R8D31-33 – Variety Or Laziness?

Day 31 was Friday, as in the past weeks I took Thursday after bootcamp as a rest day. Friday I did a mini Fran with the girls at gym but instead of just thrusters and chinups they did:

10-15-10-15-5

Thrusters
Chin Ups
Push Ups
V Snaps

Saturday we were at a hotel out of town so I took my trusty 45lb kettlebell and did the following:

1 clean and press per side
1 snatch per side
10 swings

then followed with 2 plus 20, 3 plus 30, 4 plus 40 and finally 5 plus 50. I did the whole thing twice which netted me:
30 clean and press each side
30 snatch each side
300 swings

I had designed it to revisit my ability to do longer term swings. It was just as tough as I recall doing 40 then 50 swings and having my grip almost fail towards the end.

Sunday – off

Monday I decided I would run a 5k so with a pace that would probably make an arthritic dog feel fit I ran the treadmill to try and give my upper body a break. I didn’t even work out with the girls at gym Monday night, which I have to say I felt a little guilty about.

I am going to try and get back on track somewhat, it seems like forever since I actually put a DVD in the player and followed along. I feel like I am being lazy not following a program and improvising what I am doing. That and I also feel like I am not rotating the workouts properly either. I feel like my weight is going up, something that I am too scared even to confirm on the scale, but I know I am not wrong.

Time to get back to basics I guess.

R4 D74 – Beginning of the End

Since without a plan, nothing ever happens, here is the push to the end for Round 4.

W 74 – TGU plus WOD
R 75 –  RKC Swings
F 76 – P90X and Insanity Fit Tests
S 77 – 5K run
Y 78 – off

M 01 – Round 5

That should about do it. I am at Wednesday now and the way I figure it I should be able to put round 4 to bed and get Round 5 ready to go by Monday. It’s going to be a bit weird, since my workouts have been somewhat sporadic over the last 2 weeks but I think there is still some value to doing the fit tests anyway. For what it’s worth, my weight is down, my back seems to be bothering me much less and my feet seem to enjoy doing everything barefoot so all in all I suppose I am reaching my goals of general fitness and as Tony puts it, “less vulnerable and more durable” out in the real world. The question is, what is my fitness goal for the next round? I think I am at the point where I need to start documenting weights again. Much as I wanted to get away from that particular facet of working out, I think at this point I need to see my reps and max weights increasing in order to justify my efforts. Moving away from following a DVD schedule means you are vulnerable to coasting and losing sight of the goal at hand. Since I will be moving towards more Olympic style lifting and Crossfit type work, I guess note taking will be par for the course.

R4 D46 to D49 – Kelly (incomplete) and catchup

R4 D46 – Kelly

I find that when I do new Crossfit workouts that I often fall short. That in itself is weird since I usually (and I believe I am not alone in this) blast as hard as I can the first time I try things. For some reason it is just not the case with these workouts, a case in point is Kelly. Maybe it is intimidation, maybe just because I am at home doing this alone I am not sure. In retrospect, maybe it was because I was outside and it was 3 degrees but I am a man dammit!

Kelly:

Five rounds for time of:
Run 400 meters
30 Box jump, 24 inch box
30 Wall ball shots, 20 pound ball

As is well documented, I have a 26lb ball that I use for wall ball and having to run outside and do the wall ball outside meant this was going to be a cold workout. For that reason, among others I suppose, I only managed 3 rounds. My time was around 4:30 per round which if I was able to maintain that pace would have put me around the 22:30 mark for 5 rounds. That seems unreasonably fast to me. I didn’t measure the run exactly and I believe I may have been doing a 300m rather than 400m. Given that, it means an extra 500m for the whole round which makes more sense. Anyway, the block jumps were 20″ and the wall ball 10ft. Hopefully next time I will be able to get the 5 rounds but with the weather closing in, I am not sure I will be running outside again any time soon.

R4 D47 – Clean and Press 100

As a change of pace I opted to do 100 clean and press today. Unfortunately due to the low ceiling in the basement I had to settle for 45lbs for 75 clean and press (mostly in order to get the motion correct) and then around 30 95lb cleans.  After, I got the idea that I hadn’t really done enough so I did another 30 or so clean and press with 35lb dumbbells. That is a lot harder than it sounds! I had wanted to do some deadlift high pulls too but time was short and so I will have to leave them for another time. The important thing was that I was, in a manner, greasing the groove by reinforcing the movement with strict control over technique. Over time, this reinforcement should allow me to increase the weight so that once I get an Olympic bar for the garage, I can start to use heavier weight.

R4 D48 – 5K Run

Well, run is probably a strong word. I was tired, I assumed I was too tired to bother with keeping up with Shaun T and his minions so I though a brisk walk would do me as much good as I could tolerate. Besides, I hadn’t had a workout longer than about 30 minutes in a while so I thought a long walk would tick that box too. Uneventful would probably be too colourful a word for the workout and it reminded me why I do Insanity instead of the treadmill.

R4 D49 – Rest

I feel a little worn down and since this coming week is supposed to be rest week 2 I have some thinking to do.