Tag: Deadlift

Sickness and some workouts

Tessa Leave a comment

Long time no writing, because long time no workouts. After that horrible Fran on Monday I got a bit sick. I had a really bad cold all of last week and really had cero energy. I think I kind of trained too much the week before and it just caught up to me. Also, pretty much everybody in my office was sick, so I think the bug just hit us all.

So, I didn’t go in at all last week, until Sunday when I decided to try and at least do something. I tried some jump ropes and rowing, but was still coughing quite a lot. Ended up doing some power cleans. I tried to make a Wendler schedule for it and started with that. I took my 100% 1RM instead of 90% though.. Don’t know if that’s smart….

Power Clean

5 x 80 lbs (36.3kg)
5 x 90 lbs (40.8kg)
5 x 100 lbs (45.4kg)

I wanted to do a bit more on that last set, but already failed my last one (before redoing it). So figured that was all the energy I had :p.

After this I did some more hand stand practicing. I do feel that I’m getting a bit better. But still not quite there yet. Rich started doing an EMOM and to at least get a little bit sweaty I decided to do a 10 min EMOM of

uneven min: 20 double unders
even min: 10 kb swings 16kg

Nothing very impressive.. but it was enough for me that day.

On Monday I felt a bit beat again, so didn’t go. Yesterday I didn’t have time to go to a class and I kind of felt horrible again. Coughing like a chain-smoker and headache.. but I had about 30 minutes to kill before having to pick my friend up at the airport so decided to go in for a little bit anyway.

I did Wendler’s deadlifts (Cycle D Week 1)

Deadlift

5 x 125 lbs (56.7kg)
5 x 145 lbs 65.8kg)
7 x 160 lbs (72.6kg)

My rep goal was 7 so happy that I got that. I used mixed grip for that last set. Felt I needed it :p. The 145 lbs felt quite heavy so wasn’t sure if I could do the 7 with 160 lbs, but it was easier than I thought.

After this I just did some hand stand practice again and some stretching.

Today I’m going in for my first real WOD since December 1st. Let’s hope I don’t pass out :p.

WOD November 19, 2014 and Wendler Cycle C Week 3 Deadlift (again)

Tessa Leave a comment

I redid the deadlift cycle I already did a couple of weeks ago. It’s what came up on the program now and since I haven’t really been keeping my schedule I thought it couldn’t hurt to do it again. But first we did a WOD.

WOD

12 min EMOM of

  • 2 power snatches and 2 overhead squats

My workout:
Rich used me as an example for demo-ing the moves. That was a first and kind of scary haha. I hope I did well. I had to show high pulls and hang power snatches and power snatches and overhead squats with the pvc pipe a couple of times. I had to do it so that they could look at me from the side. Very nerve wrecking, because I still struggle with my form lol. But I guess he thought I was ok enough to use as an example :). I did the workout with just a 20kg bar as I was already feeling a bit dizzy during the warmup. And I still struggled during the workout… I started feeling faint after the first few minutes.. Stupid blood pressure :(. I skipped 3 minutes of overhead squats (so just did the snatches those minutes), because I was afraid I would seriously pass out.. but other than that I managed to finish it. I hate feeling so weak :(. I felt really wobbly in the overhead squats too. Not comfortable at all!!

After that we did the deadlifts.

Deadlift

5 x 135 lbs (61.2 kg)
3 x 155 lbs (70.3 kg)
5 x 170 lbs (77.1 kg)

That felt much nicer. I did the exact same weights and reps as last time. The 5 x 170 lbs felt really heavy.. so I think it’s good I redid this one to get back on track. But no more faintness during the lifting :). Friday Rich has the shoulder press for 5-3-1 scheduled. I will repeat last ones one for that one as well. I still have to do the back squat for that Wendler week, but in the box they have already done those, so I think I will do them in the weekend :).

Wendler Cycle C Week 3 Shoulder Press and Deadlift

Tessa Leave a comment

It turns out that it’s not so easy to go to Crossfit as I had hoped. They don’t have morning classes and in the evening there have been so many other things to do that after Monday it has just been impossible.

