World O’ Hurt

It’s the second week since the end of the Spartan 300 Challenge, and quite honestly I’ve never felt better in my life! The results speak for themselves and aside from the physical transformations, I definitely feel like emotional, mental, and attitudinal changes have come with them. I feel more confident, more liable to push my boundaries, and less liable to put up with other peoples’ bullshit just to go along or be “likable”, whatever that even means.

I plan on giving it a week or two more recuperation and normalization time, then I will go through the 6-week program again, but this time I will change it up a little. The supplementary workouts I will do on a 3-on1-off schedule, instead of fitting them in on off days. This means that I will largely be concentrating on form, technique, and correctness rather than going balls out to complete them, since I will often have other workouts on the same day! It’s at least as important to work on form as it is on speed and intensity. Hence, I will not time the workouts, but trust me when I say I won’t dawdle either.

Monday

A Crossfit Central first-of-the-month benchmark! It’s hard to believe that even though I’ve been going to Central for six months, I was sidelined through two benchmarks due to my injured shoulder! Therefore today was my first encounter with the infamous Angie. For time:

• 100 Pull-ups
• 100 Push-ups
• 100 Sit-ups
• 100 Squats

All exercises must be done consecutively, no moving back and forth. There was a 25-minute cut off here. I went in with the goal of finishing the workout under the time limit. The only intimidating part is the 100 pull-ups. That’s a lot of pull-ups, and indeed, although I finished far better than my goal (21:59) this workout revealed my weakness in that particular movement; I finished the other three exercises in almost the same amount of time the pullups took! I started off very strong, with 26 consecutive, and then tapered off to sets of 7, 5 and 3 to finish out.

I taped up my hands, but about halfway through the pull-ups, started feeling that the tape was actually hindering more than it helped, and took it off right around 65 reps. Afterward, I felt I had better control of the bar. Live and learn. My right hand ripped quite badly, leading me to believe that I am gripping the bar differently or moving differently on my right side. I will have to analyze!

After ‘Angie’, Tom, a guy from my class, and I went on a 1.4mi run, which we did in about 14 minutes (slower than usual).

My Monday Kung-Fu class is the opportunity I have to help other students with their skills and katas. I have shifted the format around a bit as of late. In particular, I am experimenting with the concept of putting the onus on the students themselves to set and achieve goals for themselves in class. In the past, it has been incumbent upon the instructor to set goals for the students, leading to much confusion and 10-minute conversations, trying to find that perfect Venn diagram intersection of material that everyone needs.

Instead I have tasked everyone the past few weeks with setting a personal goal for the material portion of class. I trust that everyone has that secret weak point that they want to shore up, or that one technique they want to work on. As I consider both that my Monday class is almost a ’supplement’ of sorts (it is not the only material class for anyone) and that people generally know what they need, I let them set their goals, and I take responsibility for guiding them to the completion of that goal.

I have found that students are often afraid to directly ask for material, or directly ask for help with something. After all, asking for material is considering (well, and it IS) presumptuous. However, I want to root out insecurities and make people comfortable with what they should know. What I want to do is indirectly give them permission to state what they think they need, and help them with it, even if everyone’s need varies from katas, to spinning sidekicks, to needing a pretest after class, to just practicing on one kata without worrying about getting any new material at all.

I will evaluate the efficacy of this approach after a few months. My hope is that students will find it empowering and helpful. If not, we can always go back to top-down command-and-control.

Wednesday

It’s Tuesday as I write this, and I ache all over, terribly. Not in a bad “I’m gonna die” way, but in an almost pleasant, gratifying way. It is satisfying knowing that I gave it my all Monday, and all the soreness is just my body’s maintenance mode, busily repairing itself and making me even stronger and better. It’s satisfying knowing that I worked out hard enough to provoke an acute physiological response and associated adaptation.

Today, I think was almost meant as a rest day after Angie on Monday:

Hang Power Clean: 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1

My minimum was 135 and my maximum was 185. I tweaked my shoulder a bit on the 185 attempt, so I stopped. I’m happy enough with a body-weight hang power clean! Ah yes, we also did 25 Burpees during warm-up.

Thursday

We weren’t supposed to have a CrossFit session at Central today, but enough of us bugged JDP so that he agreed to get a group personal training session going today! I think he really wanted to punish us. AMRAP 20 Minutes:

• 10 24gk Kettlebell Snatch (right arm)
• 10 24kg Kettlebell Snatch (left arm)
• 10 35lb Dumbbell Renegade Rows
• 30yd Shuttle Sprint (5, 5, 10, 10)

I did this as RX, despite my trepidation. My hands are pretty ripped up from Angie, and KB snatches are pretty big hand rippers. My plan was to go with a 16kg kettlebell, but I finally sacked up and just wrapped a towel around the handle instead! This was a killer, let me tell you. I know I say that every week, and maybe it’s because no matter what the workout is, I am learning to MAKE it hard. I’ve been saying to students who come to my classes for years now “even short kata 1-10 is a workout, just make it a workout”.

