The Law of Conservation of Momentum

A body in motion tends to stay in motion. A body at rest tends to...

Maybe you all are a bunch of CrossFit freaks, who can take a week or two off for work or vacation and jump right back into the daily sufferfest, but I'm a creature of habit. I do best when I'm out there four to five days every week without fail - even if that means interrupting a vacation to cobble together a workout using a rock, a tree stump, and my running shoes one day and then doing some sort of inverted burpee creation in my hotel room the next. If I miss three days in a row, I'm still ready to get after it. Any more than that - missing a week or being inconsistent for a month, and I start gravitating toward the couch instead of the gym, because the truth is effective training hurts. Since my allergy to pain has been acting up, my couch has gotten more of a workout this summer than I have.

I've turned into a weekend warrior, as I either work into the evenings during the week or take some down-time after working too much the previous day. Being a weekend warrior isn't too bad, if the activity you pursue is familiar. It's sort of the opposite of training. You do activities that keep you from losing all physicality, but you don't develop new capacities. At the same time, you don't hurt yourself. Of course, if you do CrossFit as a weekend warrior, where the activity is constantly varied, things don't work out quite so well.

After a summer, where my workouts have more often been days at the beach and looked like this:

3 rounds of 10-15 minutes:
Carry 4-year-old daughter and lift over waves that break from chest to head high;
Rest as needed between rounds.

or

Bike 11.25 miles with 1,000 vertical feet of climbing

42:18

rather than this:

Warmup
3 rounds Cindy+20 KB swings

Heavy Shit
Deadlift 135x5, 215x3, 265x2, 305x1, 320x3, 330x3, 305x3

Metcon
Quarter Gone Bad

5 rounds (0:15 on, 0:45 off)

135# Thruster 4-4-5-5-4
58# Pullup 3-1-3-2-1
Burpee 7-5-6-5-7
= 63,

I found myself nursing a couple of injuries - a groin injury that developed from squatting heavy, on a day I needed extra warmup and didn't take the time for it, and a wrist injury I picked-up trying to jump back into a PMenu cycle after 3 weeks off. The former is manageable. After six weeks, I'm pretty sure the latter will require medical intervention.

I won't be olympic lifting anytime soon, but there's plenty that I can do to keep myself in motion. First, I need to figure out how to get myself in motion. Sure, there's the "Just-do-it" approach, but that doesn't do much for me. I need a program to follow. I've had good luck with my own (at least the sticking with it part, if not always the results), so I'm not shopping around for the latest fad, whether that's CF Football, MaxFit, or OPT. I need to figure out a program that works for my nutty schedule, but more importantly, I need to figure out what the hell I'm training for.

The blog header reflects this ambiguity. I'll tackle this big question next. How about the three or four of you who read these ramblings? What are you training for? I'm sure you've seen this question dozens of times, and I've had good answers in the past. They just don't work for me at the moment.

Fitness and the summer party season

It's funny. Summer has always been the season of activity for me. Before I became an avid skier or saw the inside of a gym on a regular basis, I used to waste away in winter and put on muscle and get fit during the summer, just by doing whatever fun activities came up - swimming, biking, running around with some sort of ball. Now that my daylight hours are filled with work and summer weekends usually involve driving-off somewhere for a birthday party, reunion, vacation, holiday get-together, etc., it's actually more of a challenge to fit fitness in. I'd like to be out biking, hiking, and generally playing around, but aside from bringing the kids to the beach a few times, there's been precious little of that sort of activity.

I decided I need to get back to what got me into CrossFit in the first place, the simplicity of squeezing in a short, brutal workout into an otherwise busy schedule. I'll go for the long ride or hike when I get the chance, but this past week I got smart about setting expectations, and as a result, my follow-through was much better. I'm still itching to run up Mt. Monadnock (and might this week), but for now, these sorts of efforts will do quite nicely to get my groove back.

