11-12-19: 1RM Cleans and Front Squats

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Monday, December 19th, 2011

The clean. Floor to shoulders, using just about every muscle in the body EXCEPT the arms (other than just for control). If you're using your arms a lot, you're doing it wrong.Note pictures 2-3... the weight hasn't moved much, only the lifter has. And his arms are STRAIGHT in the 2nd pic.

Brett Marshall (AFT) demos awesome front squat form. The weight is out of the hands and riding on the delts. Knees are out, feet are flat on the floor. Perfection. (crossfit.com)

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Strength: 1 Rep Max

• Clean
• Front Squat

Pretty simple prescription: Work up to 1 rep maxes on the clean, then on the front squat (ie, NOT in the same move; a full clean (which includes catching the bar in a full squat) does NOT count as the front squat attempt.) After a good amount of warm-up and review with empty bars, we set to work. Despite all of my recent complaining and whining about my own shortcomings and goats, especially the olympic lifts, including cleans, today felt really good. I felt like I was really popping the bar up to my shoulders using mostly the triple extension of hips, knees and ankles, and I was having some pretty good success dropping under the bar, rather than just relying on firing up to full standing height in a power clean. So that was all good.  As I climbed up in weight, I just trying to keep my head fully in the moment, only worrying about the deadlift "yellow light" portion of the lift, then the explosive pop, then the catch, and not getting all flustered by dealing with everything at the same time. 

After a few warm-ups at 95#, I started moving up in weight. I had two good lifts at 115# and 135#, then matched my previous PR at 155#. That felt so good with my improved form, I shot to 175# and nailed it, setting a 20# PR. After taking a few minutes, I tried for a final attempt at 185#, but didn't quite get under the bar properly, causing it to "stack up" on my left wrist wrong. Though I was able to shake it out in time for the front squats, it definitely made me bring my clean attempts to an end!

For the front squat, I picked right up at 185#, banging out two reps easily. I again started climbing, this time gunning for my previous PR of 215#. After a rep at 205#, I went to 225# and nailed it. I tried a rep at 235# and nailed it, putting me at a 20# PR on front squats, too. After nearly deciding to quit (it was time for the next class to come in), I opted for one more lift, this time at 245#. I nailed it, inking in a 30# PR on front squats for the day. Not a bad start to the week, and a welcome change from my usual bitching and moaning, at least in recent posts. Progress. Getting stronger. THIS is why we do this. No, its NOT always fun, but on days like this (or when I got to the top of the climbing rope, or broke 300# on my deadlift), its totally worth it!

One other thing I thought of later: I had NO problems with my grip on this workout. Granted, I didn't do any high reps on the front squats, so there wasn't a lot of time for fingers to slip out.  I also did some triceps work during the warm-up, which I think definitely paid off. Interesting. 

11-12-16: Box jumps and double-unders

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Friday, December 16th, 2011

High box jumps. We didn't go anywhere near this tall, but worked in with double-unders, that makes total sense. (CrossFit Roots, Denver CO)

Double-unders. Its just jumping rope... I don't know why Brandy Richardson needs to make it look so much harder than it is. Show off. (crossfit.com)

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WoD: 3 Rounds for Time

• 1 Box Jumps (30")
• 10 Double-Unders
• 2 Box Jumps
• 20 DU
• 3 Box Jumps
• 30 DU
• 2 min Recovery

Some days you have double-unders, and others you start getting grateful for a single rep that doesn't result in you whipping the rope into your toes. Not so bad the first time, but the hundred and first time... well, its gotten old by then. This morning was a trainwreck, highlighting my need to do double-under work far more regularly, either as part of my warm-up or cool-down. I apparently don't have them strongly enough to put them away for a month, then come back and expect them to be there.

The first round started well enough. Easy big box jump, followed by 10 broken up double-unders, nothing too bad. Two more jumps, then a chain of 20 double-unders. Boo-yah, I'm back! Three more jumps, then a slightly broken up set of DUs, probably something like 6, 20, and 4 reps to get out of the round. My split time for the round was 2:15. It would be the last split I noticed.

The second round was... bad. After waiting 2 minutes, I jumped back in. Again, jumps weren't too bad at all. For this round, I think the most reps I strung together on the DUs was two... maybe three. Not bad for ten, but getting awful on the set of twenty, and sheer torture on the set of thirty. Little did I know that the 3rd round would be even worse.

Again, jumps were ok. As I struggled through the set of 10 DUs, most of the rest of the class finished. The stragglers were well done before I got out of the round of 20... and it was all me for the round of 30. I wanted to quit. I would have given anything to have been done and recovering. As it was, I had to have single-bounced enough between double-under attempts to have officially completed the scaled version of the WoD (2x singles for each Rx'd DU, so rounds of 20, 40, and 60 SUs.)  Either way, by the time I was done, my lungs were scorched, my calves were unhappy, and my will was crushed. Well, not crushed. Like I said, I know what to learn from this experience: Remedial rope work before or after every WoD, and some work on off-days, unless they are deemed pure recovery.


