2009: New Year, New Goals

Well 2008 was a year of ups and downs, wouldn't you say?  National Up: first black president (maybe now Europe will talk to us again?) National Down: big ol' economic collapse.  Personal Up: Finished Danskin; badass husband and kid continue to put up with me.  Personal Down: well, actually, I've had it pretty good, and so far the people closest to us are weathering the economic storm pretty well (I'm knocking on wood here), but I did lose two personal chef clients within a month of each other, so that was a bit of a bummer.  

You know what is definitely NOT a bummer?  Crossfit.  Post-Danskin exercise has been almost entirely crossfit directed.  It looks like my gym is going to start offering crossfit classes, led by Kevin who got his Level 1 cert a few months back.  Kettlebells, ropes, rings...all a few minutes from my house?  Now THAT would be a dream come true.  In the meantime, I've been pretty good about getting a regular WOD thing going a couple times a week, but I'm definitely seizing the new year as a new opportunity to step up my training.

I was asked to join the team of a local crossfit gym that wants to participate in the regional qualifiers for the games, which was really flattering except the invite came BEFORE the gym owner realized I'm probably not quite *that* fit.  I'm like, normal people fit.  I'm not crossfit games qualifier fit.  I'm barely normal crossfit fit.  But it's an interesting idea as a goal....and would require SERIOUSLY stepping up my commitment level while not driving myself into overtraining exhaustion like last year.  That was really not fun.  

Found Dave Werner's (Level 4 Crossfit in Seattle) amazing set of skill benchmarks, and once again am humbled by how far there is to go in the pursuit of increasing fitness.   Looking forward for 2009, basically, I'd like to be able to check off the Level II - Intermediate Athlete Skill Goals by the end of the year. Some things are going to be pretty doable (100 free squats)...some are going to be a lot harder (body weight bench press), but I think the goals are reasonable.

So, without further ado, here are my specific 2009 New Year's Goals:

Deadlift.  Right now, it's seriously weak.  I think I can pull 155.  That's bodyweight.  Level II benchmark calls for a 1.5x pull, and I want to eventually be able to deadlift 2x bodyweight, which would be 310 pounds.  Why?  Because I suck at these now, and I hate sucking at things.

Push-Ups: Also a suck-fest for me, especially as I have spent so much time developing my pull-ups.  Push-ups have not been getting the love.  So I'm committing (with Nick) to the 100 Push-Up Challenge.  This should have my push-ups in way better shape in a mere 6 weeks!

Core Strength: I actually thought my core strength was pretty good, and I was able to hold an L-sit for 10 seconds the other day at Local's Gym with Jesse.  That's the minimum for Level I Fitness...gonna have to add 20 seconds to that for Level II.  To help out with core stuff, I'm gonna do the 200 Sit-Up Challenge with Nick.  This is mostly just cause it's convenient to interleave the sit-up challenge with the pull-up challenge.  And, I figure a bunch of sit-ups can't hurt.

Muted Hip: I have a serious problem muting my hip in dynamic movement.  This comes through in my push-press, power clean (oh boy does it ever show in the power clean) and my deadlift....it's a serious problem and I have come to believe the I'm going to have to get a way better handle on it before any substantial gains will be seen in the deadlift.  Plus getting a better explosive hip opening will probably do tons for my thrusters, swings, etc.  Basically, I attempt to turn any action that should be generated by force at the glute /hip into a squat, where I can transfer the stress to my quads, back and (gasp) knees.  Sound bad?  It is.  2009 is all about fixing it.  Ironically, the one exercise where I don't do this is, in fact, the squat.  My squat ain't bad.