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.

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.