Back Again

Sorry for the absence. My sister visited for a week and things were just busy. Like getting home exhausted every night busy. I think I need a vacation from her vacation here.

Anyways, on to today's workout.

Here's what was on the menu. I was actually a bit excited to do this.

Mind you, that does only say 1 round. Not 7, that's just the way some people write. Going into it, I figured about 15 minutes to finish this. My goal was to get through every thing unbroken, but I had a feeling that 25 bag slams was just not gonna happen after the KBS. I was right. I went unbroken until 15 bag slams, then I had to take a break get some blood back in my arms. Managed the pushups in sets of 5, hand release of course.

Then... BURPEES!!!

Holy cow. Those hurt. It's only 15 right? Wrong! It felt like 100. I just kept thinking "don't stop" the whole time. They were very slow at the end.

Now to finish with TGU. Those are tough because you want to go quickly, but at the same time you can't because you could hurt yourself easily. I don't know about you, but a face full of kettlebell in the morning is not something I want.

Stayed strong and guess what? Blew my hypothetical time out of the water!

My time: 9:47!

I was pretty proud of this. At the end, I could see the clock and I was concentrating on not stopping. I was stoked at that time. Especially after the mini-wod warm up that we did. That was tough!

Back at it again tomorrow. We'll see how many people show up. It was packed this morning. I counted 22 as we went out for the warmup jog. Never though I'd see that in the morning. It's awesome!

Here's some shots of my past couple weeks.

Enjoying the company of my sister.

Of course we hit up Disneyland.

Crossfit right of passage: my first hand rips.

Played with some rays at SeaWorld.

Hoku got tired and had to take a nap.

Bryan's last wod at CFEV. Gonna miss you!!

Kickin' it in the Kitchen

My kitchen is taking over my life.

But first today's wod.

Don't mind the numbers 1 and 2. We had to split things up a little different because it was a big class. So my rounds went push press - burpees - k2e. No biggie.

I did this at 65lbs. I thought that maybe I could get the first round unbroken. Nope. Had to take a breath at 15 presses. I tried, just couldn't. Burpees didn't happen either. On the k2e, I made 10, then 5, then the last 6. By the last round I was sucking some major wind. This wod was just killer on my shoulders. The hardest part of the burpees was lifting your chest off the ground. 

My time: 9:48

Squeezed it in under 10 minutes. I'll take that.

Now... about that kitchen stuff.

Since starting the Whole30, I've spent most of my hours off of work either at the grocery store or in the kitchen.

Not to say that I didn't prepare. I just didn't prepare enough. Then plans changed and things happen. Tonight I finally got a good handle on things. The key is prep early. Even if not cooking until a later time, at least cut the veggies, marinate the meat early. Then when it's time, you just have to throw it all in the pot.

Last night, I was so exhausted cooking. Tonight I felt efficient. I cut the butternut squash during lunch, then just had to throw it in the oven later. While the pork chops were marinating, I cut the veggies I needed for the quiche I was cooking also. Then after dinner, I browned the hamburger and finished the quiche. Only an extra half hour in the kitchen tonight.

Win!!!


My plate tonight: Mediterranean pork chops with garlic roasted butternut squash and cucumber.

Mini-WOD Monday (and Friday)

Ah!!! With all the excitement happening Friday (I got promoted!! Wooo!) I forgot to post the workout. And man it was a good one.

Did your heart just sink? Did you stomach turn to knots? Did an audible "ugh" just escape your lips? 

No? Huh... well you're sadistic then. All those things happened to me and everyone else who showed up Friday morning. I thought back to the Open and 12.1. I squeaked out 86 burpees in those 7 minutes, but it was hhhaaarrrddd. Like, crawling off the floor hard. Now, I have to do 100? I knew it wasn't going to be pretty. 

Our trainer Christa had done this workout before we showed up. How motivating is that?! Just so that we really didn't have any room to complain, she did the workout balls early in the morning to prove to us it could be done. Her time: 8:57. She said that she tried doing sets of 10 reps, but knew that would be too much. She broke it down farther to sets of 5 reps. 

