11-02-15: Turkish Get-Ups, Rowing, and Lots of Hot Dumbbell Action

CrossFit Garden City WoD for February 2nd, 2011
Warmup:3 sets of:

• 10 OH Squats
• 1 min Double Under Practice

Strength:Turkish Get Up
 - 10 heavy reps per arm in 10 minutes.
25# x 2 / 30# x 2 / 35# x 2 / 40# x 2 / 45# x 2
Training:

• 15 Dumbbell Push Press
• Row 500 meters
• 15 Dumbbell Front Squat
• Row 500 meters
• 15 Dumbbell Thruster
• Row 500 meters
• 15 Dumbbell Front Squat
• Row 500 meters
• 15 Dumbbell Push Press

RX'd weight for KB/DB is 53#/35#. Choose a weight that allows for all sets to be unbroken but VERY challenging. 25# dumbbells

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Ah, PVC pipe makes the learning (and warming up) so much easier! Note the weight is directly over the middle of the foot, even in the full squat position, and the shoulders are shrugged up and active, carrying the weight on the lats, rather than letting the shoulder grind together. (crossfit.com)

Double-unders. Since this was taken at the CrossFit Games, I presume she's better at them than I am. Darnit. (crossfit.com)

Turkish Get-ups. This position is important. Someday I'll know if I'm hitting it or not. (crossfit.com)

Note the very unhappy faces on the guys doing dumbbell thrusters. Even doing it with half-the weight didn't make it any better, trust me. OK, I could have gone heavier... (crossfit.com)

Rowing... metabolic conditioning fun for all ages! (Seriously.) (crossfit.com)

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After a surprisingly long and bad-food filled weekend, I wasn't feeling super great today... sounds like the *perfect* time to do a nice long workout! However, I did throw in a few extra dips and lat pulls to start out, just to loosen up... um... prior to loosening up with the warm-up. Sigh.

I definitely found myself wishing we had stuff like broomsticks or PVC pipe for the overhead squat bit of the warm-up. Going in kind of cold (and having sucky shoulder mobility), 10 squats with the 35# bar overhead got pretty heavy pretty quickly! After the minute's worth of double-unders (at which I sucked, by the way), I took some time using the jump-rope to perform shoulder dislocates, trying to loosen up said sucky shoulders. However, by the time I was done with the warm-up, I was definitely warmed up, so that was pretty awesome.

I know I've done a lot of Turkish get-ups, and a lot of those were with the 35# barbell... so theoretically that should have been a good starting point, but I decided to be safe and start a bit lower, and work up through and past it. 5 rounds of two reps per arm each sounded about right, increasing the weight for each round. 25#? Easy. 30#? Easy! 35# Easy! 40# Really kind of hard. 45#? Failed my first few attempts to sit-up in the first place, but after taking a few seconds to regroup, managed to fight through it! I know I need some coaching on the TGU, as the placement of the hand while getting up completely defines the rest of the movement... and I have NO idea where I'm putting it while actually under a weight. That is NOT good. :S

After recovering for a bit, and feeling a new kind of shoulder weakness/soreness/fatigue, opted to go a bit lighter on the weights for the final conditioning workout. 25# dumbbells would be more than enough to suck, especially on the thrusters. Daring? No. Sure to keep me from killing myself? Probably. All in all, the weights were probably a bit light, as the harder part of the workout seemed to be keeping the time decreasing on the rower (hooray for the ability to compete against your previous row), though I did get my ass handed to me on the final row. The thrusters, my main fear going into this, were indeed awful, but the rest of the sets were only marginally bad... ;)

11-01-31: Tabata kettlebell swings, push presses and squats

CrossFit Garden City WoD for Saturday, January 22nd, 2011
Warm-up:

• Jump rope: singles, jog step, double-unders
• Active stretching
• Ring dips and pull-up practice

Training: Tabata: 8 alternating sets of 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off:

• KB Swing - 25# kettlebell, one-armed, passed back and forth
• DB Push Press - 30# dumbbells (video is with barbells, but the body motion is the same)
• Squat

