Crossfit WOD Type Workouts – Page 10 – Something Beats Nothing Every Time

Leaning Towards Body Beast and Longevity Revealed

I did another Body Beast workout last night, the Chest Build workout. It was pretty short, not that brutal and I managed to work in my bench to make sure I had heavy enough weight for the presses. I am not a huge fan of the guy who runs the workouts but as of now I don’t throw up in my mouth every time I see him any more, so there’s that.

After Millennium Bronze on Thursday I took Friday off so that my weekend workouts would be effective and also because at the end of training on Friday I was just too tired to attempt the Millenium Silver I had outlined for the kids. For the record, they got to round 5 in 25 minutes. It’s tough.

Saturday I spent a lot of the day cleaning up the house and the garage again getting ready for Christmas. Nothing exercise worthy so I did an Olympic lift session that involved DL, clean and high pulls going from 75lbs up to 115lbs in preparation to move up to 135 for my DL and clean again. I would like to workout with 155 or 165lbs for both DL and clean regularly, and then up the DL to 225 for heavy days. Sunday I went to Costco and bought a Christmas tree that has lights that can do all sorts of funky stuff so we took time to decorate that and then I did the Body beast Chest workout. Tonight is gymnastics, and I think I will run a bootcamp for 30 minutes to get a bit of cardio into them (and me).

Here as some food for thought is an interesting article on the whole “people live longer nowadays” thing. Seems like we all remember Grandparents who were tough old warriors, fact is, they were all like that, mostly due to their food and activity.

http://www.weedemandreap.com/2013/10/long-ancestors-live-eating-bacon-lard-whole-milk.html

Weekly Now?

Last week ended well as far as exercise goes.

Wednesday I did 5 rounds of Chelsea plus a 20 minute Ab workout at gym.
Thursday off
Friday I did an all around 95lb Oly lift with combinations of DL, Clean and Squats
Saturday I did most of my FIRST EVER BODY BEAST workout. It was chest and tris and actually, I hate to admit it but I actually enjoyed it.
Sunday I took an hour of walking stairs with bins ranging from 10lbs to 60 lbs as I moved all the crap out of the garage upstairs to a store room.
Monday off
Tuesday I did another Oly lift day with everything but very fast and with only 75 lbs to increase the cardio component.
Wednesday I did Millenium Bronze, a workout that I invented on the drive home from work as follows:

Millennium Bronze

100 each:
Jump rope
Jacks
Crunches
Pushups
Squats
Military
VSnaps
Box Jump
Power Crunch
Burpees

I think the Silver and Gold will have to be harder by degrees, I am thinking something like this (since it’s really aimed towards my kids at gym)

Millennium silver

100 each:
MK Switch
Squat jacks
Bicycle Elbows
Ultra Wide Pushups
Pop Squats
Diamond Pushups
Single Jack and Jills
Double box jumps
Layed out power crunches
Pushup Burpees

Millennum Gold

100 each:
Arms up MK switch
SDHP with KB
VSnaps
Chinups
Pushups double shoulder touch
Pop Squat 180
Bar Leg Lifts
Double Box Clears
Bicycle Bicycle Vsnap
Plyo Pushups

Sore Doesn’t Cover It

Paleo mince pies will make it all better…

I am not sure why but since last week I have had extreme soreness in my lower back. It may have been from the hip stretching I didÂ due to the walking I did last weekend but whatever it is I am in agony. It does get better with time but it’s agony whenever I haven’t moved for a while.

Wed – off
Thurs – off
Fri – Mini basement bootcamp – half of our old regular bootcamp full body
Sat – I think this was double under practice day which doesn’t sound like much but it was 25 minutes of non stop jump rope and pain as i whipped my toes with the heavy plastic rope. I had to work the time change from midnight an dit lasted until 5am then most of the day troubleshooting problems so…
Sunday – off
Monday – conditioning with the kids 55 reps of military, vsnaps, pushups and squats. It was supposed to be century club but I miscalculated and we only did 1-10 which is 55 not 1-10-1 which is 100.
Tuesday – 95lb bar (since my soreness is still fresh in my mind):

5×5 deadlift
5×5 deadlift with hang clean
5×5 power clean
5×5 deadlift with power clean

Wednesday – Today, I think I will do bootcamp at gym again. Either that or a short KB workout before gym if I have time.

I won the Biggest Loser for the month at work, but only 2.5% loss for the month which is way behind the curve. I should be at 5% per month. Weight still 256 but falling slowly.

My challenges?

Currently my exercise volume is low and my intensity is lacking, mostly because I seem to be nursing a lot of soreness and niggling shoulder and knee pain. I will be trying this week to address the volume part, the intensity may have to wait.

