World O’ Hurt

Monday

A pure strength day. I need these the most, especially for my upper body. I am satisfied with almost all my lower-body movements except my squat. It’s time to meet some goals here!

• Shoulder Press 1-1-1-1-1
• Push-Press 3-3-3-3-3
• Push-Jerk 5-5-5-5-5

This was good for me. For some reason my shoulder is feeling awfully good lately, so I decided to cautiously step on the accelerator today. My reward was a 20lb PRs in the shoulder press!I am sure that the other two movements would have resulted in PRs as well, but I don’t think I have ever done them as part of a weight tracking workout. I’d have to say that I’ve probably never push-jerked more than 135, so I’ll consider that one a hefty PR as well!

• Shoulder Press: 85-115-125-135-140 (fail) (up from 115)
• Push-Press: 115-125-130-135-140
• Push-Jerk: 130-135-140 (ran out of time at 3 sets)

This workout again revealed a weakness of mine. At this point I would like to have at least a 145 shoulder press and 155 push jerk. At least now I know where I stand in relation to those goals, and at least I’m getting stronger.

Wednesday

I thought I was safe, since my birthday had actually been on Tuesday, not a workout day for me. However, JDP let my birthday workout age like fine wine, albeit only for one day. I was actually looking forward to the day’s workout (a beastly combo of pull-ups and C2 Rowing), but instead to celebrate my birthday we did the ‘30 Candles’ workout. For Time:

• 30 Deadlifts (135lb)
• 30 Burpees
• 30 Front Squats (135lb) (PR)
• 30 Pull-ups
• 30 Push-Jerk (135lb)
• 30 Calories on C2 Rower

I finished in 18:27. This was a brutal fucking workout, since two of those three lifts (deadlifts are my bread and butter) are two of my worst movements. The front squat puts the bar square on the acrimons that I separated (shoulder is doing better every week!), and the push-jerks were the heaviest I’ve done in a sustained matter (and exposed my upper body weakness yet again). I will go ahead and call the 135lb front squat a personal best, even though I’m pretty sure I’ve done heavier, and could do heavier. This is just my ‘official’ Personal Record.

All in all I pushed myself very hard on this workout, maybe because it was custom made for me. However, I have noticed that I am able to more comfortably push myself to my limits on a daily/weekly basis. That’s what tracking workouts has done for me. Every workout I get a sense of satisfaction from increasing what I do a little bit more, and also a sense of having been able to do more. It presses me onwards.

Thursday

A workout that seemed to hone in on several of my weaknesses. For Time:

• 800m Run
• 10-8-6-4-2 of:
  • Dumbbell Squat Clean (45lb)
  • Dead-Hang Pull-up
• 800m Run

My time was 16:24 as RX. The best time in my class (and I believe almost the best of the day) was of a very well-balanced athlete who got 13:00 straight.

As I’ve said other places, I consider my overall upper body strength to not match that of my lower body. It makes sense; 20 years of martial arts has trained my flexibility, static strength, and dynamic strength (if not absolute strength) of my legs through katas, stances, kicks, movement, etc, while doing not-too-much for the strength of my upper body. Of course since starting Crossfit, I’m far, far stronger in every way, but my upper body is still lagging behind somewhat.

The squat cleans were not very hard at all (I still give up too easily though!), but I found myself doing the pull-ups in 2 rep sets, and even had a few incomplete reps. Seeing as I can do 26+ kipping pull-ups in a row, it is easy to see that it’s the lower body movement and impetus that’s propelling the success of that endeavor! The secret then: do more strict pull-ups!

To add to the thoughts of a previous post: That’s another reason that timing one’s workouts is useful. It lets you know (with coarse granularity) what you need work at, and that really is the interesting thing about all these workouts. Depending on the skills and movements involved, one person can get the best time on one day, and fall far behind the pack on the next.

Friday

No class on Friday; I am attending a good friend’s wedding!

Scientific fact: Food tastes much, much better after a 24-hour fast, and one can fit much, much more into one’s tummy. For breakfast today:

• Three 8oz cups of fresh coffee, brewed with the “strong, stout” settings on my Capresso (I get my coffee from Anderson’s, pretty much the only place one should go). I drank the coffee about an hour and a half before I broke my fast, in order to enhance the fat burning effect of the fast before I broke it:
  • Indonesian Sulawesi
  • Guatemalan Antigua
  • Ethiopia Yergacheffe (absolutely wonderful)
• 4 eggs with lots of freshly ground black pepper, scrambled in coconut oil, in which I sauteed freshly-made garlic paste before adding the eggs.  This, my friends, is what we call “Huevos Locos”.
• 1/2 of a fairly large New York Strip steak I had previously grilled.
• 1 Large Hass avocado with plenty of cracked black pepper and some salt.
• 5 small Kiwi Fruit. Ah, how I love thee.
• A handful of raspberries. As a side note, these were just particularly wonderful. It was like biting into raspberry-flavored custard.

A few hours later I had a snack:

• A few handfuls of mixed nuts (Brazil nuts, Macadamias, Walnuts, Almonds, Pecans), all raw with no added salt.

Today was an especially challenging day at Crossfit for me. My lower back is still tight from the deadlifts on Thursday, and I just felt like I was moving a little bit slowly. Although today’s WOD wasn’t quite as vomit-inducing as this one was, it was still up there in terms of challenges I’ve had so far (You know, all five of them). As usual, Burpees were my best event!:

21 – 15 – 9 repetitions:

• Dumbbell Squat-Clean to Thruster
• Burpees
• Pullups

Completed in 16:42

The recommended weight was 40lb dumbbells for men. I used 30lb dumbbells. I also performed jumping pullups as opposed to strict kipping pullups. I did simulate the kipping motion as much as I could on the box, however. In retrospect, this was quite a bit of scaling and I think I could have done a tad better, if more than a tad slower as a consequence!

I need to decide if I’m scaling for the right reasons. Am I scaling to avoid the ego hit of a long time? I sure hope not. I don’t think in the long run those sorts of things matter. I did notice, however, that I was having quite a bit of trouble with the form on the clean with the full weight. Regardless, I think I will make an effort to at least get closer to the recommended weight.

After class, I was playing around on the pullup bar and actually got some fairly decent kipping pullups performed. I think I am once again underestimating my abilities, or otherwise giving in to an unconscious desire to not “leave it all on the mat”. This is good knowledge, it’s part of the reason I joined Crossfit. However, it’s also gotta stop!

UPDATED for Dinner:

I was a bad, bad boy tonight, and boy will I pay the price. After a few weeks of fairly clean Paleo eating, I went with a friend to a restaurant which shall remain.. Houstons. It is one of my favorite chain places because the quality and service are always consistently good. I had a rack of ribs which I ordered without the BBQ sauce (good!) and which came WITH the sauce and I ate them anyway (bad!). As sides, I got steamed brussel sprouts (good!) and for some reason a delicious concoction called “Dirty Rice”, which is rice (bad!) mixed in with sausage (good!) and other stuff (mostly bad..)

Not a great meal, but surely borderline acceptable. Up until the Apple Walnut Cobbler ala Mode, that is. I’m sure I will pay the price at Crossfit tomorrow for this transgression. I already feel sluggish and tired due to the sugar in the cobbler.

Of course all along I planned this meal in the name of science, to investigate the uhhh effects of sugarry goodness on uhhhh paleo diet participants. Yeah, that’s it…