Category: Crossfit WOD Type Workouts

10.40/2 – Weekend Review (O-Lift Special)

10.40 – Rest
10.41 – 100 Clean and Press with 115lbs
10.42 – 100 Squat with 115lbs

I can’t shake my past. Whenever I force myself to do some lighter weight rep intense timed workouts like I did this weekend I can’t help but feel cheated. I know the days of 400lb squats are behind me but its frustrating to be doing the workouts that I love but with weights I hate. Fortunately I have my daughter and wife to think of who would not benefit from my requiring extra back surgeries or anything worse. I guess I just have to learn to love lighter weights. That said, I think that bodyweight is a satisfactory max, which means I still have some room to grow since I can’t remember the last time I cleaned 230lbs. Once I get my hands on some more bumper plates I should be good. Just a couple of 45’s and I will be up to 205 which is a respectable working weight for C&P at least from my perspective. I have opted to go for barbell rather than kettlebell clean and press the last couple of weeks which means I will probably have to squeeze in a RKC workout this week. Even though I enjoy the barbell work, the KB swings are a major developmental movement when it comes to back strength. My form has been good with the barbell work too and I think I owe a lot of that to good KB work.

As far as the sets go, for the C&P I did 1-10-1 and for the squats just 10 sets of 10. It’s WOD day at the gym tonight so I have to get to grips with another Crossfit workout, that makes 3 in 3 days and no yoga this week. Maybe I will try and squeeze in FOY tomorrow.

In other news we went swimming with my daughter yesterday which was fun, she is finally getting used to the water and even dunked her head a couple of times! We also attended a birthday party for one of her friends on Saturday which was really nice, it was a good relaxing weekend and that’s what I really needed. As far as my body report goes, my desire to push below 232lbs isn’t really going anywhere. I make a couple of lbs here and there but seem to put it right back. My left shin splint is hurting at the moment and I still have residual pain from when I strained my achilles a few weeks ago at the gym. I think if I am going to push below 230 I think I need a significant change, maybe getting rid of dairy for  few weeks might do it. I’ll have to think about that one.

10.33 -10.36 – The Weekend Of Pain

It must have been the bootcamp, and if not, then surely the stretching and mobility we did on Thursday after bootcamp. Personally my money is on the plate weighted squats and lunges that we did. Whatever it was, my hamstrings and quads were on fire on Friday and Saturday. So much so, in fact, that I took Friday off and resorted to doing Fountain of Youth Yoga on Saturday. By Sunday my legs were OK and so as a bit of a cardio workout I decided to do some barbell clean and press with a light weight but large volume. I managed to count up to 10 reps and back down to 1 again making it 100 clean and press with a 95lb barbell. Sore? My shoulders and traps are sore today and of course it’s WOD day at the gym with potentially some more strength work this evening. No rest for the wicked I guess. Since I really don’t have much to say since the workouts are pretty self-explanatory I will show you what my new scale tells me.

It’s a Tanita BC549 Ironman Body Composition Monitor and basically it claims to produce all kinds of measurements when you step on the thing including:

Features and Specifications:

  • Weight
  • Body Fat %
  • Body Water %
  • Muscle Mass
  • Physique Rating
  • Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
  • Metabolic Age
  • Bone Mass
  • Visceral Fat Rating

Now I have long suspected that my old Tanita which just did bodyfat % was thrown off by hydration and that the cure for that would be to get a scale that does hydration levels too. I was sadly disappointed. If I step on my old scale before and after a workout I can have lost up to 5% body fat which of course is ridiculous. My thought was that the new scale would reflect the same bodyfat after the workout but a lower hydration level. I was not right to assume that. I did it with my new scale and the same thing happened, a massive drop in body fat and a slight drop in hydration. Anyway, I am not here to bash the scale for extreme conditions, I am going to do a long term study of my stats and see what my hydration and fat levels are like as I try to drop to 220lbs.

The first few days results are here:

Date June-30-12 July-01-12 July-02-12
Weight 232.6 231.2 231.2
Fat 19.4 19.5 19.4
Water 54.2 54.1 54.2
Muscle 178.2 177 178.2
Rating 6 6 6
BMR 2512 2594 2511
Age 29 30 29
Bone Mass 9.2 9 9.2
Visceral Fat 9 9 9

I am not sure exactly what some of the numbers mean, but as I stepped on the scale after my workout to see the hydration level effect I was told my age was 12… Interesting.

