World O’ Hurt

I’ve been jotting down notes about my workouts the past few weeks, but I haven’t yet sat down to go in depth about any of them. That’s odd because I’ve set several important milestones for myself the past few weeks, and it’s well worth taking a moment and patting myself of the back for a job well done. If six months ago, someone had told me that I would be doing some of the things that I’m doing now, I would not believe them, and yet here I am today, constantly exceeding what I thought were my limits.

It’s been a busy and stressful few weeks for me, yet I have largely been able to continue my diet and workout routine, and I’m healthier, more productive, and stronger/faster/more flexible than ever.  This might not sound like a big deal, but it’s Crossfit and the desire to constantly improve that has given me the mental strength to overcome situations that might have broken me just a few short years ago.

I’m about to go into a period of time that’s going to be very difficult for me emotionally, and it will be the things like Crossfit, Kung-Fu, and the healthy, nurturing way of life that I’ve chosen for myself will form the bedrock of my life while it changes.

Monday (08/03)

For a month or two after I started Crossfit, on my drive from my house to the Gym, I would get a knot in the pit of my stomach. It was a foreboding feeling, like I was heading into a trap. I believe that it was my body’s homeostatic system attempting to dissuade me from doing such foolish things as putting myself under extreme discomfort in new and awful ways, or exceeding my limitations, or putting myself “out there”, or preparing to fail. It was my ego’s attempt at self preservation before it got crushed time and time again in my quest to remake myself.

I remember one workout where I was hit with a particularly acute bout of this feeling. I remember standing on the box, preparing for the start of the workout, listening to JDP count down from three to one, and literally thinking to myself :

“Oh my god, this is really happening. This is fucking brutal, but I’m already standing here and it’s too late to do anything about it. I’m really going to do this.“

Well, times have changed. Now I look forward to almost every workout with a sense of perverse glee and I anticipate competing against the lesser part of me that urges me to rest (and who still too often wins). However, there are still some workouts the fill me with that same sense of dread, and those are the monthly benchmarks.

It’s not so much that Crossfit Central’s monthly benchmarks (Total, Angie, and Fight Gone Bad) are incredibly difficult (well, Angie and FGB are true beasts. I find Total enjoyable as hell), it’s that the first class of the month is time to prove myself, to apply what I’ve learned and apply the improvements I’ve made to myself over the month. And sometimes it’s scary having no one but myself to hold accountable for my improvement.

This month’s benchmark was one of my favorite workouts: Fight Gone Bad:

Three Rounds:

• 1:00 Row
• 1:00 Wall Ball
• 1:00 Sumo Deadlift High Pull
• 1:00 Box Jump
• 1:00 Push-Press

The score is the number of calories burned on the rower plus the number of completed reps on the other four exercises. My very first Fight Gone Bad turned out very well, with a score of 259 over the three rounds (as RX!). The past few times I’ve done FGB, it was two rounds, due to not having enough time or equipment, as well as schedule changes at the gym. Don’t worry though, just go more intense.

Long story short, my score was 239 over two rounds. This was the first big milestone for me this week, and it puts me on pace for a score well over 300 for the fundraiser in September! More impressive to me was almost attaining my 3 round total in two rounds. Now THAT’S improvement! What made me prouder was the fact that it was the best score made that day up to my class time. Anyone wanna bet on a 300+ two rounder for me next time?

Wednesday (08/05)

Ah, now I remember why I didn’t blog this week in depth; it was the week that crushed me to dust with my worst exercises and skills, and the followed up those brutal workouts with brutal followups.

Overhead squats are probably my worst skill, and workouts ladders (where the reps go down but the exercises stay the same) probably exhaust me more than anything else. How about a WOD that combines them both?

For Time:

• 10 Overhead squats: 95lb, 30 Knees-to-elbows
• 8, 24
• 6, 18
• 4, 12
• 2, 6

I am not particularly good at high volume output of things like K2E or Pull-ups, and I’m bad at Overhead Squats. At 95lb I didn’t get anywhere near the RX weight of 135 on the squats, and ripped my hands terribly on the K2E. This was not a good day for me! I finished in 11:40 which was ahead of most of the field, but not exactly elite. However, it was the heaviest sustained series of overhead squats that I’ve done (my previous best was 65!) Therefore, my second big milestone of the week!

