Strength is king

It's no secret anymore. The strongest athletes are the best athletes. As Rip says, "Stronger people are harder to kill and more useful in general." That harder-to-kill bit rang lound and clear last night, as I tackled DT - the newest hero workout, dedicated to Staff Seargant Timothy Davis who was killed by an IED in Iraq in February.

The strength displayed by elite CFers is amazing. It's not the instantaneous, explosive strength of Dimas or the massive, grinding strength of Konstantinovs. It's the ability to move reasonably heavy stuff repeatedly without tiring. Guys like Jason Khalipa, Josh Everett and other Games contenders have unreal work capacities. Me, well, not so much.

The difference between the traditional benchmark barbell metcons - Fran, Grace, Elizabeth - and the Games workouts (e.g., 30 squat C&J, 155#) or hero workouts like DT is remarkable. An extra 20# on the bar doesn't sound like that much when talking about max DLs or squats, but it makes a world of difference when you need to do 30 reps. Make no doubt about it, heavy metcons are the future of CrossFit. You might not be there yet, and I'm clearly not there yet, but it's my future - my immediate future. Kelly Starrett calls "225 the new 135", the way to separate the wheat from the chaffe. Last night, I was the chaffe, but I wasn't going to give up on this hero workout.

Whether that was the best choice for my physical training, I don't know. The Rx'd weight was my previous 3RM for hang power cleans. I do know, however, that workouts like this are important mental training for me. I may not have mustered maximum intensity, but I learned something about the lay-of-the-land in Heavy Country. In the last two rounds, in part motivated by a desire to not have to clean that bar again, I managed 6 consecutive push jerks. While that was clearly a sign that I could have pushed harder. It was also a mental victory, forcing myself to both increase my work rate and to adopt better form to get the job done.

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Warmup
CFWUx1
Burgener warmup
DL-HPC-PJ 45x5, 95x3, 135x2, 155x1

Metcon
DT

5 rounds:

12 Deadlifts, 155#
9 HPCs, 155#
6 PJs, 155#

27:13

My hormonal milieu

As you probably know, my training has been irregular with weekday workouts getting pushed aside by the working world pretty frequently. I've spoken about the slippery slope with respect to diet and carb cravings. However, I find that there's sometimes an equally dangerous slide when the workouts don't come regularly.

It's not any one thing I can put my finger on, but the loss of routine hurts in more ways than you might expect. Not only do I miss out on valuable training time, but I lose my training mentality. The notion of a Running Grace still sounds cool, but motivating to do such an ugly metcon does not come as easy. During the week, my body is adapted to resting comfortably in the evenings (even though that resting is usually me working on the computer). It takes some planning to convince my body to get off its ass. The other problem is my planning. I've had this nice CFSB program going - squats Saturday, deadlifts Sunday, metcon Tuesday, front squats or cleans Wednesday, and press Thursday. However, that neat little schedule hasn't been kept since the third week in March, and it was only kept once prior to that. Being off schedule isn't bad in-and-of itself. (Y'know, constantly varied and all that.) The trick is to not get thrown by it, to keep training when the opportunity presents itself, to not say because there's only a half-hour available that there isn't time to train. However, that's exactly what happened - too often. I got so wrapped around what my next workout would be that I'd put it off for a day, so I'd have time to do the workout I had planned, and then wouldn't have any time the next day. It's something I've been known to rant at others about - to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good - whether we're talking training or diet. Forget about 3-on, 1-off or 5 days a week; in March, there were many more days I didn't train (18) than there were days I did train, and I'm barely breaking even this month. (The scary thing is: I'm supposed to be getting ready for the Games.)

So, I've missed a bunch of training days. It happens to all of us at one time or another. My timing is particularly bad, but somebody doing a bad job of squeezing in workouts isn't something new. What I find interesting is how quickly my energy levels changed as I reduced my activity level - how comfortable the couch would look when I'd get home at 730 at night. That's the time I most often start my workouts, but after a long day at a desk and a few days without a workout, my body was fully adapted to inactivity and pretty happy with stasis.

