Month: July 2014

WOD July 30, 2014

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I should have really done my strength program today, but I saw the WOD and couldn’t resist.

Strength

EMOM For 8 Mins:

– 1 Clean & Split Jerk

My workout
First 2 at 65 lbs, next 3 at 75 lbs and last 3 at 80 lbs.

WOD

For Time:

– 30 Hang Power Cleans #115/75

– 30 Thrusters

*3 Burpee penalty everytime the bar touches the ground

My workout
I used 65 lbs. Did first 15 power cleans unbroken, then 3 burpees, 10 power cleans, 3 burpees, 5 power cleans + 3 thrusters. Then I did 5×5 thrusters with burpees in between. There was a 10 minute timecap and I finished with 28 thrusters.

WOD July 29, 2014

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I decided to join in on the normal WOD yesterday, because I missed doing them so much! It was a good decision, because I loved it!

WOD

2 Rounds For Time:

– 100 Double Unders (3 min cap)

– 80 KB Swings

– 60 Box Jump Overs #24/20

– 40 Pull Ups

– 1 KB Carry

My workout
We had a 35 min timecap.. or around 35 minutes… Rich couldn’t find the remote so we didn’t really have the clock… but it was somewhere in between 30 and 40 minutes haha. So let’s just say it was 35. I did the kb swings and carry with a 12kg kettlebell and I did the pull ups with a medium band. I got to 62 of the second round of kb swings. I was very happy with my double unders! Not only did I manage to finish the 100 within the 3 minute timecap in both rounds, but on the first round I managed to hit a pr on unbroken doing 46. Grr, almost 50!! I got the technique down perfectly now, so now it’s just stamina that’s preventing me to keep going. I think it’s a breathing thing as well…. I’m going to try to focus on my breathing next time I do double unders and see if that makes a difference, because I have a feeling that I’m holding my breath when I do them.

But yay! I felt so great after this WOD. It was exhausting and grueling, but that is just the way we crazy crossfitters like them! Haha.

Wendler Week 1, Day 3, Back Squat + Week 2, Day 1, Shoulder Press

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After being lazy all weekend it was time for some work again. I started with the back squat.

week1day4

I joined in with the class for the warm up. They were doing 3 sets of 20(!!) back squats for their workout. Was tempting to join in with them, but I stuck to my program.. :).

In between the sets I did 3 strict pull ups (so 3×3 total).

Squats are the hardest of the 4 movements for me I think.

After the squat I went straight into the week 2 program for the Shoulder Press.

week2day1

It was quite heavy with 60! Hope I can do a bit more next time.

For assistance work I did

  • 20 one legged squats from box (1o each leg)
  • 10×2 dips
  • 10×2 pull ups

Afterwards I practiced some more with the pistol squats. Trying to do them from the ground properly. I can do them coming down to parallel, but whenever I break parallel for a proper squat I fall flat on my ass or simple can’t get back up haha.

Today I’m going to join in on the normal WOD. Kind of miss them!!

No box all weekend

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Three days rest! They say you shouldn’t have more than 2 rest days in a row. Uh oh!! On Friday I went to a birthday straight after work and therefore missed out on a workout. I had planned to go on Saturday morning, but I had to get to Torremolinos to help my brother in law move furniture a bit earlier than expected so wasn’t able to go to the box first.

But, on Saturday I spent the morning from 9am to 1:30pm carrying boxes and furniture in 30 degrees celcius, so I think I had my workout for that day just fine haha.

I have no excuse for Sunday though. I didn’t even go for a walk or a run or a swim or a kayak. I was just.. very, very lazy.

It wasn’t without CrossFit altogether though. Because this weekend the CrossFit Games took place, which is the International competition to find the “Fittest” on earth. I love watching all those powerhouses do workouts that they make look easy, but of which you know that they are so, so hard.

It is crazy how much work they have to do in just a few days. This was their (the individuals) program for this competition.

Wednesday, July 23rd

THE BEACH
For time:
Swim 250 yards
50 kettlebell thrusters  (35 / 24 lb.)
30 burpees
Swim 500 yards
30 burpees
50 kettlebell thrusters  (35 / 24 lb.)
Swim 250 yards

OVERHEAD SQUAT
1-rep-max overhead squat

Athletes will each have 3 attempts.

