working sets with 125#, 175#, 180#, 185#, 190#, and 195#. Had some left in the tank too. Happy with that though since last week I failed after 3 reps at 205# on the bench press. Today I lifted more weight overall because the jump was right up to 175# for the 2nd set.

WOD

5 Rounds

  • 1m SDLHP (53# KB)
  • 1m KBS (53# KB)
  • 1m OH Lunges (20# MB)
  • 1m Ring Dips
  • 1m Thrusters (75#)
  • 1m Rest

I scored 104, 101, and 102 for a 307 total.

Finisher

  • 120 DU

I started off with 39 in a row. Whenever I get close to my unbroken streak of 44, I think I get excited and fail. I finished in 2:08. My arms were so tired it was really hard to keep spinning the rope after that first set.

Every Second Counts

Today was the Every Second Counts competition down at Oakland County CrossFit. We had 9 people compete and 6 of us were in the men’s beginner division, which turned out to be one hell of a battle.

WOD #

800m Run with a 25# Bumper Plate

Going in, I thought this would be my best event. Times were lower than I thought they would be, which scared me a little going in to my heat. I ended up winning the workout with a time of 3:07.

WOD #2

21-15-9

  • Thrusters (65#)
  • HR Push-ups

Originally it was supposed to be Jumping C2B Pull-ups in the beginners division but they ended up changing it. No idea why, but in the end it really ended up screwing me. This was my worst event and I took 7th out of the 10 guys with a time of 4:21. I got 3 or 4 no-reps on my thrusters and had no idea why until after the WOD was over when I asked. I guess I wasn’t getting my head through the window at the top of the movement. Shit! Two pushing movements really fried out arms and shoulders here.

WOD #3

5 rounds

  • 5 Deadlifts (185#)
  • 10 HR Plate Jump Burpees

This was the other workout I felt really confident going in. 185# isn’t heavy for deadlifts and I can knock out burpees pretty fast when the rep count is low like 10s. Originally this was supposed to be HR burpees, but at the competition they switched it up to where instead of jumping up and clapping overhead, we had to jump up on to a 15# bumper plate and stand up straight to extend our hips. I think this actually worked to my advantage because the repeated jumping is no big deal for me.

I got into a nice rhythm on the burpees and my deadlifts actually got faster as the rounds went on. I crushed it, winning the WOD with a time of 4:08. This put me back into 1st place overall with a 12 second lead on Casey A. from our gym. I knew I needed a lead on him going into the last WOD to have any shot at winning. I tested this WOD out 2 weeks ago in my garage and did 4:28 without having to do the plate jumps, so today was a sweet improvement over that.

WOD #4

“Grace”

  • 30 Clean and Jerks (95#)

I tested this 2 months ago and got a time of 2:42. Casey A. turned in a monster time of 1:16 before my heat was up, so I knew exactly what I had to do. I had to get 1:27 to win. It was going to take an out of this world performance. My first 20 reps went well and there was a chance, but then I did 21 and 22 and those last 10 reps were brutal. I finished in 1:46, putting me 18 seconds behind the 1st place. I improved by nearly a minute in 2 months though, which is pretty incredible.

I took 2nd place and couldn’t be happier. I gave it everything I had in all of the WODs. Our Survival Fitness crew ended up sweeping the podium and took 4th place as well. It was so much fun battling it out with friends, especially when we were separated by seconds all day long.

The “trophy” they gave out was a custom lacrosse ball with the logo of the competition and your place, as pictured above. Pretty cool. I also got a roll of tape and a speed rope.

Results

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