The weird thing isn't that the body adapts to the easiest form of existence it can. That's the way we evolved to minimize stress. Unfortunately, it's my stress levels that cause the most trouble. It's not the stress of a high-pressure job. There's lots to do, but it's pretty interesting, and the long days come with comp time that I'm sure to put to good use. However, the travel and the associated diet, the disrupted schedule that has me working some nights and weekends, nights with too little sleep, and the challenge to find time for myself and my family amidst the increased workload, produces a classic physical stress response. My cortisol levels shoot up; I get inflammation of joints and tissues; and my work capacity suffers. It's like I get all the problems of overtraining without any of the benefits of the training that got me there. I'm doing a strength bias program, where I'm trying to encourage anabolic metabolism, and the rest of my life is telling my body to catabolize itself. Thus, some of my reduced training load is simply a sign that I'm listening to my body, doing what I need to do to keep putting up PRs when I do train, but but that doesn't mean I haven't also been slipping into some bad habits.

Part of the stress response is that I found myself craving carbs - more ice cream, dried fruit, chocolate-covered espresso beans (yum), a beer or glass of wine; even the bread looked good at Easter dinner. Fortunately common sense won out on that count, and I settled for a modest dessert of cheesecake with syrup-laden strawberries and a side of ice cream. Yes, this was a deliberate indulgence - an admission to myself that I'd slipped and might was well enjoy it, because it was high time I cleaned up my act. While this sounds like the classic case of giving up on discipline altogether because I slipped up a bit, it worked. My diet has been dialed-in these last two days - starting with an 18-hour fast from cheesecake until late Monday morning, done with the express intent of getting my insulin levels back under control. This is a strategy I've employed of late, when travel and a hectic life get in the way of a sound diet, I work in a fast to help get myself back on track, and then I return to the strategy of Just Eating good food.

I had every intention of working out last night - hitting that lovely row-burpee-run WOD that is just the sort of metcon Rx that my I need. Unfortunately, work kept me going until far too late, so today I ducked out of the CT office in time to visit CFCC and suffer whatever WOD Tom had cooked up for everyone.

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Warmup
Dynamic mobility sequence (hips and ankles)
Shoulder mobility drills
3 x 10 of supermans, mtn. climbers, situps, lunges
30 jumping jacks

Skill work
Power cleans 75x10x4 - focus on efficiency of movement and finishing with elbows up and active hip

Metconnish
50 squats - 2 16K KBs in rack
250 single unders
10 floor wipers

5:33

Metcon
Tabata rowing

925m

Tom actually had the fish game programmed for his athletes. I took on the tabata myself. Needless to say, it sucked. I really lost it on the last three rounds. (I was on a 960m pace before that.)

A pretty short session when you get right down to it, but I needed to just be given a workout and do it. I had my rings, jump rope and DBs with me, but figured the external motivation and a workout partner would do me some good. Good to see Tom's new place. It's in the back of a kickboxing place with a climbing wall. I could make good use of those facilities, if I get there earlier in the day before the kickboxers show up. They've even got a climbing wall. Hopefully, however, my travelling days are numbered and within a couple weeks, I'll only be down here occasionally. While I'm here, however, I might as well make the most of it. On that note, I was too tired to shower and then head out to dinner, so I stopped at the grocery store and made a nice dinner - tuna steaks in coconut milk with an arugula/spinach salad. Maybe not the most impressive workout, but I got the most out of my day.

Get with the program

Now that I've decided to leave the CFSB behind until after the Qualifiers, you may ask, "What does my new program look like?" Funny, I have pretty much the same question. The new program has a few key characteristics, including:

• an emphasis on intense metcons and associated suffering;
• skill work to address my weaknesses (overhead lifts [shoulder strength and the dip-drive], hamstring/shoulder flexibility, and have I mentioned endurance and muscular stamina?); and
• not too time consuming, as I'm busy at work.

