World O’ Hurt

A few notes:

• The shoulder is starting to bug me again, just a little. I am going to back off a little. I keep forgetting to progress slowly
• I’m going to start trying to zone my meals, or at least get them zone-ish!
• I’m fixing to start to make good things happen!
• I’m trying to integrate my martial arts and Crossfit training together such that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts
• My intention is to start doing Triggerpoint and AIS more often, if not every day. The recovery is as important as the activity (if not more so!)

Monday

Crossfit Workout. It was like visiting an old friend! This was my very first Crossfit workout ever, as chronicled here. I noticed that I did not log my initial time in that post, but I happen to remember it: 18:40 or so. It was seared into my brain because of the panic of never having worked out so hard in my life! Things have changed since then:

• I’m four minutes faster
• No medicine balls for height. This means I’m getting lower on all my squats (even from the beginning, the medball being under my ass limited my depth instead of showed me how far down to go)

The workout. Four Rounds For Time:

• 400m Run
• 50 Squats

My time: 14:57. As I noted above, this cuts my time by 20% compared to my first attempt. Now that’s progress. BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE:

• 50 Toe-To-Bar

I completed 25, but I was as strict as I could be given my legs were jelly (I tried to maintain straight legs throughout, etc). The time limit was 5 minutes.

• Tabata pushup/plank. Ouch.

A great workout day!

Tuesday

This is the one of the days when I perform the Spartan 300 Challenge workouts. Never one to suffer alone, I do these at my Kung-Fu school and rope my fellow black belts Elliot and Tommy into doing them with me. I’m sill not sure how many of them to do a week, but I’m currently doing two of the four, with plans to move to three (shoulder allowing).

The workout. Five Rounds For Time:

• 12 Pull-Ups
• 18 Sit-Ups
• 24 Walking Lunges

I made some modifications to the workout:

• I use rings for the pull-ups
• I use an Ab-Mat for the sit-ups
• I did regular, not walking lunges (the space is small)

Hopefully the increased difficulty of the rings and ab-mat made up for watering down the lunges somewhat. I did manage two of the five sets with no jumping pull-ups, and then did as many as I could without resorting to jumping. I did well, but as I noted, my shoulder is feeling it. My time was 9:51. Elliot beat me with a gutsy performace on the rings with a time of 9:23. He DOES weigh 50lb lighter than I do!

Wednesday

Crossfit Workout. I really loved this workout. I think Push-jerks are quickly becoming my favorite lift right behind deadlifts! Five Rounds For Time:

• 7 Hang Power Cleans @ 135lb (I used 75lb)
• 7 Push-Press with the same load
• 400m run

This was a really great workout. As my shoulder is only on it’s road to recovery and not already there (as I have to keep constantly reminding myself), I lowered the weight significantly. I decided to make hay out of this situation by resolving to do each rep with perfect form, high intensity, and without dropping the bar. I accomplished this goal.

I will continue to go up in weight very gradually; I see no reason to be in a rush at all. I want to eventually coach this stuff, and to do that, I have to be healthy, and I have to have the ability to do everything well.

My time was 15:16.

Thursday

Crossfit Workout. This one actually looked fairly simple on paper, but it was far harder than Wednesday’s WOD, in my opinion. Ten Rounds For Time:

• 100m Run
• 10 Knees-To-Elbows
• 5 In-n-Outs

This was a beyotch, for sure. I rattled off 3-4 rounds fairly easily, and was a round and a half ahead of the rest of the field. I quickly gassed after that, but managed to pull through before the cut-off with a time of 19:13. I feel I could have done this more quickly.

Friday

Crossfit Spartan 300 Challenge Workout. Three rounds for time:

• 10 45lb Dumbbell Thruster
• 10 Burpees

A bitch. I did one set with 45lbs and then lowered it to 40lb apiece. Thank god for adjustable dumbbells! In retrospect, I probably could have finished it out with 45. My time was 7:39 but that includes 2-3 seconds to grab the weights after I hit start on the stopwatch, as well as the time it took to lower the weights to 40lb. I will follow JDPs advice and commit to a weight next time.

Kung-Fu Conditioning. We further explore the possibilities of the rings. AMRAP 20 Minutes:

• 10 Knees-to-Elbows -OR- Toes-to-Hands
• 30 Sit-ups
• 10 Knees-to-Elbows -OR- Toes-to-Hands
• 60 Bicycles
• 25 Double Unders

I did a few rounds but did not keep track. I am having too much fun motivating my students and correcting their form! We also did a short bag workout, and finished with ie-chin-ching #13. Yum!