Total Time: 13:53

Note: While trying to find pictures for this installment, I came across a great post on beastmodaldomains about utilizing box jumps in a WoD, and tackling the issue of massive reps being very risky in terms of achilles ruptures. Suddenly, instead of wondering why we only did 18 total box jumps, I marvel at the intelligence of it. Sweet. Plus, it has several awesome pics, including my new favorite:

11-12-14: Olympic Total

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

Camille Leblanc-Bazinet at the bottom of the snatch catch... or in an overhead squat. Hard to say. 

Camille Leblanc-Bazinet sets up for the clean, getting the bar from the ground to her shoulders.

Heather Bergeron catches the clean in full "ass to grass" depth. I need to work on this some more. ;)

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Olympic Total: 30min cap (Three attempts at each lift)

• Snatch
• Clean & Jerk

Ah, the Olympic lifts. Skill, power, and massive amounts of suckage when not done correctly. My goal for today was to try to do the lifts as true to form as possible, meaning no power snatches or power cleans, but the full "squat" variety of each. As a result, my total numbers were nowhere near my "sloppy-as-I-needed-to-be" Personal Records. Oh well. 

After a thorough warm-up and refresher on the lifts using PVC pipes, we moved to the real bars. Goddamn they get cold in winter in an unheated gym! After warming up both lifts for a bit, I moved to 65# for a few reps on both, then 95# for a few reps. I started my snatch attempts at 115#, moved to 125#, failed once, then nailed it.  

After that, we moved to the clean & jerk. In the workout as prescribed, we were allowed to jerk out of the racks (ie, get the bar out of the rack in the front rack position, and jerk from there, rather than needing to clean the weight up.)  While doing that would have definitely improved my total, my main issue with the Clean & Jerk is the transition between the two, so I was more interested in working THAT and getting more experience in. After a success at 125#, I failed at 135#, then tried it again and nailed it. I found myself with some extra time, and made two attempts at 140#, and failed on both of them.

Snatch: 125#
C&J: 135#
Total: 260#

11-12-12: Ring rows, sit-ups and push-ups

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Monday, December 12, 2011

Ring rows: Though used as a scaling option for pull-ups, they are difficult in their own right, requiring and building lots of multi-planar support in the shoulders, torso, as well as the arm muscles, obviously.

Push-ups. Note the abmat next to her, conveniently for my needs. There is a dearth of cool pictures of people doing sit-ups on the interwebz.

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• WoD: 10!
  
  • Ring Row
  • Sit-up
  • Push-ups
• Sellout: 2x Failure
  
  • Dumbbell Hammer Curls

The factorial in the WoD description just means rounds of 10, 9, 8, etc... 

This is the workout I'm glad I *didn't* have on Friday: It actually felt pretty good.The ring rows and push-ups caught up with me pretty quickly, but not in a way that was too distressing. I pretty much wanted to die during the 2nd and 3rd rounds (9 and 8 reps, respectively), but as the rounds got shorter, the work got noticeably easier.

The upshot with ring rows is how infinitely scalable they really are. With your shoulders directly under the rings (and where the rings are anchored), the work is very difficult. But if you just walk a bit backward, putting a lateral component into the angle of the rings from the ceiling, the work load decreases dramatically. They can be performed from a nearly vertical position for extreme scaling, or flat parallel to the floor for a tougher workout. I was somewhere in the middle, flatter in the beginning... a bit more vertical by the end.

Push-ups were all completely legit, full ROM. Sit-ups were performed with an abmat, knees apart to minimize the contribution from the hip flexors. The ROM is defined by the back touching the floor, and the shoulders moving in front of the hip crease  at the top. While the push-ups were all broken into subsets after the first few rounds, I managed to keep the sit-ups unbroken. So at least there was that.

The sell-out was good old-fashioned body building, dumbbell curls. The prescripted weight was "heavy enough to limit the set to 8-12 reps." I got it fairly close, failing out at 13 reps on the first round, 14 on the second. This was using the 20# dumbbells. 25# probably would have been perfect, but I'm not too concerned about a couple of extra reps. At least I didn't bang out 20-25 and completely miss the point. So, again, at least there was that.

11-12-09: Clean and Jerk complex

Elm City CrossFit WoD for December 9th, 2011


The inspiration for today's workout. Damn, this guy is strong!

Natalie Burgener clean and jerks. She's kind of awesome. Comes with being a Burgener, I guess. ;)

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WoD:

• 1 Clean*
• 2 Front Squats
• 1 Jerk

Repeat until failure
*Start @ 70% Max C&J and increase by 5% each cycle. End @ 90%

First time back to the gym in over two weeks (holidays, a death in the family, work overload, capped off with a fun case of food poisoning... cue my 'world's saddest violins,' please!), and crap, was it a rough re-entry. Not just a day requiring strength... but a day requiring a great deal of skill, too, and NOT skills that I had locked in before. While I wasn't cleaning at weights that were too much of a stretch, it also never felt that great. I realized fairly far into the workout that I was power cleaning (not on purpose) so much, I was catching the bar without having moved my legs out, and with my knees straight. As high up as I possibly could, in other words. Doofus.

