Ok, so I’m going to try this. No idea how long I can keep it up. But want to aim for at least two weeks.
Snacks
Snacks
2 coffees
2+ liter water
I had a super long workday today, from 9am to 8pm and I was running late! I wanted to join the 8pm class (I thought I would be able to leave work 10 min early), but ended up arriving in the box at 8:15pm. It was super busy so I decided to just do my deadlifts instead. They were doing a 1RM back squat and since I already did that last week I wasn’t too interested to join in on that anyway.
I almost didn’t even go to the box, because I was soooooooo tired! Not normal… But the deadlifts went alright. Managed to get my rep goal :). I never really try to do more than my rep goal calculator tells me… it’s heavy enough… haha. But glad that I can always match it (on the deadlift at least).
5 x 115 lbs
5 x 135 lbs
8 x 155 lbs
Then I joined in for the second part of the WOD, which was….
Karen is 150 wall balls for time. Torture!!
My workout:
We had a 15 minute timecap and I didn’t manage to finish it :(. I managed to do 124 wall balls and all the burpees, which is 45 burpees in total. I really did push myself so much more than I would have done a couple of months ago though. I remember previous wall ball workouts and whenever there are a lot of them I usually used the 10 lbs ball. I used the 14 lbs ball now. And it felt quite light, but of course… that only lasts for a couple of reps and then it just starts hurting. Quite happy how I did, even though I do feel that I could have pushed a tiny bit harder to maybe be able to finish it in time. Always room to improve ;).
The book I just read had an interesting paragraph about this workout. On why it sucks so much haha. Let me share it here.
The benchmark WOD is 150 repetitions of a single movement: wall balls. The movement is not technically difficult—all you have to do is throw a 20-pound medicine ball (14 pounds for women) up to a target 10 feet in the air and catch it on the way down to a full squat. Explode out of the squat to launch the ball again. A hundred and forty-eight reps later, you’re done.
With every rep, the ball shoves you down, and you have to push back, only to get shoved down again. The essence of a shove, what makes it so demoralizing, is that you have to absorb force from something that’s not working very hard to generate that force. That’s why bullies shove. And while you’re being repeatedly shoved by a twenty-pound ball falling from ten feet in the air, your heart rate is maxing out. Your body wants a lot more oxygen than it’s getting.
The shortage of oxygen, plus the experience of being shoved, produces a groaning sense of awfulness. Not pain, in the sharp sense that pain is acute and local. It’s a global awfulness, a misery, like flu. The mind responds to this awfulness with a loud, dissonant drone of “just make it stop.” The only way to finish “Karen” in a reasonable amount of time is to mentally compartmentalize the horrifying totality of the task, ignore the mental imperative to stop, and just concentrate on the next few reps. When you can do that, you’ve learned how to keep moving past the siren song of comfort and relief to the finish. The benchmark time for “Karen” is a pretty good proxy for a person’s general ability to suck it up.
Excerpt From: J.C. Herz. “Learning to Breathe Fire.”
I went in on Sunday to start my new Wendler Cycle. After a deload week I had fresh energy to finally wack out some proper shoulder presses!!
5 x 50 lbs
5 x 55 lbs
8 x 65 lbs
So happy with that!! The weights were the same as the last week of last cycle and then I was only able to rep out 4 of the 65 lbs. So this is a huge improvement! I don’t believe I got much stronger in this week, but I was just much more focused and that is so important as well!
After this I played around finding my 1rm a little bit. I did 1 rep at 70 lbs, then 1 rep at 75 lbs and then failed twice trying to do 1 rep at 80 lbs.
After this we played around a bit trying muscle ups. I tried on the bar first… with a band.. I got one arm over the bar, but slipped from it (we didn’t have chalk). This was the closest I got because after that one I wasn’t even able to get my chest up to the bar. Tried a bit on the rings as well, but don’t even come close!!
After that I did a 8 min EMOM (I was lazy :p) of 3 dips (using stacked boxes) on the first minute and 2 pull ups + 2 chin ups on the 2nd minute. So 12 dips total and 8 pull ups and 8 chin ups. Then I finished with 25 push ups.