As if that workout were not hard enough, the followup sucked out of me any energy I had left: an 800m run followed by three sets of Burpee Broad Jump Relays (up and down the gym floor).

Thursday (08/06)

The Texas Hand Skin Massacre continues with a pullup-centric slice o’ hell:

The clock continuously runs; each minute do:

• ‘n’ pullups during minute ‘n’.
• On pullup failure, do ‘n’ kettlebell squats during minute ‘n’.

I got to n = 11. The heart and body were willing, but the hands said “fuck no”. Starting at the 12th minute I did kettlebell squats and gassed on minutes 19 and 20, completing minute 18. I still owe JDP 39 kettlebell squats.

I feel that had my hands not ripped, I could have gotten to round 15. I felt strong, but I was bleeding like a stuck pig on the bars. Nasty.

Of course there was a followup; It was more bodyweight relays:

• 3x Rabbit relay
• 3x Spider relay

My martial arts and kata training came through for me again; The rabbit relays were trivially easy for me. It seems that on at least two or three of Crossfits 10 physical skills, I get high marks (agility, coordination, flexibility).

Monday (08/10)

Another killer. The volume has been relatively low lately but the weight has been high.

5 Rounds for Time:

• 21 KB Swings @ 24kg (32kg RX)
• 14 Burpees
• 7 Back Squats @ 155lb

My time: 18:42, one of the better finishers that day (almost no one did it as RX. It seems that given my time and the 20-minute cutoff, 24kg was just right for where I’m at. I’m impatient to move on, but smart enough to avoid injury. I have my whole life to do this).

Wednesday (08/12)

A truly horrendous WOD.

3 Rounds for Time:

• 10 Man Makers @ 45lb
• 500m Row

The order was originally inverted, but because we didn’t have enough rowers, some of us started on the Man Makers. This marks a personal record on weight for the Man Makers for me (for those of you playing at home, that’s three milestones set!)

18:45 RX (how I love typing “RX”!)

Thursday (08/13)

Deadlifts are my favorite movement. They just feel right and powerful and I love the big numbers I’m able to put up, yet today I just didn’t feel strong at all. The 225 I pulled felt more like 350, and I felt sluggish in general. Yet I showed up and persevered. When I saw the workout, I groaned inwardly; Muscle-ups are one area where I just don’t feel competent. I feel like a fish out of water, and like the muscles required to do them just don’t exist on my body. Meh! Well, I surprised myself…

For time:

• 25 Deadlifts @ 225lb
• 500m Row
• 15 Muscle-Ups
• 25 Deadlifts @ 225lb

My Time: 15:59 Almost-RX.

What does “Almost-RX” mean? Well, it means that on that day, I did more muscle-ups in a single WOD that I had cumulatively done previously in my 30 years of life. That is a huge milestone and I was thrilled to have done what I did, which was 10 real, genuine muscle-ups! I did 5 by scaling various ways (knees, jumping), but 10 muscle-ups was a huge achievement for me. I still have form work to do (such as locking out fully between reps, and doing some reps unbroken), but I am very happy with what I accomplished.

Friday (08/14)

As fellow Crossfitter and Kung-Fu instructor Cindy came to my class, I decided to make the workout Crossfit’s benchmark “Cindy”, which also happens to be one of my favorite workouts in general:

AMRAP 20 Minutes:

• 5 Pullups
• 10 Push-ups
• 15 Squats

A workout deceptive in its simplicity. and devastating in its effect! My record is 12 rounds with bar pull-ups, but all we have at the Kung-Fu school is the ability to hang rings for pullups, etc (more difficult!). I did 13 full rounds and one scaled round (jumping pull-ups). That’s yet another milestone set for this series of workouts! I am not sure what inspired me, but in spite of being tired and stressed, I’ve felt like a million bucks and ready to take myself on. What will tomorrow bring?

As a last note, we should always appreciate the special people who add color and meaning and beauty and happiness to our lives, and let them know how much they mean to us. We sometimes take them for granted, and when they depart, their absence is palpable.