Phew, what an exhausting week this has been! I don’t think I’ve ever worked out this much or this hard in a single week before. This past month I’ve continued to reach dizzying new heights in overcoming what I thought were my limitations. Physically, I have to credit Crossfit Central in stoking the fire inside me to try more and harder to do well at everything. I think I feel stronger, younger, happier, and more energetic now than in any other time of my life.

I have had some rough times the past few years, and it seems that a confluence of events and knowledge has happened to address a lot of my life problems. Part of it has been diet, exercise, a change of scenery, and the company I keep. These tough weeks and tough workouts have served to keep at bay the rough times.

Thursday’s Crossfit workout was the second I’ve had working on a pure lifting/strength area. Last time it was power cleans, this time, three rep max of:

• Deadlift: 3-3-3-3-3

Of course this is a three-rep tap-n’-go max. As I haven’t done deadlifts extensively, I was a little conservative with the weight this time around. I think next time I will be starting a bit heavier:

205-225-255-275-300

The interesting thing is that just like pullups, my grip seems to be the failing component. When I changed from matched to reverse grip to test that hypothesis (the “hook” grip didn’t do much for me), the 300lb came up much easier. My preference would be to continue working on getting a stronger grip, and to not use things like straps or different grips. I want to make all of myself strong together, and not work on one thing in exclusion to others.

After the deadlifts, John wasn’t done with us yet. He had a little surprise for us:

• Four 30-second rounds with a 3-second rest:
  • Star Jumps

I got (if I remember correctly) 22-19-21-24 reps. So WTF is a star jump? It’s a jumping jack on crack. Very exhausting, and will be making an appearance in Friday class soon.

Speaking of Friday class, it continues to be awesome. The format of the class has changed substantively, but the content has not. We continue to do the same excercises we always have, but I am putting a much stronger emphasis on progress for each and every one of the students. I’ve been doing this by tracking their progress in a notebook, and implemeting Crossfit-style “AMRAP” and “Time to X Rounds”. Holding a stopwatch and saying “three, two, one, GO” seems to be the most motivating thing I have ever done.

This Friday’s workout, I tried to adapt the Crossfit “Cindy” workout to Kung-Fu conditioning. I have not yet found an adequate replacement for pull-ups. I believe that all our school needs is some nice pullup bars, and we’d be good to go! I believe that I am going to try to purchase some more medicine balls soon, or at least make some out of basketballs and sand.I also want to explore using dumbbells in a limited capacity (thrusters, etc).

AMRAP 20 Minutes:

• 20 Double-Unders
• 5 Pushups
• 10 Situps
• 15 Air Squats.

I got in 15 rounds plus 20 double-unders. All reps strict. I haven’t done Cindy, but I can’t see how I could have gotten 15 rounds of Cindy in! Freakin’ pullups…

We also had a second workout, a nice set of Tabatas. I divided the students up into two groups, A and B, with different workouts. I wanted to give group ‘A’ a emphasis on core/abs, and ‘B’ an emphasis on arms:

A:

• In-outs on the parallelettes
• Russian Twist
• Medicine Ball Twist (25lb ball)
• Bicycles

B:

• Punch-out drill on the kick shield
• Elevated push-ups
• Medicine ball throw (15lb ball)
• Medicine ball slam (12  and 10lb balls)

I haven’t yet implemented Tabata scoring (I’m not sure if people will be able to keep track of their reps), but I am trying to figure out a good method.

Overall, this year has been fantastic for my Friday class. Every year I try and bring something new and exciting into class, so that no year is the same as the last. Every year I try and improve the “secret sauce” a little more. It is a fine line. I know that I may have alienated some students from the class, but I think that the progress is worth it.

Today’s Crossfit WOD: AMRAP 20 Minutes:

• 150m Row
• 10 In n’ Outs (An exercise on the Parallelettes, not tasty hamburgers from the Western-US-only (Much to my chagrin) chain. Trust me, halfway through the allotted time, you’ll wish it was the burgers. Although if it WERE the burgers, you probably would vomit. But, I digress)
• 15 Box Jump (20″ Box)

Completed 8 Rounds plus the Rowing and In-n’-Outs of the 9th.

Wow, rowing, jumping, and playing on parallel bars! An 8-year-olds dream workout becomes an adult’s nightmare. Yes, you little bastard, once you weigh more than 30lbs these movements will seem difficult to you, too!

I was really pleased with my performance today. I think that today’s WOD played into whatever strengths I had when I joined Crossfit. I have done acrobatic type stuff such as the In-n-Outs and, of course, lots of jumping from the katas for years now. The difference is, as I’ve said before, that of degree, not kind!

Once again I upped the intensity and actually beat my goal of 8 rounds. I stayed afterwards to practice the kipping pullups, and reached a personal record of 8 consecutive.

Baby steps…