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Two days at CF Rochester:

Saturday, 7/25/2009

Metcon
Fight Gone Bad - 237

One point worse than last summer's effort. I went out strong, gassed and crashed, but that was the plan - shock the system, see what it could do, and fight to hold on. Did my post-workout flop after two rounds, stood-up and staggered through a pathetic third round. Wish I had the numbers to illustrate the severity of the drop-off. Can't wait to do this again, when I've got the conditioning back. Too bad it won't be at CFR, where I've done this twice and wouldn't mind getting a little redemption.

Monday, 7/27/2009

Warmup
3 rounds:
Row 250m
25 DUs (just enough to start to get it again, but no more than 11 consecutive)

Heavy stuff
OHS 45x5, 75x5, 95x5, 125x5x2, 135x5x2

I ran out of time for the last set and wanted more weight, but I kept redoing weight, because my stability was off. I easily got a new max on these a week prior, but I'd rather pile up some reps at a higher percentage of that than increase my max (on the OHS at least).

Metcon
Death by Burpee Pullup

One half-second shy of 9 rounds

I've gone soft. I was only too happy to quit.

Tuesday, July 25, 2008

Just the heavy stuff
Clean and jerk 150x1x4
Clean pull 215x3x3
Clean DL 235x3x3
Back squat (high bar) 245x3, 235x3x4

Got a little wobbly at the end of the first set and dropped weight. Wobbly on the last rep, too. Still, it's good to see the base strength holding-up pretty well through extended periods of inactivity.

Wednesday, July 26, 2009

45 minutes of ultimate frisbee - Yay, something fun.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

The big test of my commitment. After a family gathering which included a slice of pizza, a beer, and some blueberry pie with ice cream, I shook off the carb lazies and put in a decent effort on something I've been meaning to try (posterior-chain-dominant weightlifting and biking). Can't wait to try a version of this at home with a barbell, my own bike, and a 2-mile loop that includes a steep 200-foot wall. The question, can I crank up the hill, after doing heavy deads?

Metcon
3 rounds:
1 mile bike
50 KB swings, 1.5-pood

16:24

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Metcon
3 rounds:
Run 400m
8 Curtis Ps, 40# DBs
(Hang squat clean, alternating lunges, push press)
8 Fingertip pullups

14:12

Redid this one, because I'd done it at my parent's house in May 2008 and wanted a direct comparison. As I gassed during the 2nd set of Curtis Ps, I thought I might not do much better than match my old time, but the runs went better and I pushed through the last set pretty determinedly. I was doing a metcon-free Starting Strength cycle last time around, so it was good to finish well before the old 16:55 mark.

Got off to the beach for a little body surfing and a whole lot of playing with the kids in the surf.

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Time for a day off, then some heavy lifting, and if I can keep it up through the week (perhaps get in that run up Monadnock), I'll call myself back in the game. Either way, I'll post pics next time. I promise.

Extremism

Extremism in the defense of gluttony is no vice. - Fred Goldwater (Barry's fat brother)

I have to face it - I'm an extremist, but I do it in phases. I go to college and party like a mad man, barely graduating on time. I clean up my act, take up biking and log 100s of miles a week for years. I take up serious chess, studying for hours each night, enter tournaments and don't do half-bad. I get back into martial arts in grad school and hardly miss a class in two years. I start a career and go a year before I take two days in a row off. I buy a house and occupy my weekends and evenings fixing it up a little at a time. I take up a healthy paleoish diet and don't eat sugar or grains for two months. I get on a roll with my CrossFit training and get myself into shape for the Games Qualifiers.

Then, I let work take over my life, and I all but stop working out. I could have spent evenings in the motel room getting in some training. I couldn't have continued balls-to-the-wall, but I could have done something. Instead, I was focused on work and I let my metcon and my diet slip. Even as my schedule has eased, I've had a tough time jumping back into a decent workout routine. I'll get in a good week with workouts and diet, and then it slips. Sure, I've had some good excuses to let things slip, a busy week in the office, vacation, minor injuries, but the pattern is clear. I'm not jumping back into the CrossFit routine, quite simply, because the workouts suck. I'm avoiding the pain.