I will try and go over some of the definitions tomorrow…

10.26-29 – The Long Weekend

It was Canada Day here this past weekend and so that meant a long weekend and an extra day off from coaching. After Bootcamp cardio during coaching on Thursday I took Friday off and took Saturday as an Olympic lifting day in order to try and work a little on my shoulder strength and mobility. It’s a little foggy now but I think it was something like:
25 Shoulder Press
25 Squats
25 Clean and Press

Although I was only using a light weight to dedicate my concentration to my form it was still a bear to get the mechanics of the press correct without compromising my lower back.

Sunday I took in an X2 Yoga class, which was actually very enjoyable and although I do like the Fountain of Youth Yoga with Tony, it’s a little dry. At least with X2 you have others to watch and emulate.

Monday was a DIY WOD out on the balcony, I decided to take a familiar apporach and do things I enjoy but also get some pullups in since I am disappointed in my ability on the chin up bar recently.

10 rounds:

5 Pullups
10 55lb kettlebell swings
15 Pushups
10 Full Squats
5 Ring Dips

It was a satisfying workout, I am still a little disappointed that  I didn’t get in a RKC workout this week but I can always get that done next time.

Tuesday will be bootcamp bodyweight day, a return to the shcedule!

10.22 – Monday WOD and My Aching Achilles

Monday evening came around and at the moment I really look forward to the coaching hours. We are working on mobility and flexibility at the moment and are really seeing some valuable results. Not only are the girls reaping the rewards of my increasing knowledge but I too am starting to work on my own flexibility and since my body has had a hard life and is currently one notch above tin man I have a long way to go. I just wish I could be looser in the hips and hamstrings and so that is my goal. We started with 90 minutes of mobility and stretching and handstands, on the way we discovered the weakness that had gone unnoticed in one of my athletes whose tight quads and hip flexors are preventing an effective back walkover. Up until now we had assumed it was tight shoulders and a slight back curvature that was the culprit. Not so! Thanks to our new comprehensive work up we have now found a new area to work and improve. For our conditioning we started a bench press max workup and discovered that strength is nothing without good joint control. We only made it up to 35lbs this time, we have a long way to go! After the 5×5 bench we did a Mandy workout which is short but tough. We finished in under 10 minutes which may indicate that Mandy should actually be Mandy².

Mandy
20-15-10-5

Pullups
Double Block Jumps
Pushups
v snaps

Maybe starting at 25 would be enough, but I think 2 rounds may be the ideal solution for it being a little too short.

That said, I was so determined to keep up with the girls that I think I strained my achilles during the box jumps, the next day I was very sore but thankfully after a little lacrosse ball work it seemed to loosen up a little. I have to credit (once again) MobilityWOD for assisting in the right way to hurt myself…

10.19-10.21 – Greasing The Groove

 

 

10.19 – Off
10.20 – FOY Yoga with Tony (Too sore for anything else)
10.21 – RKC 34543 with 55lb and pullups

The great news is that by the time I have finished Tuesday’s bootcamp I will be up at exactly 70% participation for this session. I am also trying to get my pullups back into shape since at the moment I am having trouble stringing 10 together during my workouts.

I am scouring mobilityWOD to try and get some more information on stretching and manipulating the joints and surfaces to get some progress in the bridge / splits and shoulder mobility of my girls. The field of stretching and mobility is not glamorous and is often overlooked but I am trying to find good resources for increasing mobility and flexibility beyond what 90% of sites will tell you. Most of them act like PNF is the latest development in stretching or that blindly stretching more will give more results. Since we are talking about high level athletes here, it’s tough to find much reference material, even going through gymnastics sites hasn’t really provided much information. So if you have any to pass along, it would be more than welcome.

I am also realizing that for the first time in a while I have a small window of “me” training rather than each day having to worry about bootcamp or resting after said event. For now once I am done Thursday I can feel free to exercise on Friday knowing that I have days to recoup until WOD Monday and Bootcamp again on Tuesday. I am hoping this will get me into a groove of satisfying my own strength and mobility needs (read Olympic lifting and Yoga) and help me to fight off what is apparently a roughly 3% fat gain over the last few months.

The exciting news is that my scale should arrive tomorrow. It is partly a Fathers Day gift for me, partly a Mothers Day gift for Nicole (since we get a food scale free and she says ours is toast) and partly a more accurate way to determine my body composition. I will tell you what I think once I get my hands (and feet) on it.