I got 5 full rounds and the 10 right hand snatches.

Friday

The first Friday of the month is a benchmark for the class. I generally use the Beinedammerung, Kung-Fu Fight Gone Bad for benchmarks, but it’s time for some new hotness. Meet “Mister Beast”:

• 100 Pull-ups/Ring Rows
• 100 Push-ups
• 100 Sit-ups
• 100 Squats
• 100 Double-Unders

Bon Apetit….

I’m back to blogging again. Hello, it’s been a long time, I hope this blog post finds you well.

I suppose I fell off the blogging wagon at the same time I found it necessary to take some time off working out because of my shoulders. As I’ve always been a kinetic, physical person, this was tremendously difficult. I would often stare at the composition fields on this blog and find myself with little to say. I suppose you could say that I was a little depressed over my injuries, especially when compared to the progress I was making.

The past few weeks have seen remarkable progress in my healing, and I’m now back to regular Crossfit classes, as well as having done the 2009 Spartan 300 Challenge this past Saturday. I turned in the fastest Level 2 time (90lb bar, 12kg Kettlebell, and jumping pullups) at 14:44.

My goal was to take the knowledge that I could have at least been competitive (although probably not have finished in the 20 minute time limit) in the Level 1 competition (135lb bar, 16kg Kettlebell, Full kipping pullups), and channel it into doing the Level 2 workout as fast as possible, with as good form as possible. And, I did it fasted.

On to this week’s workouts (this post will be updated):

Monday:

Crossfit:

• 20 Squats, 1 Barbell Snatch (RX 135. I did 20lb to give my shoulders some TLC), 1 Suicide Run
• 20 Squats, 2 Snatches, 1 Suicide Run
• 20 Squats, 3 Snatches, 1 Suicide Run
• 20 Squats, 4 Snatches, 1 Suicide Run
• 20 Squats, 5 Snatches, 1 Suicide Run

My time: 8:44. This was a wicked workout. The suicide runs are strangely harder than running in one direction for the same distance. I haven’t figured out why.

Kung-Fu: Light sparring and some Kata work. I am beginning to figure out that katas work one’s body differently than anything else, and in a way that totally compliments Crossfit. Amazing.

Tuesday:

Crossfit 300 Workout:

• 50 Pull-ups/Reverse Pull-ups/Standing Rows
• 50 Burpees

I will change the pullups to jumping pullups on the rings. The burpees will be… Burpees. Time: 5:42. It’s hard to do good jumping pullups on rings because you can’t push down. This slows the recycle time significantly.

Wednesday

Crossfit Workout. Five Rounds for Time:

• 15 Back Squat. RX 155lb, I did 95lb. I will not make the mistake of doing too much, too soon again.
• 400m run.

My time: 17:21. I felt surprisingly solid on the back squats. I need more strength, but my form is acceptable to good, and I actually felt stronger the longer I went on this. The run was another story. I felt progressively weaker each run, and I’m sure it won’t get better as the summer gets hotter and hotter! One thing’s for sure though: I’m going to be in sick shape.

Thursday

Crossfit: Cindy. AMRAP 20 minutes of:

• 5 Pull-ups
• 10 Push-ups
• 15 Squats

I managed 12 rounds and 1 half-hearted pullup before time ran out. I felt it a little bit in my shoulder (so THAT’S what did it!) and will be taking it a little easy on the pullups for a few weeks.

Bottom line: I’m back.

Friday:

Crossfit 300 Workout. For Time, Four Rounds:

• 25 Air Squats
• 10 Vertical Jumps
• 15 Pushups

My time: 5:45. I felt slow because of Cindy yesterday, but still pretty good. I try and maintain excellent form and range of motion throughout. All my squat jumps were bottom-to-top. I know this costs me time but I consider technique to be more important, and am willing to not cut corners at the expense of time. That is a faustian bargain in my opinion.

My Kung-Fu Conditioning Class:

I made these guys do a scaled version of Cindy. I think that getting the Rings to hang from the ceiling rebar was a really great choice! I can’t let those guys rest on their laurels, you know! The arms race continues!

AMRAP 20 Minutes:

• 5 Pull-Ups
• 10 Push-Ups
• 15 Squats

I decided to give myself a little rest today. I did do 5-rep sets of ring pullups occasionally while running around and correcting everyone’s form, etc.