10-30-06: OH Barbell Walks, Wall-Balls, Dumbbell Farmer's Walk

CrossFit WoD for June 29th, 2010

5 rounds for time of:

• 185# 105# barbell overhead walk, 40m
• 30 Wall-ball shots, 20# ball
• 95# barbells 80# dumbbells farmer's walk, 40m

Man, reading really IS FUNdamental.  Just finally parsed that the farmer's walk was supposed to be done with barbells.  Oh well, we don't have 3 good barbells...hell, we don't have ONE good one, so the mediocrity had to be saved for the overhead walk. It does make the picture included on the workout page make a whole lot more sense...where the dude is doing a barbell farmer's walk. Sigh...

 (image swiped from CrossFit without permission...but only to show what we *should* have been doing. I'll pull it if they ask, as I don't wish to piss anyone off unduly)

Scaled the workout as shown above. As we are limited in getting overhead merely what we can clean & jerk or snatch, we rolled the weight back.  I probably could have gone heavier, but I was really feeling it on the last two rounds during the turnarounds (we walked out 20m, turned, then back 20m), and its possible at a heavier weight I wouldn't have made it.  Next time, we're definitely going at least 125# (its a 35# bar, so that would just be two 45# plates.)  As it was, this was definitely the easiest of the exercises.

Wall balls were ok. Did the first round unbroken, then 20-10 for the next 3 rounds, and 15-10-5 for the last one.  Which was a much better fade than I expected.

Dumbbell Farmer's walk... man this, sucks. Not sure it would have been any easier with barbells, since that would require even more wrist strength, and as it was, having scaled each hand down 15# to 80#, I still almost completely lost my grip with about 10m to go in the final round.

All told, it felt pretty good to finish this. I felt I finished fairly strong, grip on the final farmer's walk notwithstanding, and managed to get about the same time as J, and since his cardio puts mine to shame, on a grind like this, its nice to feel like I'm "keeping up."

10-06-28: Deadlifts and Hand-stand Push-Ups

CrossFit WoD for June 27th, 2010

5 rounds for load and time:

• Deadlifts x 5
• Ring Parallelette Handstand Push-Ups

DL Loads: 245, 255, 260, 265, 275 (Former 1RM, now 5RM!)

Total time: 17:51 (with lots of time waiting for shared equipment)

Doing this in a room that felt like it was filled with warm oatmeal sucked.  A video would have just shown us sweating like pigs in between sets. This was awful.  Still, we lifted a ton of weight (actually, 6,500 lbs total, so 3.25 tons!)  For far more inspiration, may I present, from the initial CrossFit link, a video of Rob Orlando and Dave Lipscomb doing this workout, and showing how ferociously strong CrossFitters approach things:

VIDEO HERE NOW!!!!

Search Amazon.com for push-up grips

10-06-23: Thrusters and GHD Sit-Ups

CrossFit WoD for June 23rd, 2010:

Three rounds for time of:

• 50# 35# Thrusters x 15
• GHD Sit-Ups x 30

Total Time: 15:00

So, had to scale the weight back on the thrusters, since in all my time of working out, I've done surprisingly little overhead work, so my stability on exercises like thrusters is still a work in progress.  The actual squat part of the thruster is easy enough, but keeping the arms in control and locking out at the top is where my control starts to fall apart a bit.  Also, I have trouble dealing with the dumbbells, keeping them close to the body on the way down and back up, which tends to throw off my form a bit, pulling me forward.  The more you do, the better you get...

Speaking of getting better, my GHD sit-ups are coming along,  My only issue is figuring out when and how to breathe in the middle of a set... I kept having to break things into smaller sets, just to make some time to catch up on breathing!

Entire workout felt pretty good, and I was able to more or less storm through the first two rounds, but the breathing on the second set of sit-ups did me in prior to the third round, so I gave up 2+ minutes to sucking wind.  Still, not a bad showing.  Its no 5:00+ time like Mikko Salo (2009 CrossFit Games Champion), but he's a monster, and I'm just a little Mike Wazows

10-06-21: OH Barbell Lunge walk, Burpees

CrossFit WoD for Monday June 21st, 2010

5 3 rounds for time of:

• 45# barbell overhead walking lunges, 50 feet
• 21 burpees

Ugh.  Never start a workout with a headache.  Especially one that involves burpees. Made it through the first round well enough.  Knees weren't exactly happy about the lunges, but i did them nice and slow to try to maximize the stretching and whatnot, since its probable that working the legs in a nice even manner *should* help balance out the musculature and support around the patellar tendon.  Hopefully.  However, the second set of burpees nearly killed me, and the third was total gut-check time. Decided to cap it there. Probably could have finished with the lunges, but the headache just sapped my will to live, much less continue hurting myself. 

This headache has been lingering since last night, when my daughter proved that she has a wicked right open-palm eye-strike right before we put her to bed. My eye stopped stinging about 2 hours later, but the headache has gone on unabated.  I don't think that eye is blurry or anything, so i think that's causing it...probably just the stress of having my 2-year-old kick the crap out of me in one shot.  On Father's Day.  Go figure... ;) 

10-06-17: "Elizabeth" Cleans and Dips

CrossFit WoD for Sunday, June 13, 2010


Active stretching/warmup

"Elizabeth"

21-15-9 reps of:

• Clean 135#
• Ring dips

Time: 10:32 (with a little rest time due to shared equipment)

Interesting note: Not having official weight-lifting shoes, I opted to do the workout in just socks (like I'm going barefoot on *that* floor!), which I've done before for workouts where the weight is moving in a fairly vertical path, and therefore fairly unlikely to move laterally enough to kill toes or anything.  This worked perfectly, and is actually a fairly enjoyable way to workout.