It's not all bad. I've been enjoying myself, and while my metcon suffers and I've lost a little ROM and CF-specific strength, my overall strength is still decent. I don't intend to jump with both feet into Serious Training or Strict Dieting. It's more important for me to learn to balance the competing interests of family, work, fitness, and fun, but, I offer this little what-have-you-done-for-me-lately post as a means of both catching up on things and restarting my blog in hopes of keeping myself honest in that pursuit of balance.

The notion is to do a mix of oly lifting, gymnastics, and outdoor workouts, whether that be hiking and biking, or tire-flipping and sandbag carrying. I'm figuring a 2-on, 1-off approach would be ideal, as far as recovery and schedule go. We'll see.

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A few highlight since I last checked in a month ago.

Figuring out double unders (conceptually at least) - PR of 22 consecutive
Front squat PR 245# (but I had this one in the bag already)
Oly lifting and sandbag & tire-flipping metcons with John Barney

That was June. Not a complete washout, but more rest days than work days still. July has featured little in the way of workouts, given two weeks of too much work, bookending the vacation week I spent on the Cape. I brought my rings and dumbbells on vacation, but they never got unpacked. (That was lame. A single workout to get me started would have done me good.) I did get in a demanding 2-hour mountain bike ride and a short, high-speed road ride, but it was mostly about eating, drinking, and family. Lots of playing with the kids in the water and a day of body surfing at Marconi Beach - a fun, little workout that involved getting slammed repeatedly into the stone shoreline, while holding my breath. I repeated this workout yesterday (minus the body slamming) at Second Beach Newport with a solid 1.5 hours in the water, either throwing my kids around or riding the surf. Managed a couple halfway decent handstands and press handstands, too.

Don't get me wrong. I've enjoyed myself and feel good about that. It's the balance I'm seeking. A trail run, some squat cleans, and some muscle-ups would have fit in well with my vacation, if I just got off my ass in the morning.

A few photos:

Marconi Beach


Skaket Beach


whale watching


general vacationing


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My July CF workout (the only one thus far) - Saturday July 18, 8:30 a.m.

Warmup
5:00 Jump rope (double unders not quite there, but they'll be back)
Shoulder mobility
Hip mobility (adductor still not happy with me - even after 3 weeks off)

Heavy stuff
Overhead squat 45x5x2, 95x3, 125x2, 145, 155, 165, 175 (PR)
Muscle snatch 75x3, 95x2, 115x2, 125, 135, 135f (matched PR)
Power snatch 135 x1 x4

I had more in me on the OHS, but I didn't want to risk wobbling about at the bottom and tweaking my slow-to-heal groin injury. Good to know that my solid winter training is still carrying over.

Metcon
3 rounds:

100m run
10 broad jumps
20 pullups

5:10

A bit too many pullups for the first day back in three weeks. Shoulder mobility is way down and I can't straighten my arms fully. Hopefully, the latter will mend itself by tomorow. I won't be doing pullups or going overhead, I suspect, but it would be good to not feel I need to marshall my recovery resources to tend to an injury.

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While on the topic of extremism, I stopped off at a Whole Foods on my way back from Rhode Island yesterday and picked up the a nice sampling of the four food groups: beef, lamb, pork, and chicken. The latter three spent the evening on my smoker. (Can't let the diet slip as much as the workouts, or I'll really suffer.

Affiliate hopping

One of the advantages of having to travel for work (even if it isn't that far) is that I get to bop about New England visiting different affiliates. The travel really only started recently, and I'm just getting caught on to the possibilities for expanding my garage CF perspective. Meetings in Boston and Hartford on consecutive days got me to Revolution CrossFit in Boston and CrossFit Persevere in Glastonbury. These two affiliates couldn't be more different.