I set out at the beginning with that mentality: 5 reps. While I was doing the first set though, I felt too good at 5 reps to stop, so I continued to 10 reps. It took me about 20-25 seconds to finish, then I would rest about 10-15 seconds before starting again. That worked for the first few rounds, but then I started to slow down. I kept good form, no peeling off the floor this time and I was certain to finish all 10 reps unbroken for each set. That helped me. The whole time I just kept thinking "don't stop." I made it to the end. And I beat Christa.

My time: 8:40

I was dead at the end. D.E.A.D. dead.

Now, on to today. It's the first Monday of the month which means... Mini-WOD Day!!!

Here's what we had.

When I walked into the box, I was hoping that I misread the 50 and it was actually 25 or something. Nope. 50 reps. 

With that confirmed, I um... *cough* may have instantly lost 15 lbs. Haha. I wanted to be able to get to 50 and as soon as I felt the 105 lbs I loaded up, I knew it wasn't going to happen at 120 lbs. Maybe, but I do have to get to work by a certain time. Can't stay there all morning doing individual squats. I experimented with both high bar and low bar back squats. I actually thought that I felt a little stronger with low bar, but I found it a little harder to balance. I probably did 60/40 high bar/low bar. That part of the WOD took about 17 minutes to get through.

Then I had to tackle the HSPU. I did it with one mat and sets of 10. A couple times I got off balance and accidentally pushed myself off the wall. Whoops. It was hard, but I made it. Sooner or later I'm gonna have to figure out kipping these. I've seen videos but can't seem to get myself to attempt it.

Lastly, the row was the row. I worked on form and keeping my stroke count low compared to the time. Okay... not my best time, but definitely better form rather than just hauling all out and wasting energy.

All in all, it took me about 35 minutes to finish the whole WOD, but that was with little rest between the different exercises. 

Hope that everyone has a great week!

Just Breathe

Who doesn't want to start their day off with some burpees?! I bet you do! 120 of them to be exact.

Oh and while you do them, you have to keep count... not only of the burpees, but of your recovery breaths too!

I'm good at math, just not first thing in the morning and not when I'm more focused on pulling myself off the ground for who knows how long.

I was trying to breathe as slowly and deeply as possible to catch my breath and give myself some rest time. The problem with that though is that the lack of oxygen got my a little bit dizzy and that was still the beginning. 

Midway through I ended up losing count a bit. I may have done the "13" rounds twice, not quite sure. 

By the last rounds I was just trying to breathe as deeply as possible before starting again. It was tough. I was able to keep up decent form throughout though. I didn't end up resorting to the complete peel off the ground motion. 

I still can't believe some people did more than 120 burpees in 7 minutes during 12.1, that's insane. It took me almost 12 minutes with those breaks built in and I definitely wasn't "breathing" for 5 minutes.

But then again 7 minutes of burpees is insane and I don't plan on using that as a benchmark any time soon.

Have you signed up for Memorial Day Murph yet? I have. See you out there!

On a side note, grilled tonight. I love grill night. I have a new found love of zucchini because of grill night.

My plate. Steak, pork, and veggies. Can't get any better.

Burpees, Bells, and Balls

The first thing I do in the mornings after my alarm goes off, is take a peek at the wod on the CFEV website. This morning I was having particular difficulty... then when my eyes focused a tad bit more, I realized why. They changed the website last night!!! I wasn't even clicking in the right spot on my iPhone. Check out the new site... I think it's pretty badass.

When I finally focused enough to find the wod on the site, here's what I saw.

Didn't look so horrible, but I have a particular dislike for wods that increase in reps throughout. I find it mentally more taxing to keep thinking that I have more reps to go than I completed.

The burpees in this wod were killer. I was struggling by the middle of the second round. Silly me, I also went heavy (not like Laura was gonna let me go light anyway). The kb swings weren't horrible with the 35lb bell. The ball slams sucked with the 20lb ball though. I was barely going in sets of five by the last round and a couple times almost dropped the thing on my head. Thankfully, that didn't happen.

In the end...

My time: 12:20 (35lb kb, 20lb ball)

At least I didn't have to run around anywhere!

On a side note, here's my dinner and it was super delicious!!

Homemade paleo butter chicken with cauli-rice. Mmm.

Friday Fun (and pictures)

It's partner wod day! Got up ready to go today (and also ready for the weekend)!

Came into the box this morning and found this.

Okay... it didn't look that bad. I mean, when you thought about it, it was only 40 reps of each exercise per person. 

