03-29-11: Couplets and running

CrossFit Garden City WoD for March 18, 2011
Warmup:
3 sets of

• 10 Overhead Squats
• 2 min Double Under Practice

Practice:
Review and warmup Push Press and Sumo Deadlift High Pull
Determine appropriate weight for workout
Training:

• AMRAP in 5 minutes:
  
  • 5 Push Presses (95#)
  • 5 Pullups
• Rest 5 minutes
• AMRAP in 5 minutes:
  
  • 5 SDHP (95#)
  • 5 Pushups
• Rest 5 minutes
• Run 800 meters as fast as possible

Notes:
Scale weight for Push Press and SDHP to keep technique solid and output HIGH.
Stay active during 5 minute rest periods (walk around, stretch, practice something, etc.)

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The push press. Dip. Drive!

The Sumo Deadlift High Pull. Done correctly, the arms are barely used. Its all in the violent hip opening driving the bar up. The arms are basically CATCHING the bar before it hits you in the chin. Done correctly...

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I'm honestly glad that it sucks to work out after going on a three or four day cupcake bender. (In my defense, my little girl turned three, and there were several discreet occasions that, if they didn't *demand* cupcakes, certainly suggested VERY strongly that cupcakes should be ingested.)  No, they weren't Paleo cupcakes. No, they were NOT Zone approved.  They were the awesome kind, with frosting and everything. The kind that goes straight to my ass and gut. The kind that you can feel when you start jumping rope for the first time in about a week. The kind you can feel almost instantly when you hit the treadmill at a dead run. The good kind of cupcake, which also means the evil kind. The only kind.

For the warm-up, I did the first two rounds of overhead squats using the jump-rope (also working on shoulder dislocates with it), and the final round with the barbell. Double-unders are starting to come along. I was trying to work in different patterns of single-bounce/double-under combinations, just trying to master the ability to go back and forth, as well as really hammering down double-under technique. Going slow then fast and back hopefully keeps me from going too fast. Either way, I got a couple of good links (11 during the 2nd set), and several 5s and 6s. Progress!

I did the Burgener warm-up twice before practicing the push press and sumo deadlift high pull (SDLHP), and decided to stick with the prescribed weight of 95#. Heavy, but not unmanageable for either lift. Push presses felt good for the first few sets, while pull-ups fell apart pretty quickly. By the third round, I had scaled the movement to jumping chest-to-bar pull-ups. It's always interesting to watch time speed up as you fatigue, and what seemed like an infinitely long 5 minutes when your lungs start burning has suddenly started racing by as you struggle to complete just one more set.

95# Push-Press/Pull-Up Couplet: 60 reps

Knowing that push-ups are a bit more in my wheelhouse than pull-ups, I had grand plans for the second couplet. While the 5 minute rest was just long enough to get a bit boring (I want to go NOW!), it was also just short enough to NOT let me completely recover. Yeah, I know, recovery should be measured in seconds, NOT minutes. Hopefully soon. Not yet, however. About halfway through the 3rd round of the second couplet, I knew I was in trouble. I was shooting for 90 reps (optimistically) and 80 more realistically.  As it turned out, I felt proud to grind out 72 reps. By about rep 50, I just wanted to lie on my back and look up at the narrow strip of sky visible through the glass roof. I fought that urge and continued slogging through... and now had only the same too long/too short 5 minutes to prep for the 800m run.

95# SDLHP/Push-Up Couplet: 72 reps

I started the treadmill at 10mph, hoping to be able to run the entire distance. However, my lungs fairly well exploded about halfway through. I found this interesting, since most of the distances I've run lately have been 400m. It turns out the body really IS very good at adapting at what you throw at it, and moving to an 800m distance clearly knocked the bloody hell out of me. After taking a few seconds to recover, I dropped the speed to 7.6 mph, a loping jog I can easily maintain. Easily. OK, I have an ok chance of NOT bonking "running" at that speed. It ain't fast, but it gets me where I'm going.