RevFit is a globo gym with the shiniest of fitness machines and a CrossFit room. Some marketing guru named it "The Pit" since I was last there, although it only feels that way if you close the garage door to the room and let the sweat build-up. It's got your full array of CF trappings, bars, bumpers, nice pullup bars, rings, KBs, rowers, Dynamax balls, jump boxes, etc. The one thing missing from RevFit - a CrossFit trainer providing feedback. There's just a group of athletes who mostly follow the mainpage WOD, except on Thursdays when a trainer does lead a workout or during an fundamentals class, when all the regulars get kicked out of the pit and exiled to the land of chrome gym furniture to complete their workouts. Last night was just such a night. It's not the gym's fault. We were strength training and happily shooting the shit while we rested between sets and didn't get to our metcon before they began their fundamentals class. Thus, our metcon was done in an open space amidst the chrome-plated furniture of Globoland. We lined up three barbells and did our burpees right in front of the person DLing behind us (watch those fingers, kids).

Most of the RevFit regulars were languishing on the IR. Laura was still recovering from her marathon and limited to upper-body work; Sharon was visibly pained by a neck ailment; and Chris was suffering a nasty cold. Thankfully, Renee was going strong, and Samantha Aurelio was also visiting from out of town, so we got in a good workout together. They did a modified CrossFit Football WOD, and I did most of it plus some ring work.

Sam showed off her one-armed handstand, which got me inspired to try some gymnastics stuff. My press handstand was working well, although I've still got some work to do to hold that freestanding handstand consistently. Apparently the oly work has helped my flexibility, because I sure as heck haven't been doing passive stretching). My front and back lever progressions were suprisingly good, too, given that all I've been working with any regularity is skin the cats, L-hangs, and MU progressions. (It's always good to have your skilz working when it's time to show-off. ) The most impressive showing-off, however, was Sam's ATG squat. She quietly added 5# to her 5RM, while retaining rock solid form throughout. She easily has another 10# in her.

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RevFit Workout - Monday, June 15, 2009

Warmup
Hip and shoulder mobility
10 C2B pullups
5 L-pullups
10 ring dips

Skill work
5 Skin the cat to hollow hang to L-sit
2 failed MUs
1-arm handstands against wall
2 press handstands (first strict straight-arm press HS in a long time )
pike back lever - 5 seconds x2
one-leg-extended front lever - 5 seconds, 3 seconds

Heavy stuff
Press 45x5, 70x5, 95x3, 115x3, 120x3, 125x2+f, 122.5x3, 122.5x1 (burned out from too much ring work between sets)

125 is my prior 3RM, so this isn't bad. Overhead strength still needs attention, given the low numbers overall, but my loss of strength is not as grim as I thought.

Metcon
5 rounds:

5 Deadlift, 275#
10 burpees

7:05

Last time out was 6:26, so this isn't great. I should have checked my log-book before starting, and maybe I could have pushed closer. Metcon probably isn't good enough to take 40 seconds off, but 20 was certainly doable, even though I was thoroughly gassed here.

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In contrast to RevFit, CrossFit Persevere is a spartan setup - no showers (yet), no shiny chrome machinery, no internet/juice-bar cafe, no after-work crowds either on this particular day. They do have a sweet, new pullup bar, on which to do flying pullups, however, climbing one bar to the next four times until you've gone from 8 to 15 feet above the ground. (I stuck to the lower two rungs, thankyouverymuch).

Where RevFit had an array of globogoers gawking at the three of us doing DLs for time (I'm sure the 275# thump helped draw attention), CFP had two coaches there to encourage (i.e., yell at) me to fight through the pain and complete my WOD. Kim Malz, aka fitmom, is co-owner of CFP. She has a tremendous energy that is reflected in her athletes and her performance. Kim qualified for the CF Games in Aromas, less than two years after her cancer diagnosis. As inspiring as that story is, you should have seen her work her way from 24th overall at the Qualifiers to 5th, by charging through the brutal final workout. The kind of fighting spirit she showed in the workout clearly goes a long way in life. It's hard to wimp out on a workout with that kind of example cheering you on.

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CrossFit Persevere Workout - Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Warmup
Pullups
Hip mobility
2 muscle ups (felt good enough that I put them in a metcon for the first time ever)
Burgener clean warmup

Metcon
Nasty girls

3 rounds:

50 squats
7 muscle ups (switched to jumping MUs after one round plus 2 reps & 5 failed reps)
10 hang power cleans, 135#

12:57

Felt good to finally use muscle ups in a metcon. The 11 MUs are by far the most muscle ups I've done in one session. How it is I go from zero MUs one day to 11 the next escapes me entirely. I'll just keep working these and hope they don't go away again.