10.15 – Monday WOD at Gym

Mondays are going to be tricky. I wanted to do some strength training with the girls but their reluctance and their notion that they will turn into men if they use olympic bars is something I have to tackle. Last night was the first night I introduced the new stretching and flexibility portion of the evening. For the record, it goes like this:

5 laps running / skipping / heels up / knees up / 5 corner sprints
5 minutes foam rolling (We have found foam rolling to be a great help in preventing overall soreness and fixing large muscle knots)
5 laps running during which: 10 burpees / 10 pushups / 10 squats / 10 chinups

Stretching:

15 wall sliders
15 floor sliders (on floor beam)
10x Slot machine pull each arm (stand with shoulder and elbow against wall, palm away from wall. Face along the wall, use away arm to pull wall arm down)
10 min ball work (lacrosse ball to loosen upper back)
5 weighted pullovers
5 skin cat hold 15s
5 bridge / elevated bridge 15s
5 wall walk to bridge

Splits cycle:
Kneeling quad stretch x5 hold 10 (go to elbows down if possible)
Right, left, middle 10s each
Right, left, middle 30s each
Right, left, middle 60s each

Scorpion back stretch (assisted)
Back manipulation / inversion table / individual back stretch

Now I am not saying that I am the greatest source of information on flexibility but from what I have read recently, without getting into the kid of heavy manipulations required for mobilityWOD type stretching I think this will serve our purpose well for now. I am sure we will find some shortfalls, and of course there are other mobility items we do for each event as we warm up since I have, or am in the process of, revamping all of our warmups for each event.

Once it was time for our conditioning, we attempted a little thruster work, but the kids have a hard time keeping the bar balanced and close to the body, it’s pretty amazing actually to see just how many different ways there are to do something wrong when you come from a place of zero knowledge and zero preconception. Then it was time for a little metcon work so we chose Half Barbara for 5 rounds for time. I don’t have the exact numbers but it was all over in a matter of under 10 minutes.

Half Barbara:

5 rounds for time:
10 Chinups
15 Pushups
20 Situps
25 Squats

10.6-8 – Summer Training Is Here!

234@20 – Monday
233@18 – Tuesday

10.6 – Off
10.7 – Insanity Plyo Cardio
10.8 – Monday WOD

I am still struggling to get over this stomach thing, but so far I am sticking with the new schedule. That said, today is the start of Summer Training for the kids at gym where my days switch from Mon Wed Fri to Mon Tue Thur. That means after the workout we did last night (WOD Monday) I now have a bootcamp class to look forward to today (Bootcamp 4, Bodyweight).

For the first week of the new 10Dot schedule I managed 4 of 7 days which is not great but above my R9 average, after Bootcamp tonight I will be up at 67% aiming for 70% by the weekend.

As a side note, for my workout of choice this week I did Plyometric Cardio, I guess I must have been missing Shaun T a little, but it didn’t take long to get over that. It was a beast of a workout, you really do forget how difficult it is to work out for 30 seconds at a time 4 times back to back. Even at my bootcamp, the intervals aren’t 30 seconds, that would be too much for the regular participant to bear. It did make me think about upping the rep count though!!

Monday’s WOD was a short Chelsea. Since it was day 1 of summer training I decided a shorter workout was in order so we did this;

15 rounds for time

5 pullups
10 pushups
15 squats

We were all pretty close, I ended in 15 minutes, the girls around 16 although I have a sneaking suspicion they skipped a round at the end! I am currently working on some mobility work to try to advance the flexibility of the shoulders and spine for my girls and to work in some flexibility work into the scheudule for the summer. It’s tough to try to fit everything in especially with an hour fitness class taking a large chunk of 2 of my days. But I think this year it is going to be critical that we try and find a way to keep the flexibility and mobility work in the mix.

R9D84/5 – Durable In The Real World

One of Tony Horton’s best quotes for me is when he talks about being more durable out in the real world. This rings true with me since that is the reason that I go started on this journey in the first place. Even though I was in the gym working hard, I could bench 400lbs and shoulder press my bodyweight (almost 300lbs), my real world applications were not being met. I was still out of breath climbing stairs, I was unsure of myself while performing simple DIY tasks around the house because my flexibility and functional strength just weren’t up to par. In recent days I have pushed my durability to the max with home workouts and work around the house including one day I traversed 3 floors of our  home more than 50 times in 3 hours (that’s almost 3000 steps! The CN Tower in Toronto has 1770!!). That day we re-purposed a room on our top floor back into a bedroom and moved all of my wife’s crafting supplies down to the basement where we will be creating a new office / crafting space for her. On the fitness side I created a workout to celebrate the good weather by installing my gymnastics rings on the deck where they were last year. The workout looked like this:

Pullups
Wall ball (26lb)
Ring Dips

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-5-4-3-2-1 = 70 movements each

It was a good workout, although I managed to break the strap on my Suunto T6d in the process. That sent me on a  quest for a new strap which I found at Walmart for $16 (it’s a Timex Ironman TX1240 and it fits perfectly!). So if you have a Suunto and you don’t want to spend $50 on a new Suunto strap, get yourself to Walmart!

