Week 17: Front Squat, Swings, Shoulder Press

Had exactly 20 minutes to get in, get something done, and pick up my kid from Science Camp.

7 Rounds

3 Front Squat 65#

7 Plate/KB Swing 35#

3 Shoulder Press 65#

Then

500 meter row (1:59:7)

Week 17: Fran Modification

Nice lazy gym session since my kid is enrolled in full-day Science Camp...meaning homeschool vacation week for me!

Started with some basic strength moves. All 5 sets, 10 reps.

Deadlift - 95 #

Leg Press - 90# plate weight

Bench Press - 65#

All these felt good. The trick especially with the DL and bench was remembering NOT to block my breath...to do the "breathe while lifting" thing. Weight felt fine, no complaints from 2.0. It was nice to deadlift and just really focus on gluteal involvement over pulling anything heavy, actually.

Then I did the Fran, with modifications.

21-15-9

Thrusters - 45# bar

Pull-ups with medium band assist

Didn't time...the point was just to do it and keep form good. I'm not pushing for intensity.

Then I walked on the treadmill. 4 MPH with incline intervals between 3 and 6% grade. Shocking how brisk 4 MPH feels when you're pushing a lot more blood around your body.

Week 16: Functional Fitness Friday

Kevin's Friday Class...I bitched when I saw the set up. Mat's for sit ups and jump-ropes. The two exercises I CAN'T do. But we moved me to a ball for sit ups, and the jump ropes turned out to be single unders so those were fine. At this point my biggest concern with jumping rope isn't fear for the baby but concern that I'll pee from all that damn hopping.

So here's what he ran us through:

5 rounds, each round 3 minutes with one minute rest between rounds

In each 3 minute round, complete the following cycle as many times as possible:

20 swings (I used a 25# plate, the guys were stuck with a 45#!)

10 lunges (5 per side)

20 jump ropes

20 sit-ups

Most people, including myself, were coming in just shy of two rounds. Our youngest, fittest guy was pulling out just over 2 rounds, so I think this particular workout was just speed limited.

After this workout I DID NOT feel good. The speed sit-ups bothered me, and the intensity push in general left me feeling tight and pained all across my lower tummy area. NOT ok. The ball sit-ups I did the day before in core class were identical, but not nearly as quick, so I think the motion itself wasn't as much the problem as how quickly it was performed. So I'm definitely backing down intensity in class from here on out. On my own it's not a problem to pace myself more, but in class I get all excited and want to push harder...but it's so not worth it. The tight feeling was really scary and I don't want to risk anything.

Week 16: Core Class & 45# bar WOD

Kevin's core class...no problems, including ball sit-ups, but back extensions weren't possible and I modified with some ass dip thing Kevin told me to do. Otherwise all ok.

Then:

3 rounds, 15 reps per exercise

Front Squat - 45#

Shoulder Press - 45#

Pull-Ups - small band assist

Swings - 35#

Good Mornings - 45#

16 weeks: Step Up, Squats, Dips & Swings

16 weeks.

30-20-10

Step Up - 18"

Back Squat - 65#

Bench Dips

Swings - 35# Plate

Cindy - Pull-ups/Push-ups/Squats

"Cindy"
Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
15 Squats

20 rounds + 1 pullup

Double Under and Sit-ups

50-40-30-20-10

Double Unders

Sit-ups

13:38. This was pure crap.

21-15-9 Rower/Swings

21-15-9

52 # KB Swings

Calories on Rower

4:44

Love this one!

Thrusters, Pull-ups, DU's

For Time:

15-12-9

Thrusters, 65#

Pull-ups

Double Unders

8:59

Death by 50

50 swings, 53#

50 Deadlifts, 135 #

50 Wall ball, 8 # to 12' mark

50 burpees

How long? Who knows...too damn long. Deadlifts were nuts. Did the last 10 on pride and nothing else.

PM: "Kelly"

As Rx:

Five rounds for time of:
Run 400 meters
30 Box jump, 24 inch box
30 Wall ball shots, 20 pound ball

Messed up the order, so this is As Completed:

Five rounds for time of:
30 Box jump, 18 inch box
Run 400 meters
30 Wall ball shots, 10 pound ball

25:54, I think??