But, my sister is a member of one of the cheapo gyms here in the centre, where anyone can go on your card. So I borrowed her card yesterday and went there during my lunch break. I figured I’d do some Wendler after all (as I would have no clue what to do in the gym otherwise).

I started with a 5 min row to warm up. Then:

Shoulder Press

5 x 25kg (55 lbs)
3 x 30kg (65 lbs)
4 x 32.5kg (70 lbs)

And then:

Deadlift

5 x 61 kg (135 lbs)
3 x 70 kg (155 lbs)
5 x 75 kg (170 lbs)

Not great, but not too bad either. Last time I did shoulder press I could only do 3 with 70 lbs so at least it’s improvement. I forgot to write down my rep goal for the deadlift (it was 7). I think I would have been able to get 7. But since I had no specific goal.. this felt heavy enough lol.

After this I did 3 sets of

  • 10 dumbbell push press with 2 10kg dumbbells
  • 10 weighted lunges with 14kg dumbbell.

It’s better than doing nothing, right?

I cooled down with 3 minutes running and 3 minutes walking. And then it was straight back to work ;).

 

Wendler Cycle C Week 2 Deadlift and Bench Press

Tessa Leave a comment

After two lazy days full of bad food I went back to the box on Sunday to do some strength. I don’t know what was wrong with me, but I kept messing up all the weights.

For the deadlifts I somehow wrote down something completely wrong (I wrote down 190 for the last set lol) and miscalculated slightly so I did 165 lbs instead of 160 lbs. I still managed the 7 rep goal though :).

Deadlift

3 x 125 lbs
3 x 145 lbs
7 x 165 lbs

After that I did the bench press. I messed up the second set where I put on 85 lbs instead of 75 lbs. I was supposed to do 85 lbs on the last set.. so then I thought I’d just do 90 lbs, but somehow messed up even more and did 95 lbs haha. Weird day. I didn’t meet my rep goal, but that was to be expected with that weight.

Bench Press

3 x 65 lbs
3 x 85 lbs
6 x 95 lbs

According to my rep goal calculator my deadlift 1RM should be at 200 lbs now. Sounds pretty cool. Working with kg’s though it’s not so special (90.8kg), but getting closer and closer to the 100kg.

After finishing the bench press I joined in on a 12 minute EMOM of

1 min: 4 power cleans 85 lbs
2 min: 5 pull ups
3 min: 8 burpees

So, that 4 times. I can tell you, I was quite gassed after that.

I think I am definitely going to miss my box when I’m in Holland.

Wendler Cycle C Week 1 Deadlift and WOD September 29, 2014

Tessa Leave a comment

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).

Deadlift

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….

WOD

  • Karen! with 3 burpees EMOM.

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.” 

WOD September 24, 2014

Tessa Leave a comment

Strength

– Deadlift 5-4-3-2-1

WOD

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!!

Wendler Cycle B Week 3 Shoulder Press and Deadlift

Tessa Leave a comment

Hmmmzzzzzz. I kind of messed up last week in regards to bench press. Since I did the bench press WOD I haven’t found the right time to do the Wendler bench… Not sure if it’s a good idea to skip it.. but what’s done is done.

I went straight into shoulder press yesterday. But it was so disappointing again!! I did even worse than last week :(. I think though, in retrospect, that I might be setting myself up for disaster. Because I warm up with 3 sets of 5 reps at 45 lbs, which is heaver that what I should be warming up with and also more reps. So next time I’ll make sure to stick to the warm up schedule and hopefully do better. (I really hope so because this just sucks!!!!)

Shoulder Press

5 x 55 lbs
3 x 60 lbs
4 x 65 lbs

After this disappointing performance I finished with some push presses (I actually tried to do 4 more shoulder presses after a little break after that last set, but couldn’t even do 1 :s).