The next few weeks I’m going to tread pretty carefully. I think that I tweaked my right shoulder (yet) again. I am going to try and take it a little easier this next week or two; I hope that the exercises are not shoulder-hostile.

Monday

I think this is the day that I tweaked my shoulder a bit. The form on my Dumbell Snatches is pretty good, and I always get a good range of motion on the squat. I do think that I should have gone lighter than RX, or looked for another option than going fully extended overhead with the weight. Three rounds for time:

• 15 Dumbell Snatch @ 45lb (total, not each arm)
• 400m Run
• 15 Wall Ball @ 20lb

My time was 15:27.

Wednesday

Shoulder stress continues. A Crossfit benchmark workout with two shoulder killers, Cleans and Ring Dips. Again, I did this one RX which I probably should not have, especially since my shoulder was hurting at the time I came in. Live and learn. “Elizabeth“: 21-15-9 Reps:

• Squat Clean @ 135lb
• Ring Dips

15:47. Afterward we were assigned 50 of each. Knees-to-elbows, Pullups. I accomplished 16 of each before time ran out.

Thursday

I decided to make this a rest day. I think this is one of those months where no matter what you do, you’re going to feel a little under the weather in general. It can’t be avoided, and you can’t expect every day to be better than the last. Life has an ebb and flow in general, and you have to take each day as it comes. Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m turning 30 this month. My advanced age is catching up with me!

I’m not sure if my shoulder is a symptom in general; I have been feeling a sort of vague malaise lately, as if my body is fighting off sickness (I also have a bit of a sore throat). I have also fallen off the diet wagon a bit. Oh well. Things will improve. I just need to do what I know needs to be done!

Friday

I decided to implement some of the things I have been talking about regarding katas and Crossfit-style workouts. Here was the Friday workout: AMRAP 20 Minutes:

• Max Reps Knees-to-elbow
• Kata 1 2x
• Max Reps Push-ups
• Kata 2 2x
• Max Reps Double-Unders
• Kata 3 2x

I had originally assigned specific katas (the first three long forms in our system, to be exact) but decided to let people pick any three discrete katas they wanted to practice.

It was my hope that people would utilize the katas as Crossfit would the 400m runs, as sprints designed to tax the three energy pathways. I actually did get a lot of positive reaction to the workout, but to me it seemed a bit muddled. I think it might be my view being colored by the hyper-focused Crossfit workouts, but I identified the following issues:

1. Difficulty of establishing standards of movement.
   This basically means that it is easy for me to run through the movements of a workout beforehand when they are simple and repeatable, as is the case with say, push-ups, sit-ups and what have you. When you look at a kata, you see a complicated series of interconnected movements. Therefore it is hard to establish a baseline of correctness so that the scores we write on the board actually mean something. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that people chose different katas, which leads to the next problem:
2. Class cohesiveness goes down.
   There is something to be said for the esprit de corps that comes from everyone “keeping together in time“. I believe part of my complaint from this perspective stems from allowing people to pick their katas. Now, this point may affect me more than it did the students, but it seemed to me that the workout on Friday was a bit more chaotic than usual.
3. More opportunity for slacking.
   I spied a few people utilizing the kata section as time to practice the moves of the kata or time for “active rest” as Andy puts it. That was expressly not the purpose of putting katas into the workout. My aim was to put katas in the context of doing something stressful and intense, and to have the students put the same intensity into doing the katas as they do the normal workout (again, I’m not levying this complaint against everyone). I have to take my share of the blame for perhaps not communicating that as well as I could.
   Of course, it is also the first time we have utilized this paradigm in class, and we rarely explicitly call for intensity when practicing katas, which does the material a grave disservice, in my opinion. Now, the reason I chose simple, fundamental katas for everyone to do (before changing my mind) was because people in general should have those sets of movements practically embedded in their DNA at this point, making execution second-nature, and intense execution consistently over 20 minutes the kind of stretch that I’d consider healthy.Practicing not-quite-mastered material in the context of an intense workout is probably healthy as well, however, and doing so would definitely simulate some of the emotional and mental stress that comes from testing.
4. Pacing slows down.
   Again, this could very well be a function of the newness of the concept, but there was some expensive context switching going on between katas and exercises. We are going to do this again, and I will stress the importance of keeping a high pace (and why it’s important) during the workout, and minimizing transition time between movements.