The new program

Having completed the qualifiers, I've wondered what I should do next. They were motivational, and certainly, a part of me wanted to raise my firebreather quotient and hit more heavy metcons and see what kind of intensity I could generate on a day-to-day basis. However, the reality of the situation is that I'm lacking in some fundamentals that I think will have more long-term benefit to me than enhancing my ability to suffer more and longer. Certainly, long metcons remain a goat, but my olympic lifting technique and gymnastics skills need to be brought to the next level and I think focusing on them for a while will give me a more functional strength than anything else right now. It's summer, though. I can't be spending 4 or 5 days a week inside a gym while it's gorgeous out, so I decided I better program in some good outdoor activties - certainly flipping tires, dragging sleds, throwing tires, etc.; but also some LSD work, like trail runs, hikes with heavy packs, and biking.

The program is thus a compromise. I'll follow the current Catalyst Athletics strength cycle, which started back in April. However, I'll only do two or three workouts a week, so that I end up completing two weeks of the 10-week cycle each month. On my other two or three days per week, I'll play in the mountains, do those outdoor metcons and get in some much-needed gymnastics work.

I'm sure dragging a 10-week cycle out for five months is dreadfully wrong on some fundamental level, and at some point, I'll post the question to the CA forums, so Greg Everett, Steven Low, and company can tell me in excruiating detail exactly how I'm short-changing myself. However, my priority right now is to enjoy my workouts. They'll be hard - sometimes brutally so, but I got into CrossFit because I wanted to have more capacity for my outdoor pursuits, so I best enjoy the great outdoors while I have the luxury of living in a beautiful rural setting. I promise to bring my camera, when I do.

Now that the qualifiers are over, I'm not sure what form this blog will take or how often I'll update it, but for now, I'll post an abridged version of my most recent workouts, which with commentary will still make this an insanely long post, but until I come up with a better idea, this is still a workout blog, so...

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June 3, 2009
Back squat 255x5, 265x5, 275x5
Press 115x4+f, 115x3+f, 110x5

Was quite pleased with how readily I got within 5# of my 5RM on the squat, but my press remains anemic. My 5RM is 121, so I'm not off by much. However, it's apparent that I need to continue to emphasize overhead work in my supplemental work.

June 4, 2009
Power clean 145x3, 155x2, 165x2, 175x2, 185, 195, 195f

Redid the 195, because my initial catch wasn't pretty. I had the bar plenty high on both reps, but I didn't drop myself into a proper quarter squat to catch it. Instead, I feebly tucked my tail between my legs to receive the bar. This was a problem at the qualifiers, too. Then, I blamed it on my lack of confidence in my quads, which had been thoroughly thrashed by the heavy thrusters, burpees, and rowing the previous day. However, I'm starting to think that I need to train my body to get accustomed to finishing both power cleans and push jerks in a 1/2 to 1/4 squat without dropping to the bottom of the squat. I could definitely lift a lot more weight, once I get that movement pattern down. Sounds like something to throw in my warmup using PVC.

June 10, 2009
Snatch 115x2x2
Snatch Pull 150x3x3
Snatch DL 150x3x3
Front squat 185x3x5

My first Cathletics WOD. Interesting working a bunch of exercises at submaximal loads. I've done mostly ME work for strength training, and while the individual sets were all done fairly comfortably, I could definitely feel the accumulated volume afterwards and can see how the program would develop strength.

June 11, 2009
Muscle snatch - 2 snatch balance couplet 95, 95, 115, 125, 135f, 135
OHS 140, 115x2x2
Power C&J 155, 155x2, 155

8 TGU
C2B Pullups 15x2

Worked up to a muscle snatch PR, after failing on my first attempt at that weight. This was a shoulder intensive workout and is something that will definitely help with overhead strength, perhaps in ways that diligently working the shoulder press with minimal progress might not (although having some fractional plates would probably help in that regard). Shoulders were too toasted to pull off the 30 TGU I had programmed, so I called it a night.