800m run: 3:05

11-02-09: Sumo Deadlift High Pull - Hang Power Clean - Knee to Elbow MetCon

CrossFit Garden City WoD for January 27, 2011
Warmup:
Burgener WU

Skill:
20 mins of goal/skill practice

• Jump rope
• Ring work

Conditioning: 4 rounds for time:

• 250 meter row 20 Sumo Deadlift High-Pulls 75#
• 10 Hang Power Snatch Clean 75#
• 15 KTE's

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Sumo Deadlift High-Pull. These start to suck very quickly. Done correctly, its the opening of the knee and hips that fire the bar off the ground, and the arms mostly serve to keep the bar from smashing into your mouth. Several reps in, it becomes much harder to keep that happening when your lungs are full of razor-wire. (CrossFit Central Runtex)

Nicole Carroll demonstrating the three main positions in the hang power snatch: 1) the slight closing of the hip that drops the weight down a bit, but which allows 2) the aggressive opening of the hip, driving the bar up, as well as a huge shrug to keep it moving, allowing 3) the catch in the rack position. The partial squat on the catch is optional, but increasingly necessary as the weights get heavier. (Team CrossFit Academy)

Yeah, they look fun. Until you realize the grip requirements, and that you've already done a crap-ton of work before you get here. Yeah. Fun. (CrossFit Santa Cruz Central)

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Started out with the Burgener Warm-Up, followed by @20 minutes (untimed) of alternating bouts of jump-rope and ring work. Knocked out a set of 7 dips, a new PR by 2. Did some more work on my false grip, as well as pull-up progression work. Had some very good speed on my single bounces and running steps on the jump-rope, but couldn't seem to get much past 20 jumps before getting snarled up. I'm working on both shortening the rope AND keeping my hands more to the side (rather than out front), to address issues I've been seeing in the rope path, so its probably just those things coming into play. I also played with some lat pull-ups, where from a full dead-hang position you engage the lats, pulling the body up only by a few inches, but the arm/torso angle actually closes a bit. (This was _stupid_ to do before a workout involving 60 knee-to-elbows, btw. Very bad workout design on my part...)

Since our ONE rowing machine is currently out of commission, I had to substitute SDLHPs for the rowing, which is a fairly standard sub. However, since we only have one straight bar, whatever I was going to be using the for the snatches (reading really IS FUNdamental. I just screwed up and didn't read/comprehend what the workout actually called for. Sillyness abounded today, apparently.) cleans was also going to be on the SDLHPs. I decided 75# would make an ok compromise, which ended up being more or less true.

This workout was amazingly awful almost from the get-go. Put simply, I wanted to quit before the end of the first round, and with students waiting to do their "squats" on the Smith machine (which I was using for the K2Es), I had ample opportunity and excuse. I took neither and finished the workout for the full 4 rounds. I was fighting back that bastard Pukie for most of the final two rounds, but still...


Total Time: 20:10

11-01-13: Sumo deadlifts, sumo deadlift high-pulls and push-ups

CrossFit Garden City WoD for Tuesday, January 11th, 2011
 
Warmup:
Jump rope - fast single bounce, fast run, some double-under work
Dynamic Warmup
Ring work while fresh - dips and control position, knee tucks
Strength:
Sumo Deadlift 5 x 5

Conditioning:
AMRAP in 10 minutes:

• 7 x Sumo Deadlift High Pull (85#)
• 7 x Pushups

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Sumo deadlift. Wide stance, hands close together. Another way to suffer. (crossfit milpitas)

Sumo deadlift high pull.  Elbows HIGHER than hands. Bar is lifted by the drive out of the bottom with the legs, not REALLY by the arms/shoulders in a pull. (crossfit queen anne)

Push-ups. Of a sort. Bottom position is hips-chest-chin to the ground. No half push-up horseshit. Top position is arms completely extended. No half push-up horseshit. STRICT planche position (hips straightened out, ie UNLIKE Annie in the middle of the pic) the WHOLE time. No half push-up horseshit. (crossfit.com for one of my favorite pictures of all time, from the video link above, one of the greatest videos of all time. And YOU thought push-ups were boring...)

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After another fun day of shoveling snow, including some seriously heavy lifting where a snowplow clipped the old snowbank (now seriously compacted ice) into the driveway, necessitating a crap-ton of shovel deadlifts, it was time to work out yet again.

Some jump-rope to warm up, mostly single bounces, working on the speed of the rope, as well as focusing on really turning it with just my wrists. I definitely think I need to adjust the rope again, as there is just way too much overhead, and so probably way too much on the ground when it goes underneath. Ugh.

After some dynamic stretching, I jumped straight on the rings, rather than waiting until after the workout.  Getting on fresh, I was able to hold a fairly solid control position, and even did two ring dips in a row. Wobbly, weak looking ring dips, but hey, I'm counting them!