All that said, it was still a good workout and everyone seemed to enjoy the novelty of it. It is interesting to see the application of the general-purpose conditioning work we do in the context of katas. I do believe that it takes practice and intent to transfer those skills over from one modality to another! I intend to do more of this sort of training as testing time (mid-late August) creeps ever closer…

I did receive an interesting class review/complaint/request from one person who had not been to class in a very long time (having moved away for quite a while). To me it was very interesting to hear because it highlighted how different the class must seem for someone uninvolved in the process of its transformation to its current form!

Previous to this year, the class was not as self-directed or self-motivated for the students as it is now; I generally called out specific exercises at specific junctures in the class sessions for students to do this exercise or that; it was very top-down command-and-control. Nowadays of course, I lay out what I expect of the students in terms of exercises and movement standards and allow (nay, encourage) them to blaze their own trails through the workout.

This particular person said, very earnestly, that they liked the previous format better, because they considered themself (I know it’s not a word, and I don’t like using English’s sorry excuse for a gender-neutral pronoun; I’m just trying to protect their identity!) “kind of lazy” (???!!!) and needed the added motivation of everyone moving together, doing the same thing, at the same time (paraphrased).

Now, I can imagine how someone steeped in the previous class culture of calling-out-reps and sticking together through exercises would see the way we do things as strange. However, my response to what this person said would be that if they felt unmotivated in an environment which relies increasingly on self-motivation, then that is exactly the environment that they need to be in in order to stoke those fires in themself! It is time to step up to the plate and find baseline performance and construct target goals. Every day should be the day that we all get a little bit better, and a lot better in the long run. That is one thing that the top-down way of doing things cannot guarantee, and for those used to that, it is a tough tit to wean off of, but you have to start somewhere.

As an instructor, I try and lend as much strength as I can to the students, because they often do not see themselves as capable of doing things that I can clearly see that they are capable of! However, that doesn’t extend to changing the class environment to accommodate people who are completely non self-starting.

The first workout of the month at Crossfit Central is a “benchmark” workout. Roughly translated, this means that they will really kick your ass, but it’s for your own good. In an act reminiscent or grade school, they will hand you a report card of sorts to write down your score for the workout. Don’t worry, you don’t have to get your parents to sign it. It’s a way to let a few standardized workouts track your progress through the Crossfit program. This is an awesome idea that underscores the commitment of the CFCentral crew to the betterment of their clients.

This month’s benchmark was “Fight Gone Bad”. It apparently simulates the strength and cardiovasular load of a typical three-five-minute-round mixed martial art fight. To a first timer like myself it also felt like it simulated pretty well the “getting the shit kicked out of you” aspect of a typical three-five-minute-round mixed martial art fight:

Three rounds of five minutes, one minute each of:

• Row
• Wall Ball with 20lb medicine ball
• Sumo Deadlift High Pull, 75lb
• Box Jump, 20″ box
• Push-press, 75lb

Plus one minute of rest at the end of each round, to give you time to purge your stomach of that pesky food, or just let you dry heave until you feel better.

The scoring is one point for each of the rep-based exercises, plus calories burned on the rower. My score: 259 RX. Not bad, considering my goal was to get above 200 RX! As usual, I left feeling challenged, but excited because I felt I actually could have gotten 275 with a little more oomph.

The Concept 2 rower is an amazing thing. Deceptively simple: A metal frame, a sliding seat, a handle and chain, and some sort of friction device attached to a computer. Decidedly low-tech apart from the computer, it is a beastly monster that sucks the life out of you. One minute full blast and you feel like a husk of your former self, drained of all vitality and ready to stagger and stumble to the next station.

The push press is probably my favorite, as I found it much easier to get into a rhythm (even in the last round) than for the others. The deadlift high pull… Needs work, and we’ll leave it at that. Overall a challenging and awesome experience. Next time I want to break 300.