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Over the weekend I have been reading this book about CrossFit. It tells the story on how CrossFit originated and has some interesting stories on some of the well known CrossFitters today and how they came into the sport. It was a fun read. (Yes, I’m a geek and obsessed.)
I had a super lazy day on Saturday, basically hanging on the couch reading my book all day. (Ok, so I am geeky enough that the book was about CrossFit, but still.)
In the afternoon I was able to get my lazy ass to move a little bit and I went for a 5k run. I hadn’t ran a 5k since… oh wow.. since almost exactly a year ago! September 26, 2013… That’s funny.
I ran 5.25km in 34 min 37 seconds then.
This Saturday, September 28, 2014, I ran 5.02km in 32 min 46 seconds.
No improvement there, but at least my average pace didn’t go down either. I have to admit that it was quite hard…. to keep going. You would think that a full year of CrossFit would have made me a bit faster… or at least make it feel easier at the same pace. But no such luck. It does give me motivation to start running a little bit more though. Maybe not 5k’s, but I think it would be good to do a bit more interval training with running. I dislike it so much though… so it’s hard to motivate myself. But I think I will be running a bit more when I’m in Holland next month. Take advantage of the flat country (because if there is anything I hate more than running, it’s running uphill). Oh btw, my run this weekend was actually with a little elevation as well, and the one last year was in Holland so completely flat. So.. there you go.. maybe I did improve a tiny little bit :p.
I think it should be my goal to run a 5k under 30 minutes before the end of the year!
My workout:
I’ve never done turkis getups with more than 8kg so I thought this would be interesting. I’m not sure I like this movement for finding a 1rm. It feels quite dangerous!! Because you basically have the kettlebell on top of your head the whole time… and when it gets heavy and you fail to lock your arm out you kind of just have the kb crash onto you if you are not careful. Anyway.. I was able to do 12kg with both arms. Then I tried 16kg which went fine with my right arm, but then failed with my left arm. After a few minutes of rest I was able to do it with my left arm as well. I did both arms again with the same weight. Then I tried 20kg with my right arm, which was impossible (couldn’t lock it out).
For time:
My workout:
I wasn’t looking forward to this one as front squats are never my favourite. But I thought it went quite well. I did the row in 4 minutes 25 seconds. I wanted to do the squats in 3 sets of 10, but had to break up the second set after 7 reps, so then did 2 more sets of 8 and 5. I used 65 lbs (Rx was 95 lbs). I did the burpees unbroken (albeit a bit slow). My total time was 10 minutes and 23 seconds.
I’m not sure this is worth mentioning here, but I am always a bit proud when I run, because I dislike it so much. So, I am mentioning it!! Haha.
Yesterday I had to bring my car to the garage, which is about 3.5km from work, so I decided to walk from there to work in the morning. Then in the afternoon when I had to walk back to pick it up it was mostly downhill, so I decided to run some parts :D. I had a 5.5kg backpack on so the run was quite slow (although when I look at my pace it was not that bad at all really). It was quite nice actually. Especially running downhill is such a happy thing to do. I think the main reason why I hate running so much during WOD’s is because the run that we have to do at CrossFit is partly uphill. Which is where I struggle the most.
Anyway, this was my walk/run/walk with a backpack yesterday.
I didn’t feel for working out after that though, so no WOD this day.
– Deadlift 5-4-3-2-1
12 Mins EMOM:
– 3 Cleans & 1 Jerk
My workout:
We did the exercises in reverse order, so we first did the 12 min EMOM and finished with the deadlift. I did the EMOM with 65 lbs, which is not so heavy, but jeez that was hard!! I missed one squat in the 11th round so in that round I did 1 power clean, 2 cleans and 1 jerk. I was exhausted after this workout!!
We had a couple of minutes before starting with the deadlifts. I started at 5 x 135 lbs.. then Rich had the great idea of letting me show someone how to do rope climbs, so I did some rope climbs in between the deadlifts. Completely tiring me out!! Everyone was already finished with their deadlifts when I was supposed to do my 2 reps, so instead I just did the 1 rep max, which was a new PR!!! :D :D The whole set looked like this:
5 x 135 lbs
4 x 155 lbs
3 x 165 lbs
1 x 190 lbs !! whoohoo!!