Push Press

4 x 65 lbs
5 x 65 lbs
5 x 65 lbs
5 x 65 lbs

Then I went onto the deadlifts, which luckily went much better! My rep goal was 7, which I managed to do :D (I can really feel my legs today though!!! Yikes!!)

Deadlift

5 x 130
3 x 145
7 x 160

That sets my calculated max at 190 now! :D Getting close to 200!!

After the deadlifts I spent some time on trying out pistol squats and I finally found a way to do them!! If i put a 10 lbs plate under my heel and I hold a 10 lbs plate in front of me for balance I can actually manage to do proper pistol squats!!! How cool is that :D :D :D.

I did 2 sets 0f 10 alternating left and right and then 4 sets of 5, switching legs per set. I sometimes struggled getting back up, especially with my left leg. Sometimes because of balance and sometimes because of strength. But so happy that I found a way to be able to do them! Not sure if it counts as an unscaled rep though, when using those plates for balance.

I joined the WODers in a 400m run afterwards.

Wendler Cycle B Week 2 Deadlift

Tessa Leave a comment

Deadlift, deadlift, deadlift… I have been reading Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training by Mark Rippetoe over the weekend which gives a lot of information and cues on proper form and execution. I was focusing so much on my form during this workout though that it felt 10 times harder somehow. And it didn’t look much better…

Since I was only doing deadlift today I did a loooot of them. After a couple of warmup sets I did the Wendler sets. My rep goal for the last set was 7, which I met (but barely).

Deadlift

3 x 120 lbs
3 x 135 lbs
7 x 155 lbs

After that I was kind of curious to see if I could lift 185 lbs, since the rep goal calculator indicates that that should be my 1RM now. I know Wendler says that you shouldn’t “test” your 1RM too often, but I couldn’t resist. At first I tried with my normal grip.. and failed. But I read in Mark Rippetoe’s book that if you try the one hand reverse grip that you will most likely be able to lift more. Simple because you are stronger than your grip and your brain won’t let you lift what it knows your grip can’t handle. How smart is our brain? Hehe. And it worked! I was able to lift 185 lbs! Whoop whoop! Although I guess it’s not much progress in 5 weeks.. only 10 lbs… but I want to stick to this program. My goal is not too gain strength as fast as possible.

After that I did 3 sets of 10 with 115 lbs. Which were quite hard as well. I was struggling with my grip a lot. At that point I kind of started wondering if I was maybe doing too much, but was still happy I got all that work in.

After being done with my deadlifts I felt a tiny little bit tempted to join in on the WOD after. Or just 1 round maybe.. The WOD was this

2 Rounds For Time (2 minutes rest between rounds):

– 80 Double Unders (2:30 minute time cap)

– 60 Box Jump Overs #24/20

– 40 KB Swings

– 20 Burpees

Cash Out: 2 Minutes Max Burpee Box Jump Overs

It may sound weird, but that looks like fun to me.  (The painful kind of fun, but fun.) But when I grabbed a jump rope and did 40 double unders (unbroken whoop whoop) I felt that it probably wasn’t the best idea to join in after all. Because after those 40 my whole body was shaking from exhaustion lol. What I did do though, was join in with two of my friends who were trying to do a handstand on one hand. I had never tried this before and I actually managed to do it!! After a couple of failed tries I found my balance and was able to stand there on one hand for about 5 seconds. So cool! For someone that couldn’t even do a normal handstand a year ago things like this feel really really good!!!

My friend took a picture of what is actually one of my failed attempts (couldn’t really find my balance here), but nobody was paying attention when I did manage lol so don’t have a “perfect” pic, but this one is cool enough :D.

10578498_10152354069556009_1979482828_n

Wendler Cycle B Week 1 Shoulder Press and Deadlift

Tessa Leave a comment

Yesterday I started the second “cycle” of the Wendler program. It didn’t go so well. I felt really weak! It was over 3 weeks ago that I last did the shoulder press and deadlift so I guess I should have expected a bit of decrease… but was hoping to at least hit the same reps as last time. Because the last set of the previous time was the same weight as this week so I was a bit disappointed that I did worse instead of better.