Sound familiar to anyone? Could be the MainPage WOD, couldn't it? Just what I was doing back in January to get on track for the Games, before I decided to do a CFSB cycle first. Well, as much as I admire Coach G's programming, he doesn't know my weaknesses, my varying schedule, the equipment I have available in my travels, or the weather around here. Still, the format of this new program will be familiar. There will be the occasional CFSB-like day (particularly shoulder press day), where I warmup, do skill work, do heavy work, endurance work, and a metcon, but I won't have the time for that every day, and I need to attack some longer metcons. I will regularly pick metcons from the mainpage, not cherry-picking so much as goat-herding; I will do my share of short, brutish, heavy metcons of the style that I expect to see at the Qualifiers; and I will do a series of Girls to benchmark my progress relative to where I was when I started to think about going to the Qualifiers. Many days, I'll also do skill-work also to address weaknesses, like push presses and jerks, muscle-ups, handstand pushups, etc.

Saturday's workout also marks another change in my workout program. I went to the Y and had a fun, little warmup, where I did a nice variety of gymnastics work as part of my warmup on the plush gymnastics mat. However, when I went down to the weight room to do some overhead lifting, I couldn't find a single space where I could safely bail. This, despite the fact that there were only three other people there. They'd moved the furniture around in such a way as to maximize the impression of space for people whose intent was to find a place to rest their alternately underdeveloped or oversized ass, while they isolated that particular muscle group that was sure to make all members of the opposite sex swoon with desire. Now, I'm in the habit of redecorating the room to make space for myself, but this time, there was simply nowhere to move the various benching units to make space for some snatches and overhead squats that wouldn't put them on top of one of the three other people in the room. I simply gave up and went home, deciding that it was preferable to hit my workout in the 40-degree garage and out in the rain. I owe the directors at the Y a letter explaining the reason for my cancelled membership, but that's a matter for another day, because my hope is that I can be diplomatic and persuasive enough that they'll consider their failure to provide value to somebody with the simplest of needs by the time next winter rolls around. (I don't intend to live in this same place long enough to make insulating, heating, and pouring a new floor in my garage a worthwhile investment.)

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Warmup
Suicides

Skillwork
Free-standing handstands
Forward rolls, shoulder rolls, handstand rolls, hand-walking, cartwheels
HSPU on parallettes (partial ROM and full ROM [ears below bars] in pike position)

Burgener warmup x 2 (once at Y; once at home)
Snatch-OHS-snatch balance complex 75x2, 95

Metcon
Nancy

5 rounds:

400m run
15 OHS, 95#

16:26

Pretty happy with that for my first time as Rx'd. I did everything unbroken with the only rests coming before I picked up the bar and then with the bar overhead (unless you count that slow first half of the run in the last round, where I was recovering from a screaming metcon headache). This almost gave me the Fran cough - just the kind of effort I need to produce more often.

Changing gears

Got my last max effort day in at the tail-end of my CFSB program. It wasn't the smoothest implementation of programming with all my travel and missed workouts, but I definitely got stronger just the same. With six weeks to the Qualifiers, it's time for me to direct my programming more directly toward my weaknesses, which means more metcons and fewer squats. I'll keep deadlifting and working on my overhead lifts every week, but I need to focus on work capacity over time, rather than strength and short-term power. I'll go back to training those, because strength, speed, and power are quite simply fun. However, I need to focus on cardiovascular endurance, muscular stamina, and building my willingness to just plain suffer. First, however, I got to enjoy seeing how much progress I made lifting heavy 3-4 times per week for a couple of months. I was pleasantly suprised.