Tonight is cardio abs bootcamp and back to coaching, it almost feels like I have had a rest week with being off work since my parents are in town. But it’s time to get back to work, hammer out the last few days of round 9 and decide the format of this site going forward. My inability or unwillingness to stick to P90X2 as a whole leads me to believe it’s time for a change but I am not sure how or what. Stay tuned!

R9D47 – Bootcamp 2.10.1 Bodyweight

Balance and coordination day at bootcamp. Something that takes a lot longer than strength to develop. The shortcomings were on full display with the use of the stability ball being a real challenge for all concerned. The good news is that they were persistent and I hope will reap the rewards soon enough.

Bootcamp 2.10.1 Bodyweight

10 regular pushups with shoulder touch
10 military pushups with hip touch
10 sphinx to plank step or drop
10 pushup side raise
10 pullups

20 in and out row
10 roll to boat hold 3 count
20 bicycle with leg extension
20 side knee touch per side
10 pullups

10 SB pushup boing
10 SB Burpee lift ball
10 SB Plank to sphinx
10 per SB elbow plank side raise

Feet on SB

10 regular pushups with shoulder touch
10 military pushups with hip touch
10 sphinx to plank step or drop
10 pushup side raise
10 pullups

20 Crunchy Frog
20 vsnap
20 laying triple bicycles
20 full situps

Arms on SB 20 360’s
Arms on SB plank to sphinx
10x feet on SB walk out and back
2x feet on SB 360 walkaround
20x laying hamstring pull

BONUS ROUND!!

10 military pushup
10 diamond pushup
10 Hindu Pushup
30s crane

R9D46 – Chelsea Teaches Me A Lesson

Friday night at gym after coaching I thought I would do Chelsea with the kids. It wasn’t even a full Chelsea or Cindy, it was 15 rounds in 15 minutes of 5 pullups 10 pushups and 15 squats. I had done a similar thing with the younger competitive kids the night before and I had enjoyed watching that so I thought it would be fun for us all to do it together on Friday. Unfortunately I took my 2.5 hours of coaching as adequate warmup and jumped straight into the workout without warming up properly first. Now I am a pretty fit guy but I guess it may be my age or maybe just the fact that standing around doesn’t count as a warmup but once the 15 minutes was over I realized I had made a critical error. My legs were shaking and weak, a sure sign that I had done something I was going to regret. The next day, Saturday was painful, but Sunday was torture. Thank goodness there was the Carling Cup Final to watch (GO  LIVERPOOL!! YNWA!!) and Tottenham getting thrashed by Arsenal because I was in no shape to be on my feet. Now there are plenty of studies to show that the cooldown period after exercise is basically a myth but I am a staunch supporter of the warmup before you start. The warmup is so critical because it gives your body time to ease into the exercise, giving your muscles and your circulatory system time to ramp up into the work. It enables you to warm up the muscle in order for you to stretch effectively before you start and even a light stretch is pretty much mandatory before a workout. Some people (myself included) used to think stretching was a ridiculous waste of time but in hindsight I can tell you that unless you want to end up with muscles that are shortened and inflexible, even the most basic of stretch before you start is super important. I am not talking about a static stretching regime here, I am talking about dynamic stretching of the muscles you are about to use. Experts have found that you can actually increase your risk of injury if you statically stretch before or during your workout and also that ballistic stretching is almost always a bad idea. If you are a fan of the P90X system you will find that P90X2 is almost completely dynamic stretching and foam rolling, a suitable replacement for static stretches.

In my case on Friday, it wasn’t the stretching that was the problem it was the warmup. My body wasn’t ready to work even after several hours on my feet. Just like being on the treadmill my body had gone into autopilot mode and wasn’t really using any effort to move me around. Let me tell you, I won’t do that again. Just 5 minutes on the spin bike would have been enough to save me from three days of hell.