Jump Around

Today was another of those "it doesn't look so bad" days. Just like every other time too, I was horribly wrong. Guess that I'll never learn. It will always be bad.

No weights, but tough work nonetheless.

I started the first two rounds not using a band for pull-ups, but I knew that wouldn't last. By the third round I was on the red band. The pull-ups were still a struggle. 30 seconds of max effort, even with pacing, is tough. I was exhausted after 20 seconds and really had to push to get in a couple more reps each time. 

The tuck jumps sucked, but once I got a pace going I felt good. I actually was able to get more reps at the end than in the beginning. Laura made us turn around and face the back wall away from the clock a few rounds in. Except my shin hurts now. Boo!

Lastly, the sit-ups. My game plan was to be consistent. I'm not very fast at doing them, but I held on and managed to get 15 almost every time.

Here's my breakdown at the end of it:

Pull-ups: 154 reps

Tuck jumps: 447 reps

Sit-ups: 158 reps  

Total: 759 reps

I'd say that's not too shabby.

On a side note, I wore my Reebok Crossfit Nanos for the first time today. Not too bad. They definitely need a break in period. I'll do a shoe comparison/review once I get a good feel for these. 

I got the black and grey ones.

Hoku chilling outside this afternoon.

Check out this pic that Laura took this morning. My minions!

Pull-ups!

Winded...

No weights today... boo! Just sprints waiting for us. Great. At least it would be a fast WOD and I could get in some supplemental work afterwards.

At least there was no thinking involved. All you had to do was run the distance. Our trainer, Laura, even told you when to go again. I like simple. I do not sprints as much. Brought back memories of doing sprints around the track for rugby. I used to dread 200m sprints. Dread. Today was no real exception.

I felt good for the first 100m felt good. Pretty much everything after that sucked. We did the whole down-and-back thing for the 200m. I'm not a fan of that because you have to slow down to turn around and then it just takes so much more for me to pick the pace back up again. The 300m sprints turned out to be me just trucking around the block as fast as I could. 

Needless to say, I was dead by the time this was over. That supplemental work I was talking about? Turned out to be just a few rounds of kipping pull-ups. That was all I could get out.

On a side note, I spotted this awesome stickered van on the way home today. Hawaiian Pride!!!

Over/Under

That would be to get the ball over my head and my entire body under the bar soon after.

Here we go.



I love OLY lifts. Seriously, love them. Cleans are probably my most favorite... just not squat cleans the day after almost 200 air squats and 3000 meters of rowing.

I wanted to save most of my strength for the cleans so I opted to go lighter for the ball slams (12#). I prefer the ball to the bag because the ball, even if ever so slightly, bounces back up and saves me the tiniest bit of energy from picking the bag up off the ground. This worked except for the one time I missed the ball and had to resort to picking it up. I also took a few breaths in that break as well.

The cleans, however. I stuck with 63#, which equats to almost 80% of my 1RM. I knew I would be sacrificing time by going heavier, but I was fine with that.

I may have slightly misunderstood how tired my legs were from yesterday's workout though, because halfway through the first ten, my legs were on fire. I had felt fine through warm ups. Now, I was kinda kicking myself in the butt.

My get-it-done mentality kicked into gear and even though I could only push them out in sts of four and then two, I got every rep in with good form. Strong shrug at the top, quick drop underneatch, and a solid catch position. Granted, I had to push pretty hard at the end to make it up, I sitll got there every time. All without sacrificing form or switching to power clean (which, admittedly, I would have preferred today).

After recovering from all of that, I hope over to the bars and amazingly had enough strength left to bust out a couple rounds of 3 reps and one round of 5 reps of kipping pullups. A little more training and it might be time to try these out in a WOD.

Life Goal... Accomplished!!

I have to start off this post with the most exciting news... maybe, like ever.

I did my first pullup!! And I mean, I kipped it straight up to the bar. Awesomeness. Too bad there isn't a video or anything. I'm rather low tech when actually working out.

Hells yeah! I never, ever, ever thought I would be able to do one and now... two months into CrossFit, it happened. Amazingness. And did I mention this was after this morning AMRAP? More awesomeness.

Ok. Ok. Now on to the actual workout.



For some reason, maybe tiredness... the first time I read this in the morning I thought it said only 3 kb arm presses, which I thought was weird. Why so little? Ah, because I'm an idiot and misread the board. Got it.

The AMRAP was a usual AMRAP, which means that it sucked. Three minutes into it, I couldn't believe I had to keep this up for seven more. And naysayers complain that you can't get a good workout in ten minutes. Ha! Kb presses were not the most comfortable thing for my wrists though. It just sucked to have the bottom of the kb hitting my arm the whole time. I think I have a slight bruise now :( oh well.