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Warmup
Jump rope 7:00
Messing around on rings

Heavy stuff
Deadlift 45x10, 135x5, 205x3, 275x2, 315x1, 345x1, 365x1 (PR already), 375x1, 385x1

Metcon(ish)
45 1/2 BW thrusters, 85#

3:38 in sets of 26 + 19

Goal was one unbroken set, resting in the rack or overhead. It's one of two remaining Level II fitness standards, both of which relate to work capacity and muscular stamina. This one is particularly tough, and there are plenty of damn strong athletes who have struggled with it, so I don't feel too ashamed of falling short, but I'm going to keep after it, as it gets after one of my primary weaknesses - stamina on the overhead lifts.

Core work
Overhead barbell walk, 95# X 150 feet

Felt more like shoulder work than core work, but that's too be expected after the thrusters.

All in all a pretty easy day, but max effort lifts have a way of catching up with you, so tomorrow I may feel differently about it.

A reasonably comfortable PR.

Embrace the suck

A few days ago, somebody on the boards posted a question about how you master the mental game of CrossFit. That is, how do you dig down halfway through a brutal metocn and convince yourself to do the very thing that all your instincts are screaming at you to stop doing? There were plenty of good replies to this question, but the phrase that occurred to me (and it's one that I've never really liked) is "Embrace the suck." For some reason I never liked the sound of the phrase before, but when I thought about it I realized that it is exactly the mindset I need to push through an upleasant challenge, a particularly nasty WOD.

When you get right down to it, you need to be willing to accept discomfort, to relish that discomfort, to know that the pain you experience at the moment will bring you strength later. It won't bring you comfort. Sure, it may make the physical and psychological challenges of your day-to-day life easier to bear, but it won't make the next workout any easier. Learning to push yourself through discomfort only makes things worse. You get stronger, yes, but by pushing harder, the pain increases. It's a vicious cycle. The more you suffer, the stronger you get, the more it sucks the next time. You'll get stronger, but don't expect it to get any easier. It will just hurt that much more. To make the next step as a CF athlete, I need to learn to love that pain - to recognize it as future strength and hold onto it rather than turn away; I need to Embrace the Suck.

The cruel irony was that yesterday's workout was one of those challenges that was bound to make me question that entire philosophy. Whatever Evil Genius first decided to pair running and DLs can go fuck himself. Heavy DLs screw the back up tight and encourage the body to develop an antiPose stride, where you struggle to simply lean forward slightly. I knew that as soon as I went out for the second run, I'd be in that sort of discomfort that comes from getting your core squeezed mercilessly by itself. Fuck embracing the pain; the pain was embracing me. I knew this would be the challenge of this WOD coming into it. I knew that I had to push through, but when it comes to heavy DLs, pushing through needs to be done with a measure of caution.

I've never been a fan of DLs in a metcon. Maximizing power output is too easily done at the expense of proper form and loss of form on heavy DLs is a recipe for injury. However, after working the DL almost weekly for over a year, I've got the form locked in pretty well and can tell when I'm starting to slip. If Coach G. is going to program DLs on the mainpage with regularity and they're thus likely to show up at the Qualifiers, I need to figure out a way to get efficient at doing them with solid form. I'm not sure I didn't err on the side of caution yesterday (breaking the DLs into sets of 2 and 3 for the most part), but it was a good effort toward pushing through the discomfort and keep putting out the work I know I can produce. As I get accustomed to this particular flavor of pain, I hope I can up my power output on workouts like this. (Of course, there are many flavors of suck I need to learn to embrace more fully, but that's where that Constantly Varied bit comes in. More on programming soon.)

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Warmup
Agility drills
Barbell TGU x 3 each
OHS 45x15

Skill work
Muscle up progressions
4 MU singles

Finally getting the hang of this as a controlled movement. Hope to give the 30 MU for time WOD a go before the Qualifiers.