Weekends are supposed to be fun

It's summer - time to get my workouts in outdoors; time to throw things around the yard; time to head out to the mountains; time to play with tires and sleds. Sunday, it was the tires, and as much as it hurt, this was decidedly fun, and a good workout, too.

Warmup
Hip mobility work
Good mornings, 45x10
10 ft2bar

Heavy stuff
Deadlift 135x5x2, 185x3, 225x2, 275x1, 305x1, 315x5

Needed to get used to lifting heavy again. It's been 7 weeks since I picked up over 300#, and I definitely needed that extra warmup set at 135# to get things working right. By the time I got to my work set, however, they felt solid. Looking forward to restarting linear progression on the DL.

Metcon
3 rounds:

6 tire flip and jump through
200m run
20 wall ball, 25# to 10 feet

9:13

Tire-flipping fun from Patrick Haskell on Vimeo.

The pressure is off

Seeing the final qualifier workout come up today for the last chance qualifiers gave me a nice feeling of "I'm glad it's not me." I actually am looking forward to tackling this workout again, but first I need to practice the oly lifting technique I learned at Greg Everett's seminar a few weeks back. I want that technique so engrained that some approximation of it remains my default mode of liting, even when I'm so far gassed that I can't count reps (like last Sunday).

So today, rather than trying to start rebuilding the metcon that I lost over the last couple of months, I decided nothing would be better than spending some serious time working on my snatch. I invited John Barney over, both to share what I learned and in hopes that the act of teaching would reinforce some of the lessons for myself. (I had planned to do this immediately after Greg's seminar, but my schedule screwed this idea up until I'd had time to forget much of what I had learned.) The drills, positions, and movement patterns, actually came back pretty quickly and the bar was moving well, even though I never loaded it up heavy.

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Saturday, May 30, 2009

Warmup
Shoulder mobility drills
Air squats
Lunges & sampson/psoas stretch
Boz OHS drill

Skill work
Burgener warmup elements, 15# - many times through
OHSs and snatch balance sequence, several times through at 15 & 45#
tall snatch 45x3
3-position hang snatch, 45x3x2

Snatch 75x3, 95x1x2, 125x1x2

Good speed on that last rep, but I wasn't feeling the heavy stuff today, so I moved on.

This workout has been sitting on my to-do list, ever since Byers posted it at CrossFit 603 - and not just because I'm a math geek or because BW-normalized squat workouts are in my wheelhouse and I just wanted to feel good about the first metcon in my new program. I think it's an interesting approach to build scaling explicitly into a WOD. It was also high time I had a good core-stability workout, since in my limited prep for the Qualifiers, I was mostly focusing on strength and power-endurance work.

Metcon
OHS for a total of 20xBW - choose your weight

I did 74# x 47 @ BW 173

1:57

A similar CF603 WOD, 40xBW C&J made it's way into the Rocky Mountain Qualifiers (at the Qualifiers, it was done with fixed volumes of 7000#/5000#). For the Qualifiers, this sort of choose-your-weight workout is especially interesting, because to do well, you need to know your personal power curve (those weights at which you can most efficiently move weight with a movement). By choosing the optimal weight, you maximize your power output and thus the intensity of your workout (in the strict CrossFit definition of Intensity = Power).



This was rough. With the OHS, the focus is on core (and shoulder) stability, so maximizing the power output doesn't have the same cachet. I think I ended up picking a weight that maximized my speed on the workout, and the effort left me with a nice post-WOD headache. My right shoulder was starting to take a walk around the joint capsule on those last couple of reps. I was definitely at my limit finishing this workout in a single set, but next time I'll try it at 95# and maybe heavier again after that to see how well I can keep the overall intensity going when the intensity of each rep goes up. I expect it will be an entirely different workout that way.

Ring work
1:00 in a mature support
MU progressions
1 MU
4 STC to hollow hang & quit

My post-WOD headache came back with a vengeance when I was inverted, and I called it a day.