10 min AMRAP: 18 rnds + 10 +4

I just couldn't squeeze in those last few presses.

There weren't enough rowers for the whole class so I opted to wait and worked on some double unders and pullups. That's when I got those three glorious kips.

Double unders. They were a different story. I've already proved to myself that I can do them. The problem is once I get a little tired, my form sucks and I lose concentration... two things I need if I don't want to continually whip my toes or the back of my thigh. So what do I do? Blame the rope (which I do think is just a tad too long, made for people 5'0-5'6 and I'm maybe 5'0 on a super good day). I'm working on getting one custom fit. Just gotta make the (not too far) drive to El Cajon and pay a visit to Rx Jump Ropes.

That's it for now!


My dinner plate: spicy garlic long beans and asparagus (my recipe) and Chinese five spice slow cooker pork (from The Clothes Make The Girl). Yum!

(Good) Friday Fun

I don't know what it was about yesterday, but I was wiped out by 8 o'clock at night. I struggled to keep my eyes open during Missing and Grey's Anatomy (two of the few tv shows I actually try to keep up with). Afterwards, I immediately dove into my bed and knocked out.

Woke up this morning not looking forward to my long day of duty (means I have to stay late at work), but still looking forward to the WOD. At this point I was also crossing my fingers that there wouldn't be overhead anything today... my shoulders didn't feel up to the challenge again.

Luckily, my wish came true and we arrived to this.



I was hoping for a semi-fast time on this (less than 10 minutes) and still a little tired from the heavy lifting earlier in the week so I opted to go a little lighter on the DL weight.

I grabbed a 45# bar and slapped 15#s on each side... eh, it was a little too light. I added another 10# to take the weight up to 85#. Christa was suggesting 95# to 115# or something in the bodyweight range. Hahahaha. Right. I'll stick with my 85#. Right now, I could prolly 1RM my bodyweight, not 20 of them.

Turns out that sticking with 85# was the right choice. It was just heavy enough that I had to push myself, but I made it through the first two rounds unbroken with the last round in sets of 10.

I also made it through all the sets of pullups unbroken, kipping with the blue band of course. I'm pretty proud of that. Practicing the kipping technique has really been paying off. I'm hopeful of meeting my June goal of kipping with no bands.

Now if only my short, little legs would run a bit faster. I was the second person out the door in the first round and ended up coming back in the door at sixth. I know I'm not the fastest runner and I need to work on that. It just seems that everyone else has a much easier time going faster. I find it a little disheartening hearing someone trudge up behind you and pass you. Ugh. Did I mention that I hate running?

My time: 8:39

Not too shabby... but as always, could be better.

BUT

I did get a new PR today!!!!!!! After the WOD, I decided to do 5 rounds of "let-me-see-how-many-I-can-get" double unders. I've been working these for a couple weeks now. Up until now, I've only been able to get 3 before failing.

Today though... I GOT 11! My average today was also 7.

I'll take a PR when I can get it and progress is an amazing thing. Hard work pays off!



My veggies from dinner last night: spinach salad and roasted asparagus

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.

The Shoulder Killer (and some goals)

Well, at least there was no egregious amount of pounding pavement today. On the other hand, my shoulders are done.

Yay for Mondays!



I checked my log for the last metcon that we did push press in and I used 55#. Didn't seem that bad, so I grabbed the bar and did some 45# warmups then added on two 5# plates. 15 reps of these? The last time I did this the metcon was 2 rounds, totalling 20 PP. Multiple rounds of 15 reps @ 55# was not going to happen, especially if I wanted to get through more than 2 rounds. I was already dreading the knees to elbows. Back down to just the 45# bar I went.

That turned out to be a good decision, because knees to elbows sucked the life out of my shoulders. It's one thing to get your knees up there (and no, I haven't mastered toes to bar yet so this was not the easiest task), it's another thing to hang on while doing a semi-kip to help get your knees up there. I'd say my knees made to my elbows about 30% of the time. The other 70% of the time, they got pretty close. It's a horrible feeling seeing your knees so close and yet still so far away. At my best I was getting five reps in at a time. Then after all that to get down and do pushups! Holy freakin' canolli! The only time to catch my breath was the situps. The only non-shoulder intensive exercise of the entire WOD. Thank goodness I stayed with the 45# bar, I might have died otherwise. Not really, but I would have had horrible form and that's never a good thing.

15 min AMRAP: 4 rounds + 11 PP (45#)

I'll take that.

And now for the other part... a couple of weeks ago, I decided on some goals to set for myself. Long term, I'd like to participate in next year's open. Short term, I have to master the skill sets first. Which leads to my first couple skills to tackle: kipping pullups and unassisted ring dips.