Friday, July 25th

TRIPLE 3
For time:
Row 3,000 meters
300 double-unders
Run 3 miles

SPRINT SLED 1
Sled push for time (100 / 60 yards)

Time cap: 2 minutes

SPRINT SLED 2
Sled push for time (100 / 60 yards)

Time cap: 3 minutes

21-15-9 COMPLEX
For time:
8 deadlifts (155 / 115 lb.)
7 cleans (155 / 115 lb.)
6 snatches (155 / 115 lb.)
8 pull-ups
7 chest-to-bar pull-ups
6 bar muscle-ups
6 deadlifts (155 / 115 lb.)
5 cleans (155 / 115 lb.)
4 snatches (155 / 115 lb.)
6 pull-ups
5 chest-to-bar pull-ups
4 bar muscle-ups
4 deadlifts (155 / 115 lb.)
3 cleans (155 / 115 lb.)
2 snatches (155 / 115 lb.)
4 pull-ups
3 chest-to-bar pull-ups
2 bar muscle-ups

Time Cap: 7 minutes

Saturday, July 26th

MUSCLE-UP BIATHLON
For time:

400-meter run
18 muscle-ups
400-meter run
15 muscle-ups
400-meter run
12 muscle-ups

Each time the athlete breaks a set of muscle-ups they must run a 200-meter lap.

Time Cap: 18 minutes

SPRINT CARRY
For time:
Sprint 100 yards
100-yard carry (100 / 60 lb. cylinder)
Sprint 100 yards
100-yard carry (120 / 80 lb. sandbag)
Sprint 100 yards
100-yard carry (150 / 100 lb. cylinder)

CLEAN SPEED LADDER
This event will be broken into 3 rounds: Quarterfinal, Semifinal and Final. Athletes will be ranked by their time to complete each ladder, or by the heaviest weight cleaned.

Quarterfinal Round:
For time:
1 squat clean (245 / 155 lb.)
1 squat clean (255 / 160 lb.)
1 squat clean (265 / 165 lb.)
1 squat clean (270 / 170 lb.)
1 squat clean (275 / 175 lb.)

Time Cap: 2 minutes

Top 24 athletes advance

Semifinal Round:
For time:
1 squat clean (280 / 180 lb.)
1 squat clean (290 / 185 lb.)
1 squat clean (300 / 190 lb.)
1 squat clean (305 / 195 lb.)
1 squat clean (310 / 200 lb.)

Time Cap: 3 minutes

Top 8 athletes advance

Final Round:
For time:
1 squat clean (315 / 205 lb.)
1 squat clean (325 / 210 lb.)
1 squat clean (335 / 215 lb.)
1 squat clean (340 / 220 lb.)
1 squat clean (345 / 225 lb.)

Time Cap: 4 minutes

PUSH PULL
For time of:

7 handstand push-ups (deficit for men)
50-foot sled pull
8 deficit handstand push-ups
50-foot sled pull
9 deficit handstand push-ups
50-foot sled pull
10 deficit handstand push-ups
50-foot sled pull

Each round the deficit for the strict handstand push-ups increases. No kipping.

Time Cap: 11 minutes

Sunday, July 27th

MIDLINE MARCH
3 rounds for time of:
25 GHD sit-ups
50-ft. handstand walk
50-ft. overhead walking lunge (155 / 115 lb.)

THICK ‘N QUICK
For time:

4 rope climbs
3 overhead squats (245 / 165 lb.)

Time Cap: 4 minutes

DOUBLE GRACE
For time:

60 clean and jerks (135 / 95 lb.)

Time Cap: 7 minutes

The event begins 2 minutes after the time cap of Thick ‘n Quick.

And…. that was it! Haha. Can you image doing all that work?!! And some of these workouts they had no idea what it was going to be until a couple of hours or sometimes even a couple of minutes before they had to do it. These people are absolutely amazing! And sometimes a little crazy. Some people were struggling through injuries, which I’m not sure what I think about. I can imagine wanting to be able to continue in the competition, but CrossFit is an advocate of being fit and healthy and putting so much strain on an injury doesn’t look very healthy to me. But I guess any sport on competition level is not necessarily the most healthy in the first place. Anyway, it was mostly just extremely inspiring and fun to watch.

Wendler Week 1, Day 3, Bench Press

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week1day3

I think I was done with the bench press in less than 10 minutes! The weights felt so light….. But the final round I did only 8 reps… I didn’t have a spotter (could have asked someone, but for some reason felt stupid :s) so didn’t want to risk getting stuck under the bar hehe. But think I probably could have done 9 or 10.. but now I’ll never know. I don’t know why, but sometimes I feel awkward doing these things. I find it hard to take myself seriously, especially with such low weights and then I feel a bit embarrassed I guess. But I’m going to stick to this program!!

I did way less chin ups than programmed.. I just can’t do loads of them and I did them strict so I think this was ok. While I was driving home I realized that I should have done 3 reps strict and then do the other 2 eccentric. Will make sure to do that next time.

After the above work I finished with a 1km row (in 4 minutes 39 seconds).