I timed this on my watch, but I see now that somehow my watch got bumped and the timer function restarted, so I do not have my exact time. Curses! I know I was just under the 26 minute mark cause I threw myself into the final 15 wall balls like a crazy person to be sub-26.

I will say, this felt really hard. Like, after round three I looked around and said, "I could just stop now" and seriously thought about it for a good 10 seconds. Then I ponied up and started jumping. But I don't usually pause to think about quitting, so I know this was a hard one.

The wall balls weren't too bad, (but then I was using half the Rx weight, at 20# I'd probably be dead by now) but the box jumps just smoked me, even at 18". I think the box jumps immediately after the wall ball was pretty evil...not sure if the Rx order would be any easier, though.

It's also totally possible I am feeling the night 'o' indulgence and the afternoon of sampling baked goods. I can certainly tell I'm not fueled up the way I have been, which is an interesting observation and good modivation to get back to a comfortably dialed-in diet asap. A few days of indulgence are fine, but not at the cost of crappy WOD times, yo! :)

Ok, I just went and checked mainsite and actually around 26 minutes isn't that horrible for this WOD, so I feel better. Seems like I'm not the only person who thinks this workout was super hard.

AM: Overhead Squat 5 x 5

Yup, pretty simple.

Overhead Squat 5 x 5. I love 5 x 5 strength workouts...feels like the perfect middle ground between max effort and "hey this is getting kinda boring."

Warmed up with the bar, then ran right up the weight stack, incrementing by 5 pounds:
75 - 80 - 85 - 90 - 95 - 100 - 105 (failed, twice)

So actually I did 6 rounds, and attempted a 7th, but couldn't hold on to 105 pounds overhead.

PM: Wall-ball + 400 meter + Burpees

Fridays are the best because I get to Crossfit in a group setting with Kevin acting as coach, which is a rare treat.

So this evening Kevin came up with a "Kelly"-esque WOD:

5 Rounds for time

21 Wall Ball Shots, (I used the soft 10# dynamax ball because I really didn't want to have one of the hard balls smack me in the face a few days before Amanda takes my pics.)
400 meter run
10 burpees


So I REALLY need to stop drinking tea right before a WOD. I had to stop after round 3 to go pee. Seriously, I stopped my workout to duck into the bathroom. Took 18 seconds and I will admit that I skipped handwashing just this once. I know, eeeeww, but I was on the freaking clock, and I washed immediately after I finished.

My time was a hair over 18, including the potty break. 18:08 I want to say. The runs were hard, but I tried not to run like a prancing deer (Kevin schooled me last week for...um...dorsiflexing, I think? Toe pointing down, basically) while still keeping a strong POSE leg pull. But probably I was just slogging through however I could by the end. The same folks showed up this week as last week, and it was nice to put up a good time (I came in first) in front of the group after getting my ass handed to me last week.

AM: 30 Muscle Ups for Time

WOD as Rx:

30 Muscle-ups for time

Post time to comments.

If you cannot do the muscle-ups do 120 pull-ups and 120 dips.

So as I cannot do a muscle-up, I did 120 pull-ups and 120 bar-dips (previously I have done this as bench dips, so bar dips was quite a jump). I partitioned into 20 sets of 6 each, starting with pull-ups. For the first 11 sets I was cruising. From 12 on my dips got ragged, and I resorted to jumping bar-dips as neccesary, which was quite a bit on the last 3 rounds or so.

Total time: 18:06

Spin + Glute Workout

Today was a Crossfit rest day but I missed Monday Spin because it was a holiday and Sue called in a sub for class who just doesn't work for me. Besides, with the day off for Nick and Bella, no one in the family was up and moving at 9:00 anyway. So I wasn't about to miss the Wednesday class, rest day or no.

AM: Spin Class with Sue. 60 minutes, great as usual. Hills, intervals, the usual. Felt a bit easier than it sometimes does, though I did drip buckets of sweat by the time I was done, so maybe that's just selective memory talking.

PM: After work I did an Oxygen magazine glute workout at home. It was good. I'm a bit dismayed over how little and flat my ass has gotten. I kind miss the junk, you know? So I thought maybe a little extra targeting would help re-round my tush, but I'm not sure "targeting" is really my thing anymore.

