12-07-04: July 4th Team WoD

Elm City CrossFit WoD for July 4th, 2012

Precisely the disaster we tried to avoid by having a staggered start. If this WAS us, I'd be the jerk in the back waving. For sure.

Burpees defined. (Lean Primal Fit)

Truth.

Plate carries. These always suck, but as a bigger guy, they aren't the absolute worst... until someone passes me at a dead run with a plate. Jerk. (River North CrossFit)

   

I can't tell if she's resting, but *this* is the standard full contraction position: shoulders in FRONT of the hips. Crunches and other crap will NOT fly. (CrossFit 817)

NNNNNNNNOOOOOOooooooooooo........! (CrossFit Battlefield)

Push-ups. Keep your junk off the ground, but your chest should touch. Repeat until you crash face first into the ground. Repeat THAT. (BaseOps)

---

Team WoD:
Every member of the team must complete the following:

• 200m run
• 30 burpees
• 400m plate carry 45#
• 40 sit-ups
• 100m overhead walking lunges 25#
• 50 push-ups

For Independence Day, Elm City CrossFit celebrated our Independence Together with a team WoD. 8 teams of 4 athletes tackled this one, with the only curve-ball being that only one member at a time could run the 200m, tagging in the next person as they finished it, to stagger the start, and not have a crowd of 32 people running around the parking lot.  As designated "burpees will crush me guy," I lobbied hard to go first. After all, my teammates (two coaches and a distance monster) would easily pass me later on, while if I went last, I would NEVER catch up!

The run felt pretty good, as I managed to pace off of one of our faster athletes, allowing me to come in second (not that anything was being counted that early on), and hit the burpees. I felt good to match that athlete coming out of the burpees, too. (Bear in mind, she's a few months post-pregnancy and VERY well rested what with raising a few-month-old...AND she still kept ahead of me!) 

The weighted carry was ok, though I started it steady and slow, and by the end was trotting to keep from falling to the back of the pack. The sit-ups were fine. My turn-over is a lot slower than a lot of other people, mostly on the relaxation part of it... I'm not sure why, but its something to look into as far as tweaking how I do movements to both maximize efficiency and speed. There's almost no way a slow relaxation/eccentric phase in the sit-up is helping me.

Then the wheels fell off.

Walking lunges suck on the best of days. But a hot day, with a 25# plate overhead with arms locked out, is just that much more awful. Talking about it after the fact, it was funny how my mental negotiations kept falling apart: "OK, first 'round' was 12 lunges... rest, then do 12 more. Ok, go... Ok, that was only 3 more. OK, let's do sets of three. Fine. Crap, that was only 2. Why can't I breathe!?"  For a while, I just tried to keep up with the pack... then to keep ahead of the pack behind me... then to keep up with the pack that HAD BEEN behind me.

After that struggle, it was time yet again to face the fact that I have a few push-ups in me, but not a lot. With 50 of them to knock out, I hit the first set as hard as I could, coming up with 14. Six more got me to 20. A few sets of 5 got me to 40... then it was singles and doubles the rest of the way out. Meanwhile, almost every other team had finished, while I faced a puddle of my own sweat and dared my arms and pecs to do another rep. Finally, we finished (when I finally finished) with a time of 24:22 (or maybe 22:24?)  Either way, it felt like it took a LOT longer than that, mostly because of the hell of walking lunges.

Overall, I felt pretty good, performance-wise, but there's no doubt that if my lunges or push-ups were better, I'd have done better (der!), but my team would have done a lot better, too. 

12-04-11: Chipper!

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Heather Bergeron with a bit of a chicken-neck going on. K-Starr and Carl Paoli would call her out on throwing her chin up and out to get clearance, but as a total CrossFit bad-ass, I'm sure she could fix it in an instant. I'll let it go... this time.

This guy has never done a kipping pull-up in his life. I think he's ok for all that.  You want strength? Go deadhang pull-ups, all the time. You want power output, turning pull-ups into another form of cardio? Kip to your heart's delight. Two different exercises, two different purposes, two VASTLY different outcomes.

That's a LOT of weight over his head. A LOT. 

Here's how to get that much weight overhead: with the bar resting on your shoulders (a), dip down VERTICALLY just enough to give you the ability to re-extend violently, driving the bar upwards. As soon as the bar breaks from your body, you drop under it (b), catching it with extended arms just as the bar is about to come crashing back down. Arms and shoulder girdle locked in, you stand all the way with the weight, demonstrating that you've completely controlled it. (c). And, since this IS CrossFit, repeat that for reps.

Push-ups. So simple, so horrible if you're not already really good at them. This was the first movment today that really taxed my non-existent strength endurance. After a few reps, I was gassed and ready to tap out, and had to keep chopping away at the total 1-2 reps at a time. Ugh.

 Internet fail. There should be a single picture of a full ROM sit-up on the internet, but if there is, I couldn't find it. And don't think I didn't just waste valuable time looking for it. Apparently 20 minutes have gone past. Lame!

Overhead walking lunges. FML. For real. These suck so bad, its nigh unspeakable.

WoD: For Time

• 10 Deadhang Pull-Ups
• 20 Jerks @ 75% 115#
• 30 Push-ups
• 40 Sit-ups
• 50 ea. Overhead Walking Lunges 45#

I went into this workout feeling a bit old and creaky, and came out of it feeling a LOT old and creaky!  I opted to do the pull-ups without any band assist, knowing I could get sub-sets of 3-4 reps, which I did. I actually wasn't too thrilled with my final rep, not being sure if my chin really cleared the bar, but I was pretty smoked pull-up-wise by that point, and more than happy to get on the bar for the 20 jerks.

Here, I benefited from the fact that my PR on the jerk is actually a clean and jerk PR, meaning its limited by my still crappy ability to transition from one to the other without having any fingers slip out from the shoulder rack position, making the jerk nearly impossible. So, with that limiting my attempts at heavy jerks, the percentage for today's WoD wasn't too bad. I managed to do 10 reps unbroken, then completed the rest in two sets of 5. As expected, push-ups were miserable. With my arms already tired from the pull-ups and jerks, I only managed about 5-6 reps at first, and then slowed down considerably. While I had made up a lot of time on the jerks, I noticed as one by one, the other ECC athletes transitioned from their push-ups to sit-ups, while I kept chopping that big tree down, 1-2 reps at a time.

Sit-ups were relatively easy, broken into subsets of 20. (In hindsight, I may have been throwing my head to create momentum, as later that day, and lasting for at least two days, I've had an awful pain in my neck and upper-right shoulder that's been limiting my mobility and testing my patience... doh!). Then, it was on to the worst test of the WoD. 100 walking lunges, carrying a 45# plate overhead...

Taking up the weight, I again just started chopping away at the total, 10 lunges at a time (5 per leg). I hit the turn-around point out in the parking lot right on schedule, 50 lunges in. I turned, and went into the next sub-set. (Insert lots of rest and panting between each sub-set, by the way.) I had noticed that a funny twinge/knot in my left quad was starting to make itself known, and on this set, it suddenly started to really hurt. I held up for a second, and realized that when I was just standing still, without any pressure on it, the quad felt like it was licking a nine volt, with a kind of constant buzzing feel. I tried another rep or two, and the pain intensified, instantly abating to the weird buzzing/tingle when I just stood up.

After signalling to Coach Kimmy that I was in trouble, we decided that I should scale the workout to what I had already done (ie, DNF as Rx'ed, but counting 18:33 as the time with only 30 lunges per leg)