I've done a fair share of sumo deadlift high-pulls over the past few months, but haven't actually done the heavy weight deadlift-only part of the move. Looking around online, that lack of experience might have cost me a bit, as it looks like the high-pull version of the hand-grip (about as far apart as if you had both thumbs extended and touching) is NOT what everyone does for the deadlift. Not a huge concern.  I opted for the beginner scaling offered by CF GC, since I am not well versed in the movement.  Rather than working up to a heavy 1 rep max, I would just do 5 sets of 5, with increasing weight for each set. After warming up with the empty bar at 35#, then 55#, I jumped up to 105#, then finished the warm-up with 125#.

Sumo deadlift, 5x5: 145#, 165#, 185#, 195#, 205#

My goal was to make it up and over 200#, a fairly arbitrary goal, not having worked this motion heavy before, but with a known 1RM on my standard deadlift of 285#, I wanted them to at least be in the same ballpark.  I haven't 1RM'ed the deadlift in a very long time at this point, so hopefully it's even higher now (fairly strong is a 2x bodyweight deadlift, so 420-430# for me).

After pulling the weight off the bar, I practiced a few sumo deadlift high-pulls, focusing on really exploding out of the bottom, so that the weight was almost floating up in my hands, rather than having to pull the bar up. Of course, that didn't work quite so well once I loaded up the bar. I opted for 85#, a little less than RX'ed, but I knew my lungs would explode anyways...

First two rounds were done inside of a minute, but after that, things started slowing down dramatically. Though I was able to complete each set of exercises unbroken, moving from one to the other started taking more and more time. I was shooting for at least 12 rounds, and fell rather short at 9 rounds completed (probably overtime.  It was most likely more like 8 rounds + 7 SDLHPs and 2-3 push-ups, but I forced through the final round as fast as possible, so I'm counting the full 9.)  Form on the SDLHPs started getting real squirrely in the final two or three rounds, so I really had to slow down and make sure I wasn't rounding my back in the bottom, or really starting to haul up on the bar. While that slowed down my overall speed, it was really the 'don't fall over and die' time to gasp between rounds that slowed me down completely. The muscular endurance and metabolic conditioning are definitely two HUGE gaps in my armor at this point, which *hopefully* implies they are also the things getting worked the hardest, and therefore improving the fastest.  It's just impossible to tell from inside of it.

Push-ups were solid the whole way through. If I'm still down on my met-con abilities, I am LOVING the fact that I can cue up 63 push-ups with full ROM and decent explosiveness.  Not so long ago, I would have run out of push-ups completely at about 20.  This made for a VERY nice change!

AMRAP 10 minutes: 9 rounds

10-07-13: "Fight Gone Bad"

CrossFit WoD for July 13th, 2010

Three rounds of:

• Wall-ball, 20 pound ball, 10 ft target (Reps)
• Sumo deadlift high-pull, 75 pounds (Reps)
• Box Jump, 20" box (Reps)
• Push-press, 75 pounds (Reps)
• Row (Calories)

In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute.The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. On call of "rotate", the athletes must move to next station immediately for best score. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower where each calorie is one point.

Add your points and post them to comments.

OK, first, issues with timing.  Since it was just "J" and I, we had to rely on his stopwatch to tell us when to change.  That being the case, and the fact that we might not hear it when it first went off (over the sound of ragged breathing, clanking weights, and/or the rowing machine), we opted to add in a 10 second buffer between each minute.  So, each round had an extra 40s total.  As a result, our numbers can't be considered "official" as per the instructions above.  Oh well.

Also, the rowing machine picked today to have the batteries in the ergometer die, so instead of accurately measuring calories, I decided that four pulls = one calorie.  That's my decision, I'm sticking with it.  Also, so as to not have both of us trying to use the one weight bar at the same time, I opted to start with the rowing, and rotate the workout accordingly.

Exercise	Round 1	Round 2	Round 3
Rowing	10	12	9
Wall-Ball	38	28	23
SDLHP	20	10	12
Box-Jumps	17	13	13
Push Press	15	15	15

Total score: 250 (That's pretty cool!)

All in all, this was a pretty awful workout, given that the room was (again), pushing 95 degrees or so, and easily 100% humidity.  The number of broken sets skyrocketed in about the 3rd or 4th exercise, much less in the later rounds.  Like trying to suck wind in a bowl of pudding.  Ugh...

Also, this marked my first attempt at box jumps since my patellar tendonitis flared up all those months ago. I figured I had to go for them... rowing and SDLHPs are both of the known replacements for box jumps and double-unders, so, since they were already worked in, I had nothing to sub with.  So, I did it as Rx'ed. Updates as they occur with the knees.  yay!