Baby Steps Towards Consistency

Monday – 35lb ball clean and pullups x100
Tuesday – Deadlift, clean, front squat repeat 50x
Wednesday – Deadlift, clean repeat 50x

Shoulder seems a little better but not because of physio but rather last night I reached into the passenger foot well in the car to get something and I got a massive stretch cramp in my shoulder / trap area. After an hour it felt better and this morning my shoulder feels better than it has in ages. Weird, I guess there is a muscle in there somewhere that is forcing the joint into a painful position. I will investigate and try to replicate the stretch tonight and see if I can fix myself.
I am thinking of trying to get some kettlebell workouts in, I miss that workout and I think it may do my shoulder some good, not the press necessarily but the stretch from the swings. My weight is slowly coming down, but at 258 I am still at least 25lbs over where I want to be. I hope that staying consistent will bring me back in the next month or so.

The Last Few Workouts

Thursday – 30lb shoulder cleans with medicine ball, 50lb deadlifts with heavy bag, 95lb deadlifts with barbell. 10 each x 10 rounds.
Friday – Off
Saturday -Â 30lb shoulder cleans with medicine ball, 50lb cleans with heavy bag, 95lb cleans with barbell. 10 each 10 rounds.
Sunday – 100 deadlifts 95lb barbell sets of 10. 100 shoulder cleans with 30lb med ball sets of 10.
Monday – Off
Tuesday – 50 deadlifts @95lbs. 50 deadlifts @ 135. Plus a little clean practice at 135lbs. Shoulder still problematic.

For the rest of this week I need a pullup workout, a dip or chest workout and a HIIT bootcamp workout plus 1 or 2 135lb barbell workouts.

My basic plan for now without gym workouts looks like this:

Deadlift / Squat Day
Clean / KB Clean and Press Day
Pullup and Dips Day
Multifunction HIIT / bootcamp Day
Plus whatever I can manage on my 3 gym days which at the moment is 1. Very Little and 2. About To Change.

If I can get to a point where I can do 2 days of HIIT at gym with the kids then I can start to work more aggressively on adding more weight to my deadlifts and maybe squats. I don’t think I want / need to exceed 135lbs for my clean and press at this point especially with a hurt shoulder. It will also give me what I consider the Absolute Minimum for consistency and that is 5 days work out of 7.

Time to stop talking and start doing…

A Word About P90X3 and Summer WOD Pictures (of the workout!)

As you all know very well I am a very big P90X fan, so much so I am actually a Canadian Beachbody Coach. However, the rumours surrounding the release of P90X3 have me a little worried. For a start, the big THING is that it’s only 30 minutes. Now, I have done a LOT of P90X and P90X2 workouts and for the most part after round 1 they are usually only about 40 minutes. I tend to shorten the warmup a little but I don’t listen to Tony ramble on, I skip to the next movement or even better skip ahead and then catch up while he and his pals rest and hang out looking cool and making pseudo sexual jokes about chokes and oil. My hope is that this next iteration is exactly that, as I always say to my kids at gym, More Work Less Talk! There should be some changes, I am guessing that they saw the Tapout XT video series and decided that was exactly what P90X needed, a little butt kicking MMA conditioning. So I am cautiously optimistic and I will happily ignore the 30 minute spiel and hope that it doesn’t include the warmup or cool down so they will be basically the same amount of work with less “50 years old” chirping from good old Tony.

For myself I am WAY behind where I wanted to be a few weeks ago but I am feeling OK. I wanted to have been to the Crossfit box at least a handful of times by now which I haven’t. I had hoped to be doing the gym conditioning with the kids which I haven’t either mostly because of my very sore shoulder which I have half a mind to go to the clinic to get referred for xrays or an ultrasound because it’s still hurting like hell from 2 weeks ago when I did dips at the gym with the kids.

Speaking of the kids, here are a few pics of the workouts they are typically doing at the moment. So for those of you following along at home (ex-gymnasts) keep up if you can!

Basic and Light

For the past week or so I have been doing my regular olympic lifting, anywhere from 65-105 reps total. Last week I was able to do a day of just deadlifts at 135 which left me very sore indeed and so I decided to scale back a little and go back to 95 lbs until I am a bit more stable. So this weekend I did just cleans at 95 lbs and did 5-5-5-5-10-10-10-5-5-5 for 65 reps at 95 lbs. It really doesn’t sound like much but it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be. I have also added a little kettlebell swinging and/or some pullups. Last week I did 10 sets of pullups to see what my output was like. Well I only managed 65 total but at least that is 6.5 per set average. It is getting tough again with coaching 3x a week and trying to work out on the other 4 days plus squeeze a workout in at the gym either during the day or before I coach to make it 5x a week but time is such a challenge. That’s part of the reason I am getting back to my basic lifts, making sure I do deadlift, clean, pullups, bench, ring dips and squats during the week. My combo / bootcamp workouts will just have to wait for the time being until my back settles down a bit more and I get my capacity back up to scratch.