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Jeff Martone demonstrating one-armed kettlebell swings. While you could do one arm repeatedly (and with 8 rounds for this workout, that would actually have been an ok idea, 4 rounds for each arm), I opted to switch arms every rep, switching hands during the top part of the swing. (crossfit.com)

The dumbbell push press. The dip in B (note the vertical back) allows you to start driving the dumbbells up with the legs as you extend OUT of the dip, finishing with the arms overhead. Quick lockout, then repeat as needed. (yahoo.com)

Bad squat (rounded back, iffy loading on the foot are the two things that should jump out) on the left, and good squat on the right. Arched back means that when he extends his hips to stand, his torso will lift smoothly, NOT end up just rocking forward and maybe even down first, which the rounded back invariably seems to lead to. With the weight on the heels, you can explode out of the squat with full posterior chain engagement, rather than just sort of hopping out of it, as when the weight is on your toes. (crossfit.com)

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While the lads did their poorly executed "concentration curls" and Smith Machine "squats," I grabbed some room out in the stairwell area to warm-up. Did a bunch of jump-rope, working for very fast single bounces and running steps, then some focused practice of double-unders. They are finally starting to chain together... little by little. With time...

Speaking of, I quickly attached the rings to the Smith machine and, after easily attaining the control position, banged out 5 ring dips in a row... somewhat easily! After dropping back to the floor, I did the same again! Of course, instead of 5 easy dips, *this* time it was 3 easy dips, one kinda hard dip, and one gut-check almost-at-failure dip... but it was five ring dips in a row, again. To say I was a bit psyched would be an understatement.

I tried for a few ring pull-ups, feet on the floor so I could work the 'false grip' handgrip, so as to be ready to transition from pull-ups and dips to full muscle-ups (a pull-up that transitions up into a dip, moving you from completely below the rings to completely above them):

Definitely click to embiggenate the picture. Notice in the first frame the funky 'false grip.' This is basically the same grip as in the dip, but with the body below the hands. This way, when you transition from the pull-up into the dip, your hands are already in position. It's a pain, but totally worth it... I assume, never having done one. YET. (croftoncrossfit.com)

 The next step to learning the muscle-up will involved lots of progressions to perfect the technique while also building the sheer brute strength needed to tie the pull-up and dip together.

Muscle-up progression. Even with feet on the floor, it looks like they're doing a bit of work, no? Again, note how the false-grip is the dip grip once you get your torso over the rings. (crossfit centurion)

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By this point, I was feeling pretty well warmed up, so I took some time to go through my active stretching routine. I was feeling a bit acidy from lunch (apparently, beefy, bisony, beany chili doesn't digest all *that* well in 2 hours...), so I was a bit nervous about embarking on a Tabata interval workout. After drinking some water and spending some time futzing with my iPod Nano trying to find my 'tabata mix' (song mixes that go back and forth, 20 seconds extreme metal, 10 seconds soothing music), I was ready to go. Scoring was as follows:

Exercise	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	Totals
KB Swings	11	11	11	11	10	11*	11	10	87
Push Press	10	10	10*	10	9	10	9	9	77
Squats	13	13	15	13	13	14	12	13	106

Total reps:270  Tabata score: 31 (total of LOWEST round scores)


I realized after the third round of push presses that the song mixes have an extra minute of 'soothing' music after each 4 minute (8 rounds) interval, so the rounds marked with asterisks show where I got an extra breather. I wasn't positive that hitting "next" on the iPod Nano would do exactly what I wanted it to do, and without a screen to visually see that it was going to go where I wanted it to, I enjoyed my extra 60 seconds of sublime relaxation. While that definitely helped keep me from booting up chili mid-WoD, it also gave me an unfair boost in the following rounds, as evidenced by suddenly higher than average rep counts for those rounds. Happily, the effect was short lived, and since Tabata scoring only looks at the LOWEST round scores, it actually didn't have too much effect, though its possible the 8th round would have been the lowest for everything without the extra rest time.