Peaceful sea trip

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I didn’t have to start work until 3pm today and I was feeling a bit down (MH17 news is devastating) and felt that I needed some sea healing. Went for a nice trip with the kayak. The water was completely flat today! I saw loads of fishes and birds while on the water. One huuuuuge fish swimming underneath me (no idea what kind) and a big group of small fishes jumping out of the water right in front of me. I love being out at sea!!

 

wednesdayrow

It wasn’t as foggy as the pics make it out to be. Is just my phone being in a plastic water covered case.

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Can you see the two mountains in the back on the first picture? The one on the right is Gibraltar and the one on the left is Morocco!

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That building on the right is where I live. Right behind Playa del Cristo, Estepona’s nicest (and busiest) beach.

 

 

Wendler Week 1, Day 2, Deadlift

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Day 2 of my Wendler program covered the deadlift!

week1day2

I had a little bit less of a clear idea of what to do for assistance work this day. Wendler’s bodyweight template had GHR and leg raises listed, but I wasn’t sure if I could do GHR’s on a GHD so I thought I’d maybe have to swap those for Good Mornings. As it turned out I could do them on the GHD, kind of.. but they are a very new movement to me and I thought they were quite hard! So I did 5×5 of those. I wanted to do hanging leg raises after that, but…. I can’t really do them!!! I am so inflexible it’s not normal… I should practice them. I think they are the same as Toes to Bar, but without kipping. And pfff.. hard!!! So I switched to doing 10 good mornings (not sure why I didn’t try normal leg raises), but this is also a movement that I’ve only done once before and I don’t feel 100% confident that I’m doing it right, so after the first 10 I switched to front squats. So yea.. a bit of a messy day.

After the assistance work I did 50 russian twists with a 25lbs plate.

The deadlifts felt fine :).

Wendler Week 1, Day 1, Shoulder Press

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It was my first day of strength training and I loved it!

Shoulder press was on the program. I had to be a bit creative with the weights as the prescribed weights didn’t match the weights to my disposable exactly.

week1day1
(All weights are in pounds.)

The training itself felt really light. Too light to be honest. But I have to trust in Wendler. It’s all about the last set I guess. Going for max repetitions. I got to 10, which made me happy as it indicates a higher 1rm than the 70lbs that I’m on. I did the first warm up round with a dumbbell btw, as the lightest barbell we have is 15kg (33lbs).

The assistance work was actually harder than the training. I did 1 set of 10 pull ups first, with a medium resistance band so that I could do them strict. I think I will do them without a band next time and just do more smaller sets, like I did with the dips. The dips were ring dips and of course I can’t do 10 unbroken so I broke them up into 5 sets of 2, which went great! Then back to 10 pull ups. And then back to ring dips. I failed my last rep so did 9 total on the second round. I then did another round of pull ups and finished with 1 dip to get to 20 total.

After this I joined in on the WOD.

WOD

12 minute EMOM of 5 power cleans

My workout
I used 65 lbs, which I think is a bit too light for me, because it was very easy.

Sunday run

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I ate 2 whole Rittersport choclate bars and felt so guilty about it that I decided to go for a run. My gps was being a bit funky so I thought I ran over 5k, but after adjusting some of the weird off course gps points I ended up under 5k. Oh well. It was nice to be running again. I haven’t been running for ages and I’m always so bad at it during the WOD’s that I think it’s good to practice it a bit more often again.

sundayrun

 

I don’t think I’ll ever be a good runner, but I think I did ok, if you account for the fact that it was still 30 degrees outside!

 

Finding my 1 rep max

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Both my coach and my friend (my go-to fitness guru) think implementing Wendler as the schedule I posted earlier is a great idea. So now I just had to know my 1 rep max for the four movements to be able to get started with it. I already knew my shoulder press, because we did shoulder presses a week ago and my one rep max for that is 70 lbs. I never really tried for a one rep max back squat, but in a workout about 2 weeks ago the heaviest I could go was 135 lbs so I’m going to set that as my 1 rep max.

So then it was just the deadlift and bench press yet to be determined. I decided to skip the Saturday morning WOD and instead come in to find my 1 rep max. My four rep maxes are now set to be the following.

Shoulder Press 70 lbs (32kg)

Deadlift 175 lbs (79.5kg)

Bench Press 95 lbs (43kg)

Back Squat 135 lbs (61kg)

So these numbers are going to be what I will base the percentages of the Wendler workouts off. I can’t wait to get started!!

It’s also interesting to see, if I compare my maxes to this sheet of strength goals based on body weight, that I am on intermediate level with back squat and strict press, but not with deadlift and bench press.

strengthgoals

I can’t wait to see where I will be a couple of months from now!