Goal date: June 9th (my birthday!)

That gives me a little over two months to get these down. And while it may not be a strict pullup, I'm fine with kipping. I've never been able to do any sort of pullup in my life. It's been a goal of mine for a long time and I've done work before to get me to a pullup but I've always been discouraged and given up. Not this time, it's gonna happen and hopefully by June. I've been practicing after almost every WOD (couldn't today because my shoulders were shot) and I've gotten to the point where I'm off the green band and able to kip with the blue. I'm working up in the reps, right now I can consistently do 5-8 kipping with the blue band. Next is to transition to the red band. Hopefully, that will happen by the middle of April.

Unassisted ring dips is going hand in hand with that. Right now, I'm using the blue band to do these in wods. Which, I'll admit, is a little easy when I start... but after about 20 or so reps... not so easy. I've been doing negative ring dips (jump up and slow lowering to the bottom) to build my lat strength up. I've done these before on parallel bars, so I know that I can do this, but the rings add a whole other dimension of unstability. Still, it's gonna happen one day.

Until then, I'm gonna keep practicing.

Hump Day Blues

I despise running. There was a reason that I played sports like softball and volleyball growing up. No long distance running. At one point during a summer, some coaches tried to recruit me to the high school team as a goalie (really? who wants a 5 foot nothing goalie?). I asked them how much they ran during practice... 1 mile warmup then everything else. No thanks! My short legs just don't like to go fast and I hate when people yell "stride it out!" How far to you think these things go? 5 foot nothing remember? They don't stride far at all!

I had some hump day blues this morning. I didn't want to wake up. Add to it the fact that I checked my phone and saw 600m runs in there, now I really didn't want to get up. Still, some sort of workout guilt/CF addiction pulled me up and into the car. When I got there, everyone else was feeling the hump day blues too. At least I wasn't alone.

Here's what we had:



I went a little light on the deadlifts: 75#. I wanted to be able to get through them unbroken. That weight was just right. I was tired at the end and really had to push through, but my sets were unbroken.

Then two laps around the block. This part I hate. It's uphill on the first leg. Not a ginormous hill, but enough that you can feel it. I felt like I was dragging a$$. I pushed myself, but the laps still seemed to take forever. I wanted to get in four complete rounds. I knew after the first run that wasn't going to happen. Ok, at least three and some then.

I didn't wuss out to the green band on pullups. I decided that I needed to put my kipping practice into play and would try to kip with the blue band. Success! The first round I managed to string 5 kips together and the second round 8 kips! That's a record for me. I haven't quite got the rythm down yet and I usually look like I'm doing some awkward flailing motion. The third round I got two sets of 5 kips in. Yeah, I'm still using the band but this is the best it's been for me ever. Ever. In my life. I'm pretty sure I was smiling when it happened.

Final tally for 20 min AMRAP: 3 rounds + 10 dealifts + 300m

Almost the four rounds I wanted.

On a side note... I love spaghetti. It's one of my go-to-favorite-comfort-food type meals. I was very distraught when I learned that Paleo/Primal eating doesn't support wheat. There goes spaghetti. A sad, sad day. My body feels so much better since I've begun I mostly Paleo diet that I'm not giving up on it. Then I discovered a solution: Spagetti Squash! You bake it and string it and voila! spaghetti noodles. I admit, they are a little crunchier and sweeter than pasta noodles, but they were good. I love it! Spaghetti is back in rotation!


You can't even tell those aren't pasta noodles!

Happy Leap Day!

It was soooooo hard to pull myself out of bed this morning. I definitely hit the snooze button and then had to move quicker in order to leave the house on time. I seriously felt like I had only been asleep for five minutes.. maybe. Anyways, made it to the box on time and this is what was waiting for me:



Seemed simple and I was a bit glad because I am still sore from Monday's WOD. I've been walking around looking bow-legged because my legs still hurt from all the nonsense. On a side note, they changed Monday's WOD length from 3 down to 2 rounds for the afternoon classes... wusses. Haha.
I know I'm new, but I'm going to accept some credit for being one of three people to finish the full 3 rounds in the morning class.

Anyways, back to today. I attempted kipping for the firs time today. I felt like and must have looked like a retard, but practice makes perfect and one day it'll come. The whole thing took me 10:10 to finish. Some of that was attributed to pull-ups awkwardness. It sucks feeling like I could have done a little better, but this is only my third real class. I'm planning on coming in over the weekend to find my 1RM for all the lifts so I have an idea of what to use for the WODs and to work on my form for ring dips and kipping pull-ups.

In these two weeks though, I've seen improvements and my body overall (aside from the soreness which while it sucks sometimes, is a good thing) feels much better.