To be clear, it wasn't a bad workout. There were walking lunges and mule kicks and other very effective moves. It's just that it felt...kinda...boring. I know I don't flinch at doing 50 squats, but 15 reps of unweighted mule kicks somehow felt tedious. I think Crossfit has spoiled me to body-part specific routines. Again, it's not that I didn't get a little sweat going or that my muscles didn't have to work...they did. But it's just not as fun to me to methodically work the same muscle from 14 different angles. Different strokes, I guess.

"Barbara"

Barbara

Five rounds, each for time of:
20 Pull-ups
30 Push-ups
40 Sit-ups
50 Squats

Rest precisely three minutes between each round.

Round 1 - 4:34

Round 2 - 4:32

Round 3 - 4:27

Round 4 - 3:38

Round 5 - 4:27

Run 5K

The Crossfit WOD today was run 5 K for time.

I warmed up with about 500 meters on the rower (maybe more, not exactly sure) then moved over to the treadmill for an interesting hill workout.

I'll try to explain what I did....

Started the treadmill at 15% grade (REALLY steep) and 5.5 mph. I ran 1/10 of a mile like that, then decreased the speed to somewhere around 4 mph and recovered for 1/10th of a mile. For the next 1/10th, I decreased the grade to 14% and increased the speed to 5.7. Ran for 1/10, recovered for 1/10. After every run/recover cycle the grade went down by 1% and the speed went up by .2 mph. This went on for 3 miles, until by the end I was sprinting at 0% grade.

Total time was around 30 minutes, but I didn't write down the exact time.

5 x 8 Squat + Sit-ups + Sumo Box Jumps + Swings

Crossfit Total came up today. I knew that I wasn't in a good position to go heavy....the last cycle of workouts that culminated in Kevin's Clean & Jerk-Run WOD practically killed me. One day of rest wasn't really enough, and I certainly wasn't going to drag my ego through the mud of a 50# drop off my PR in my CFT. Which is what would have happened.

So instead, I did this:

5 rounds for time:

8 reps Squat - 135#
8 Sit-ups
8 Sumo Squat Box Jumps
8 DB Swings - 50#

10:23

For the first 2 rounds I did 8 push-ups after the box jumps, but after that I forgot about them, so I'm not listing them. Total time includes the extra 16 push-ups, though.

After that WOD, I felt pretty warmed up so I worked on some strength stuff.

Bench x 8
65, 85, 90, 95, 100, 100

Deadlift x 8
135, 145 (6+2), 145, 145

Deadlift x 1
225, 230 (Fail), 225

Then some skill work:
100 double unders for time: 6:23

PM: DB Clean & Jerk+ Running WOD

Crossfit class with Kevin...after "Twins" this morning, I just wanted something hard and fast....like 5 minute fast, preferably involving no shoulder work.

No such luck.

5 Rounds for Time
35# DB Clean & Jerk
400 meter run

17:03

I was 7 seconds away from being dead last of four on this WOD...and I only moved into next-to-last on the last round of running, about 50 meters away from the end. Sheer pride and force of will forced me to sprint it out at the end. My already dubious finish was further blunted by the fact that the guy I passed was 71 years old and immediately after class went on an 15 (ish) mile bike ride to Woodenville to get go get dinner with his wife.

I would have felt supremely sucky were it not for the fact that I was very much at the end end end of my three day training cycle.

Doing the cleans was okay but hurt my wrist. About 1 time of 3 I failed on the jerks....sheer muscle fatique just overrode almost everything.

And my runs were pretty weak. Kevin said he needs to teach me to run. Apparently I run like a deer...all leapy. I may have over-corrected my heel stride. Shit! One of these days I will figure out how to run, I swear! Agh.

So the cleans did leave me with nasty little bruise pattern:


Yeah, that's not pretty.

AM: "Twins"

Well the Glassmans, the founders of Crossfit, gave birth two two healthy baby boys. So, to honor the new arrival, this WOD came at us:

"Twins"

as Rx
Two rounds, of each couplet, for time of:
750 meter Row
20 Handstand Push-ups

115 pound Thruster, 20 reps
20 L-Pull-ups

as Performed:
Two rounds, of each couplet, for time of:
750 meter Row
20 Handstand Push-ups (2-3" depth...far, far from full range of motion)

75 pound Thruster, 20 reps
20 Pull-ups
20 Knees-to-Elbows (or knees-to-armpits, as it were)

23:46

Thrusters were tough...rx weight for women was 85#. I am okay with doing the 75# weight.