For some reason, Curtis P's sounded familiar. I don't know why. When I read the description, I knew that I had definitely not done those ever before. They didn't sound like much fun, power clean into lunge into push press. That's a lot, but then...

Christa said, "They aren't that bad. I did 75 of these the other day. They're fun!"

I have to admit, I pushed the believe button wholeheartedly. 

And then we were off. First 600m run went fine. Then Hillary and I moved on to the CP's.

We started off using 53#. Mostly because it was the lightest weight that we could use bumpers on in case we had to drop the weight. Seemed ok in the beginning. We were doing 10 reps each then switching. By our 15th rep each, we had majorly slowed down. It wasn't the clean that was hard or the push press. 

It was those damn lunges!!

Somewhere in the middle of that we decidedly that we would switch to only 5 reps before switching. Before you knew it, we were down to just a 45# bar. Let me tell you, it's amazing what I difference 8# can make.

It took us the better part of 20 mins just to finish the CP's before finally moving on to the burpees. I don't think I was ever so happy to do burpees. We were able to stick with 10 reps each before switching and had a pretty good system of yelling out when we were on the 9th rep so the other person could prep and smoothly transition. 

Next was the part that I looked forward to... pull-ups. I love training pull-ups and was excited to tackle this. Same deal here, 10 a piece, then switch. Worked good for a bit, but somewhere in the middle we both switched to 5 reps each, then I went back to 10 reps. Hillary tore her hand last week on the 100 pull-ups so I didn't mind pushing out a few more reps. 

Finally we were running out the door for the last 600m run. The first 300m went fine, but the last. As soon as we came around the corner for the uphill portion my calves were in serious protest mode. They did not want to move. I felt like the harder I pushed, the slower I went. Finally we got to the top and I did my best to stride out the downhill portion. I was able to turn on the burners and sprint the last block in the door. (Then made a dash for the trash can. Don't judge, I worked hard).

Our time: 31:44

On a side note, during my turns to "rest" I snapped some pics with my phone. Here you go! Have a great weekend!

Hillary prepping for the clean portion of Curtis P.


Dreaded lunges.


Into the push press.


The guys pushing out their sets.


Don't slow down!


Hillary's burpee face plant.

Still going.

After what seemed like forever, we finally got to the pull-ups.


David clearly enjoying the stretching after the wod.


Bryan and Christa chatting afterwards.

Keep up the good work!

60 BURPEES! ahhhhh!

Woke up this morning and checked online, going down the list of exercises in the WOD wasn't too bad... until I saw 60 burpees. Finish that off with a 700m row. It was good until that point and likewise during the WOD, I was good until that point.

Here's what we had.



I actually like HSPU, except that I feel like I'm ruining the back of my shoes from scraping up and down the wall. Everything else was going good. I'm still kipping well using the blue band. I even managed to get through all 40 KBS unbroken. The last 10 took a slight bit of mental fortitude though. Situps are definitely one of my least favorite exercises, always have been and my college experience with them didn't help at all. The whole time I was just dreading those burpees though. And I mean dreading.

The last time I did any where near as many burpees, I was doing 12.1 from the Open. I did 84 in 7 minutes and I was dragging myself off the ground. Now, I was supposed to do 2/3 of that workout and hopefully do it faster... this all after running around before hand.

Ugh.

Double ugh.

I usually don't mind burpees. I'm not the tallest person, so I seemingly have an advantage when doing them. Today, I hate every last one of them. By 30, I was exhausted. I was lucky to be getting 5 burpees every 30 secs. I started them right at about 7 minutes in and didn't get done until sometime after 12 minutes. FML.

The row was slow going afterwards as well. I was huffing and puffing and just doing my damndest to keep below 30 s/m with a pace better than 2:30/500m. What I would give to have some leg extensions for rowing.

All in all it was over in less than 20 minutes. Thank goodness.

My time: 16:16

**On a very important side note** to me at least. This past weekend I got my first EVER pullup!!!!! Can you see the ginormous grin on my face?! Seriously, this is HUGE.

Granted it took me a kip and and extra kick about 3/4 of the way up, but my chin got over that bar and that's what counts.

HOORAY!!! Check that one off the life goal list. It really was a life goal... I have always sucked at pullups. Since forever.

Now, to work on better kipping rythm and eventually a strict pullup.