“BURP – ANNIE”
50-40-30-20-10 reps of:
– Double Unders
– Sit Ups
(EMOM 5 Burpees)
My workout:
I came running in half an hour late into this WOD. They just finished the warmup and skill practice so I went straight into the WOD. Luckily with this kind of WOD you don’t need much of a warmup anyway. The WOD is one big warmup. It went quite well! I messed up on my double unders a couple of times, especially in the first set. But other than that I was able to keep going pretty well. The burpees felt so easy somehow! Almost like a break from the work (I did 3 burpees instead of 5 btw). My time was 12 min 48 seconds. The timecap was 15 minutes. I did 5 burpees on every minute for the remaining minutes in the timecap. Rich thought that was a good idea lol.
3 x 800m Run (2 Mins Rest between sets)
My workout:
I scaled this to 3x 400m run with 1 min rest in between. I knew the 3 x 800m would destroy me and I still had the barbell class after this. I hate, hate, hate running. Even the 400 meters are horrendous. My times were:
Round 1: 1 min 50 sec
Round 2: 1 min 48 sec
Round 3: 2 min 10 sec
After the last round I ran another round with one of the guys who struggled through one or two rounds and then decided to sit the rest out. I was able to convince him to run one more together :D.
After that it was time for my very first “barbell class”. Maria, a coach at the box is starting a class for olympic weightlifting, which focuses just on the Snatch and Clean & Jerk and mostly on technique and form. The first lesson was today and it will go on for the next 6 weeks (don’t know if it will continue after that). It’s too bad I will have to miss most classes when I leave for Holland next month, but very happy that I can attend the first few.
My workout:
We didn’t really work with those percentages as it was the first class for everyone, so we just worked on the technique with no or very little weight.
I really enjoyed this class! I can learn so much from it!!
I almost forgot to post a monthly overview! Cycle B of Wendler is done. I’m in the deload week now.
I can say I’ve had some great moments and some disappointing ones in this cycle. I think I greatly improved on my squat in the last few weeks. But not happy at all with my shoulder press. I have not been able to feel comfortable and strong doing the press this whole cycle and it’s pissing me off. Bench and deadlifts are going great as I feel I can keep up with the rep goal’s set by my fancy excel sheet.
My last squat session was very disappointing, but I’m going to assume that that was just a bad day and not a reflection on my progress. (fingers crossed)
I still find it very hard to combine this program with normal crossfit sometimes. That’s why I missed a bench press day.. I chose to do a lot of bench press that week within a WOD, but that meant I didn’t have time to do the Wendler workout. I hope I’m not in the way of my own progress by mixing it up and not being very strict about the days (and days in between) I do the Wendler workouts.
Then my month schedule.
A lot more WOD’s and a lot less Wendler. And still a lot of rest days too. I think next month will be better. Although I still workout more than I rest.. Because obviously all the workouts together are 58% versus 42% rest. But I think it should be more like 70% workout, 30% rest (which would be 5 days work vs 2 days rest per week).
Overall I did really feel like I was making progress this month. Feeling stronger, learning new skills (standing on one hand, pistol squats) and feeling fitter too! I still suck at cardio and at some point I will have to start spending more time on that. But for now it’s all about strength (y).
I would have loved to get some workouts in this weekend as I had a bit of a slow week, but I had a friend over from Holland so couldn’t make time to go to the box. We were very active over the weekend though. On Saturday we walked a lot and went for a kayak trip of about 1.5 hours. The kayak trip was so nice as usual. The water was super flat and there were loads of fishes. There were these big school of fishes hovering at the top so you could see their heads/fins moving about. Sometimes they would jump up. It was really cool!
Then on Sunday we went for a hike up the Estepona mountain. It’s called Los reales de Sierra Bermejas and it’s a beautiful area.
I posted more on the hike on my personal blog.