I am hoping to get back to 100 rep min workouts with 135lbs and multiple movements by October, but the way my back is at the moment, that may be a bit ambitious however I think it’s only sore because of how much I am doing. I can’t really gauge how well I am doing according to my pain level but rather by my capacity for work and that’s why the basics are so necessary as a yardstick.

I’m Back! P90X Kenpo

It’s been a while, I have been battling many things, a very sore leg which may have a slight infection, a hacking cough that won’t go away, a significant weight gain that is preventing me from getting to a pain free plateau and a return to coaching that will no doubt throw a wrench into my workout schedule. However, I am glad to report that I have been able to do 2 workouts now using the 135lb olympic bar. It’s not the volume I would like to say I am doing yet but I made it through and recovered in the standard 3 days. This is pretty significant for me because it signifies the threshold that I wanted to reach where I could say I was back into my normal range of functionality. I now realize that I am going to have to start back with my regular stretching and mobility work too since I have been staying away from it in order not to stress my back too much but I know I can’t expect to move any significant weight around without maintaining a good stretching regimen. I have also done a couple of kettlebell workouts with my 45 and 55lb KBs which also represents a milestone given the amount of stress that KB swings put n your spine. My chinups are pretty sad, I am only able to hit about 7 or 8 in a row but I did manage to do a 100 pullup workout a couple of weeks ago mixed in with 100 ring dips.

I hesitate to say I am back to normal only because I still live with a huge amount of pain every day. I realize that the better I feel, the more I do so therefore it will be a while before I am able to feel “normal” but the good sign is that my actual workout weights are getting back there. My endurance is a whole other ball game. I am really gassing out very quickly and I need to really work on my high intensity capacity now, giving me a longer window of time where I can keep my work rate high. I am certain that there is no way I would be able to match my bootcamp capacity from last year at this point but hopefully before Christmas gets here I will be able to do a 750 calorie workout in 45 minutes which was my peak performance that I can recall from last year.

I did do P90X Kenpo last night, I wanted a little cardio and to feel like I was mobile and Kenpo really did the trick. It was so weird going back to those videos but the forced warmup and stretching did wonders for me. If I have to, I will go back to Tony to get me back n track with the warmups and cool downs since it seems to be that is a critical component to my next few months.

RehabD9 – Getting Serious

Yesterday was my first return to what I would consider a “normal” style workout.

10 rounds:

5 chin ups
10 pushups
15 squats

10 rounds:

5 dips
10 vsnaps
15 military pushups

Time will tell, I know I am pretty sore this morning but how I wake up tomorrow will be a big indication as to whether I am ready to get back to my workouts or not. The crappy thing is that I probably won’t be sleeping in my own bed tonight, we are heading to Huntsville for a wedding and if I don’t get stuck at work I will have to sleep there. That may confuse the issue or compound the soreness, but whichever it is I think however I feel tomorrow may partially be a result of a new bed. As of right now, I am sore, but mobile, not really much of a change from a normal day, my back cracking Â a lot, stretching is painful, even the hunch is painful today not just tight. I also was up at 4am to come to work which means I am a little short on sleep which I am sure isn’t helping. Let’s hope this is the beginning of the end of feeling like an injured player and the start of getting back in the game.

RehabD6 – Rehab Recap

As far as I can remember I didn’t do anything on Saturday since I had coached Friday and worked all day. Sunday I did a basic Olympic lift workout managing to stick with my 70lb barbell for now and covering off the basics:

5 rounds of:

10 Squat
10 Deadlift
5 Power Clean
5 Clean and press

Sure doesn’t sound like much when I look at it now but my legs were very sore from wide leg squatting 2 of the sets. My back was very sore Monday morning while getting ready for Wonderland but it was workable. Monday after Wonderland I needed to work on my pullups again so I did the following poor impersonation of a workout:

10 rounds of:

5 pullups
5 ring dips

That is really pretty sad but again, I am really all about making sure that what I do isn’t disabling me afterwards and so far I think I have a good handle on my limits. It’s Tuesday and I have to coach Wed and Thurs but I think today I need to pull off a WOD type full body workout and I am actually ready to try the med ball cleans again with the 35lb wallball. I must add that I also did a kettlebell workout at work on Friday (I almost forgot) and while it was once again rather small, it was a large victory to know I can KB swing with a 45lb KB and survive. Maybe that means I can add some KB to my med ball cleans today.

All in all it’s been a pretty good few days, the parents are in town which is great for us and for the grandchild and I am still managing to get some physical work done. Things are indeed looking up from a functional aspect. I am still very sore in the mornings and EXTREMELY tired no matter how much sleep I get. I do seem to snap out of both very quickly but I think I do need to get more rest.