The funny part was when I changed back into work clothes, including my newish Avia 207s, which I bought probably a week or two before reading Chris McDougall's "Born to Run."  I really noticed the feeling of muting all the senses and feedback from my feet, and walking back to the office felt like I was walking with two numb feet. Not as enjoyable as the workout at ALL. When these thing wear out, I am so looking for minimal footwear to wear at work.

10-06-15: Rowing and Wallballs

CrossFit WoD for June 15th, 2010

Warm-up

• Exercise bike 7:00
• Active Stretching

For time:

• Row 2Km
• 50 Wallballs
• Row 1Km
• 35 Wallballs
• Row 500m
• 20 Wallballs

Total time = 24 minutes.

Wow. More rowing.  Over 4 miles in two days.  wheeee!  The addition of a fan to our usually hot, humid, and airless workout space was a wonderful thing. ;)

10-06-14: Rowing and Benchpress

Warm-up:

7:00 Exercise Bike

Active Stretching

CrossFit WoD for June 14th, 2010:

For time:

Row 500m

30 x 135lb Bench Press

Row 1000m

20 x 135lb Bench Press

Row 2000m

10 x 135lb Bench Press

Total Time: ~18:00 

7:00 Exercise Bike

Man, that bar got heavy FAST.  As RXed, it was supposed to be bodyweight. Psha! And monkeys might fly out of my butt.  Or at least, my intestines might fly out of my abdomen, which is more likely and more horrifying.  As it was, rowed about a 2 minute 500m split on each round of rowing, and made it through the final 10 benches unbroken, so I felt pretty good about that.  Now, if only the area between my pecs and anterior delts wasn't screaming at me, I'd be much happier.

Oh yeah, due to a lack of an actual bench press *bench*, each round of benches included at least one, and generall 2-3 135# cleans prior to sitting on the bench, so count that, too! ;)

10-06-10: Circuit: Row, Thrusters, Pull-Ups, KB Swings

Warm-up:

7:00 exercise bike warm-up

Active Stretching

CrossFit WoD for Monday, June 7th, 2010

Circuit for time:

Row for 30 Calories

30 x 85lb Thrusters

30 x Pull-ups

30 x 55lb Dumbbell Swings

Row for 20 Calories

20 x 85lb Thrusters

20 x Pull-ups

20 x 55lb Dumbbell Swings

Row for 10 Calories

10 x 85lb Thrusters

10 x Pull-ups

10 x Dumbbell Swings

Total Time: 46:15

Today was a perfect example of how the food you eat really is the fuel that your body needs. Unless that food is total crap. Apparently, starting out the day eating cookies and drinking coffee does NOT prepare you for a full body death-blast from CrossFit.  Basically, the first round of this thing (the 30s), took me almost as long as it took Chris Spealer  to do the whole thing. I just betcha he didn't have freaking cookies for breakfast, either.  Each event of the last round was bracketed with 2-3 minutes of me just trying to get myself under control enough to actually tackle the next thing.  I'm eating some real food as I type this, and feeling the jitters/shakes/DTs passing, which is good.  Very, very good.

10-06-07: "Randy"

CrossFit WoD for Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

"Randy"

75 pound Power snatch, 75 reps for time.

Broken up into rounds sets of 15 reps, taking minimal rest times, managed to kind of storm through this.  75# is thankfully pretty light for me, so form didn't need to be perfect (I noticed as the reps stacked up that my form at the start of the first pull was deteriorating, with my back losing its nice, tight arch. However, for yanking 75# off the floor, it wasn't that big a deal... for now. Definitely need to eradicate that habit in the long view.

Started with 7 minute warm-up on the exercise bike, followed by active 
stretching.

Total time for WoD: 6:40. 

10-06-03: "The Se7en"

Warm-up:

7:00 Exercise bike
Active Stretching

"The Seven"
Seven Five rounds for time of:

7 x Handstand push-ups
7 x 135# 85# Thruster (1st round @ 135 lbs)
7 x Knees to elbows
7 x 245# 195# pound Deadlift (1st round at 245#)
7 x Burpees
7 x 55 pound Dumbbell swings
7 x Pull-ups

        DNF (Did NOT finish) - completed 5 rounds, and was unable/unwilling to continue

Total Time: 40:00ish

This was one of the most grueling things I have ever attempted. I was done after the first round, and ready to quit after the 2nd.  How I kept going for the next three is beyond me, especially in a weight-room that had to be 85 degrees with 100% humidity.  I tried to keep moving to the next exercise everytime my heart rate dropped below 180 bpm, which is pretty damn high.

Upshots: First 3 sets of Pull-ups were unbroken, and all started with strict form, before relying on a kipping motion for the last few.  If you had asked me yesterday if I could do even one strict pull-up, I probably would have said no.  So that was a nice surprise.  First time doing burpees in a long time, and feeling it a bit in my knees, but between the cryo-cuff and vitamin I(buprofin), its all good...hopefully!  :D

10-06-01: "Arnie"

Warm-up:

Active Stretching

"Arnie"

For time:

With a single 25lb kettlebell:

21 Turkish get-ups, Right arm

50 Swings, alternating arms

21 Overhead squats, Left arm

50 Swings, alternating arms

21 Overhead squats, Right arm

50 Swings, alternating arms

21 Turkish get-ups, Left arm

Time = 21:35ish.