I started with

Deadlift

5 x 110 lbs
5 x 130 lbs
8 x 145 lbs

Which was ok, because according to my rep goal calculator my aim was to get at least 7 reps on the last set and I got 8, so all good!

Then

Shoulder Press

5 x 45 lbs
5 x 55 lbs
7 x 60 lbs

And here it is the exact opposite. My aim was to get at least 8 reps and I only got 7 :(.

In between the shoulder press sets I did 3 strict pull ups each time.

Not a very active day in terms of assistance work… but was still feeling my muscles from the day before (clean & jerks).. Hopefully I will feel stronger next time!!

A tiny break – some Wendler videos – WODing in my hometown

Tessa Leave a comment

It’s been 14 days since my last post! What happened there? Well, a whole lot! I became an auntie again!!! I am proud auntie of little Kyan who was born on August 10, 2014. He came a month earlier than planned which made me go on an impromptu trip to Holland to be with my family.

photo 2

However, before I went to Holland on the 9th I did do a workout here in Spain on the 6th. I just didn’t have time to post about it yet. I did Wendler Week 3, Day 1, Shoulder Press and Day 2, Deadlift.

Shoulder Press
week3day1

As you can see I messed up the weights on the warming up big time. I don’t know how I got so confused, but the first set felt really heave haha. Wonder why :p.

I actually filmed my last set (7 reps of 60). I was curious to see my form and thought I could learn from it. I filmed a bit too low though, so can’t see my extension. But it might be fun to keep for future comparison anyway.

After the shoulder press I went straight into the deadlifts.

Deadlift

week3day2

And I filmed those two. My second set and the last one. And these are actually quite useful, because I can see that I need to straighten my back more on the first rep (I think it looks ok on the last 2 reps?) and I think that I should put my feet a little bit closer together and/or push my knees out more. My legs look a little bit wobbly.

Also. Note to self. Control the pain face! lol

I don’t remember all my assistance work.. I think I tried some GHD situps, which were surprsingly hard (going down). I do remember I did 5 rounds of 3 strict dips and 3 strict pull ups.

So.. after that workout it’s been kind of quiet. The time in Holland was so hectic that I barely had time for myself, let alone workout. I did however manage to visit the local CrossFit box one evening for a workout. And I was very impressed. I didn’t expect too much of a box in Lelystad. Lelystad is quite a small city and for some reason I didn’t think a CrossFit box in Lelystad would be very big or good. But I was very, very wrong!!! Great box, with a lot of space and high quality equipment. And a great coach!! I thoroughly enjoyed my session there and learned a lot too!

photo (10)

I went on Wednesday the 13th and the WOD was

WOD

  • 3 min AMRAP
    30 double unders
    10 handstand push ups

Rest 3 min

  • 3 min AMRAP
    30 double unders
    10 ringdips

Rest 3 min

  • 3 min AMRAP
    30 double unders
    10 push ups

My workout
The WOD itself was nothing special, but I was very impressed with the warm up, how it was planned out to match the wod. I had to do things I’ve never done before (worm to downward facing dog comes to mind). After the warming up we worked on skills, which mostly meant working on a kipping handstand push up. I only every practiced this once before and was happy to get some useful pointers on how to do this properly. I learned a lot in the short time spent on this!!

For the workout I scaled the reps of the hand stand pushups to 5 and I managed to do 5 of them kipping and unbroken. My double unders were absolute crap. They got better each round though. I think I had to get used to the rope a tiny little bit and lets be honest.. my double unders are just one big mess sometimes. In the first amrap I only got to a total reps of 65. The second amrap I did the dips eccentric and got to 68 reps. The third amrap went the best and I got to 80 reps.

After the WOD we spent time on a thought out cooling down, which involved “smashing” some muscles. Also something new for me.

I am honestly very impressed with CrossFit Lelystad and will definitely join for the 3 week period when I’ll be in my hometown in October/November!