Metcon
3 rounds:

Run 400m
10 DL, 260# (1.5 x BW)
20 Box jumps 30"

19:07

Hey, this CFSB shit works

I'm certainly not the first to say it, but it was the first time I got to test it myself. I'd gotten "PRs for reps," while working through the program, but I hadn't gone after a 1RM before this week. Thursday's shoulder press test was unsatisfying, due in no small part, I'm sure to the inconsistency with which I worked it (5 times in the last 7 weeks and not at all for the 5 weeks after I set my PR in December). My squat, on the other hand, has been getting lots of love and attention from ME sessions, to DE box squats, to sets of 20, and a handful of new 5RM efforts, but I hadn't done ME sets of less than 5 since January. Today, I got to see how those lighter weights translated to the truly heavy stuff. As you might guess by now, the anwwer is: quite well, thank you.

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Warmup
Row 500m D6 144.5
Hip mobility drills

Heavy stuff
Back squat 45x5, 135x5, 185x3, 225x2, 275x1, 295x1, 305x1 (PR), 315x1 (PR), 320f

A little more aggression and I would have had that 320. I got stuck halfway up with my form locked in solid and held it there for a couple of seconds, but couldn't push through. If I'd hit it harder to begin with, I'm pretty sure that would have gone up too. Still, I'm very happy with this.

Skill work
Handstand practice 8:00

Need to do some shoulder mobility work ahead of time next time. I'm getting pretty solid, but I just don't have the range of motion to lock everything out where it needs to be to make these easier.

Metcon
3 rounds:

Row 500m
50 squats
25 DB swings, 55#

13:56

That was rough. The swings were hard, but unbroken. The squats got broken every round. I was really feeling the heavy stuff. Still, the performance wasn't half bad. I'm planningto give metcon more attention between now and the Games, and hope to have this workout under 12:00 by then.

Core work
GHD 2x15

Bring what you got

Sometimes you've got plenty in the tank and are firing on all cylinders. Sometimes, you just gotta limp on through. There was nothing objectively wrong with me tonight. I just didn't feel it. My timing was off, my strength wasn't there, and I felt all kinds of strange during the metcon. Still, you can't wait for everything to be right; sometimes, it's just time to get after it.

Yesterday I managed a morning workout that didn't even merit a post.

CFWUx2
One mile run 7:23

Was supposed to be 5K, but my back/left glute were attacking me, much like they did during my three-hour drive the previous day, so I bailed on the run. Was short on time anyways, so no big deal. Felt much better today, but didn't get out to the gym until 8:30 pm - not my favorite time of day (unless I'm getting to bed early or grabbing an after-dinner drink). No such luck tonight.

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Warmup
Jump rope practice 4:40 (max 3 DUs)
Shoulder mobility triplet

Heavy stuff
Shoulder press 45x5, 95x5, 115x3, 125x1, 130x1, 135x1, 137f (141 is my PR)

Had hoped for a better showing after my CFSB work, but no matter what I do with my programming, I'll be keeping the shoulder press and other overhead work in a regular rotation. One of these days, I'll see some strength gains there.

Metcon
Filthy 50

30:11 (PR by almost 3:00)

Box jump, jumping PUs, swings, lunges, PPs unbroken, but
DUs took 5.5 minutes
Got to burpees at 18 minutes (previous best was to wall ball by then)
Burpees took 5.5 minutes
DUs took almost 7 minutes (in 1s, 2s, 3s & 4s)

Felt like puking after the wall ball. (Yes, Jenna, I walked away twice. Even tried to walk away from the burpees, at which point I just dropped and did three more.) Sat down after the burpees at the hands of a metcon demon. Felt pukie close at hand and had weird muscle spasms that made it feel like somebody had placed a heavy hand on the side of my neck. Very strange. Got some evil calf cramps as I was finishing up the DUs and hobbled inside feeling Angry Hungry. I swear, if I found a person in the fridge, I would have ripped off their arm and eaten it. Thankfully, I was able to take out my primal aggression on some leftover London Broil and fruit. Good to get in a solid midweek session.