The front squats were easy as pie, again not being anywhere near my max weights, and the grip wasn't too much of a problem... until it came time to transition into the jerk. My grip/forearms aren't flexible enough to keep all my fingers under the bar... and as the pinky and ring finger slipped out, I was completely screwed trying to prep for the jerk. The only weight I was successful at was my starting weight of 115#. After a few reps of that in my first work set, I moved up another 5% towards my C&J max of 155# (set on another day when I was struggling with the exact same grip issues), to 125#. After several failed attempts, all at the jerk, and all because of trying to get my grip re-situated, I dropped back to 155# to at least get some work done going overhead. For the final few minutes of the workout, I made a few more attempts at 125#. Failed all of them at the jerk. Effin' grip.

So, I clearly need to work on the transition, and on my forearm/grip flexibility. It's no good having work that you can do, strength-wise, be completely undermined by something "small" like that. Of course, that's not entirely true, as most olympic lifts and their variations are equally dependent on strength as technique... but still...

The one "upshot" is thatI got my re-entry out of the way early. Had this workout gone fairly smoothly, like I hadn't missed a beat, only to have a train-wreck the next time... bah. Best to have it out of the way now. I guess. Dammit.

11-11-23: Bench press and double-unders

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

Bench press. 15-20 reps in, the smile has usually disappeared. Usually.

Floor presses. See notes below...

Double-Unders. Nothing I haven't already said about them before....

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• Buy-in: 5 x 4
  
  • Bench @ 87% 185#
• WoD: 6min AMRAP
  
  • 5 Floor Presses 155# 135#
  • 7 Double Unders

This was my first time NOT working out with the 5:30 a.m. crew. Turns out, I suck at setting my alarm clock at 11 p.m. at night. Rather than setting the MWF early morning alarm, I set the slightly later Tuesday alarm. That'll be handy next week when it finally goes off! Happily, there were plenty of friendly faces. (Yes, I was worried about not knowing anyone... pretty lame, but seriously.)

First up was bench presses, 5 sets of 4 reps, at about 5 rep max weights. Basically, the first several sets of 4 should be easy enough, but in terms of total volume, the chances are that the final set would be hard. In a good sign, the first 4 sets were increasingly difficult, but I finished all of them, only to fail on the final rep of the final set. Essentially, perfect weigh selection! After that, it was fun with a couplet involving floor presses and double-unders.

 Happily, the weight for this was lighter than for the bench presses, and floor presses automatically have a reduced range of motion. Easy, right? Heh. Tonight, I experimented with using a much lighter jump-rope on the double-unders. It was arguably easier to turn fast enough, but I had a lot of trouble stringing them together. Probably just a practice thing, because the actual individual double-unders themselves seemed a bit easier.

I ended up informally competing against Tom, one of our better endurance *and* strength athletes, who had also been my spotter (and I spotted him) on the bench presses. As it turns out, he was keeping tabs on me, too. Having already hit my limit on bench presses earlier, it was only a matter of time before the floor presses caught up with me. However, I was having better luck with the double-unders than Tom. At the end of 6 minutes, we were completely tied: 5 rounds + 5 floor presses.

11-11-21: Handstand Push-Ups and Burpees

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Monday, November 21st, 2011

Handstand Push-Ups. Or maybe just handstands. The more I try to find pictures for this blog, the more I start to hate the limitations of still photography. (That's not a very useful caption. Sorry!)

Yay burpees! I mean "Ah crap, burpees!" If only there was a way to scale-em... at least for those days where that might really help!

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WoD: 21-18-15-12-9-6-3

• HandStand Push-Ups (Band Assist)
• Burpees

Some days you just shouldn't even get out of bed. That was this workout. Even after the warm-up, I still felt tired and sore. I ended up choosing a fairly stout combination of bands for the HSPU, knowing there was just no way I had 84 reps stored away doing even half-way decent scaling. Turns out, it didn't matter that much: The burpees annihilated me. Dead. I bonked halfway through the first round of 21. Then things got ugly.

I came down out of the handstand on rep 15 of the second round, and knowing that I was already way far behind the rest of the class, decided to go with a "Fran-esque" round structure (21-15-9) but play with the end, depending on time/fatigue. As it was, there was a 20 minute cap on the workout, which I ended up being the only person to hit. My final output was as follows:


21 - 15 - 9 - 3 - 3 - 3 - 3

Translated into the original workout, that more or less becomes 21 - 18 -  15. (54 reps of each, total). Yup, I made it through a little more than the first half of the workout. With a heavy assist on the HSPUs and sheer death on the burpees. Solid.