It's called training

There's a tendency in CrossFit to make everything about competition. I'm not talking about the Games. That is a competition. I'm talking about the WOD, whether it's MainPage, an affiliate WOD, or your own programming you're following. People follow the MainPage to compete against everyone else on the same day. On the message boards, challenges go up to compare times in a metcon taken from someone's log. In our own training, we break out our favorite workouts and try to bust them out in a few seconds less than the last time we did them; we chase new 1RMs more often than we should; or we tackle some obscene workout from a MainPage video or the Qualifiers to see where we stack up. There's nothing wrong with this by itself. As Coach says, "Men will die for points," and so the competition provides valuable motivation to push through the pain that accompanies most CF workouts - to generate the intensity needed to get the most out of our training.

The problem comes when the daily competition takes the place of intelligent training. Last fall, I took this to the Stupid Zone. Last fall, I got in a contest with some folks on the message boards to see who could first get 10 consecutive muscle ups. I got stuck at three before my efforts to Grease the Groove led to some unpleasant elbow problems. Somebody else developed their own arm problem. We called the contest off, and as far as I know, none of us has made it to 10 still.

Lately, I've been doing workouts from the Games and Qualifiers, to train the kinds of heavy metcons I'm likely to face, but also to see how prepared I am - how I stack up against top competition. When I stepped into CF Central CT tonight and saw that they had max deadlifts programmed, I had a notion to try the brutal Sunday WOD from the Great Basin Qualifiers. However, after warming up with 155# cleans, common sense got the best of me. It didn't make sense to tackle another workout that would leave me staring at the bar wondering when I'd be able to complete my next rep. I needed an intense metcon, so I decided to cut the workout in half.

The decision paid off. I pushed to my limit. I had a couple failed reps on the cleans and C2Bs; I fought off room spins for a moment during each round; and I ended up lying on the ground for a couple minutes waiting for the pain to stop. Post-WOD bliss wouldn't come for a while, but I felt great about this (even if I wouldn't have been competitive).

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Warmup
Shoulder triplet
Dynamic mobility drills
Mountain climber burpees, 5x5
Burgener w/u
15 C2B pullups

Power clean/clean couplets 95, 135, 155x4

Metcon

1,000m row
3 rounds:

5 cleans, 155#
10 C2B pullups
15 box jumps, 30"

14:21

What a difference a day makes

Yesterday felt so lousy that I figured I should hit a day reminiscent of the CFSB program and see if I didn't fall back in the working mode, instead of the whining mode. I did declare "CF Sucks" again after round 1 of the metcon, but I kept after it. It wasn't a goat fest, but aside from the short time domain, I wasn't exactly playing to my strengths. Felt good to go hard and heavy. Now, to do it again tomorrow.

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Warmup
Wind sprints
Air squats
Sampson stretches
Shoulder mobility drills

Heavy stuff
Bench press 45x5, 95x5, 135x3, 165x2, 185x3, 195x3, 205x3, 210x2

Got a new 3RM and 2RM in there despite not working bench since Fall. Gotta love how strength transfers from one movement to another.

Box jumps for height

Got 37 inches pretty readily, but the next jump was to 47 inches, and there's no way that was happening. Did a few horizontal tire-to-tire jumps too. Good fun, but not exactly a workout. Here's photo sequence of John hitting the 37-inch jump.

Deadlift 135x5, 185x3, 225x2, 265x2, 275x1

Metcon
5 rounds:

5 Deadlift, 275#
10 Burpees

6:26

Nice cycling of burpees. I have a lousy habit of landing from the jump and then dropping into the bottom of the squat. Today that only happened two or three times, and that made for a halfway decent time on this WOD - despite me stopping to valsava with every DL rep.

Here's hoping I can get in a workout tomorrow and build on this momentum.

I've lost my edge

It was only a matter of time before my 2-on, 2-off, 1-on, 2-off schedule caught up to me. Today, I lacked not only the strength and endurance but the mental strength to push through. I had a workout that aside from the usual suffering would have been good fun, but not today. Today I couldn't muster the intensity, and I spent far too much time looking at the weights. It was all I could do to hobble down the road without walking. Today, I was hating CrossFit, and CrossFit was hating on me. I'll have to give this one a go some other time. It's a good combination of movements. It deserves a shot on a day that I actually feel like moving.

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Warmup
Hip mobility drills
Burgener warmup
Bear complex 45x3, 95x2, 115x1

Metcon

3 rounds:

400m run
Dimishing reps (9-6-3) of:

• 115# bear complex
• Tire flip and jump through

20:17

That was ugly. It hurt plenty, but that may just be indicative of bad tire-flipping form. I'm guessing I never bore down and flattened my back, given my lack of focus. That only served to slow the runs down, too. Feh.

At least tomorrow is another day.

Exposing my own weaknesses

Took a little detour on the way home from CT yesterday to catch up with Sean Manseau at Pioneer Valley CrossFit. He had already done Jason (a total of 50 muscle ups and 250 squats) in the morning, but he was still ready for a late-night workout. Sean is a great coach and a really interesting guy - a former graphic artist, writer, and now affiliate owner. We were on the same page regarding tackling a qualifier WOD. He had in mind the Great Basin Sunday workout but I had no interest in box jumps because my calves have been locked up tight since skiing Sunday, so instead, we tackled the second European qualifier workout.

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Warmup
Shoulder mobility work
Kipping pullups and 5 bar muscle-ups
3 HSPUs

(Sean's sweet pullup bars gave me a chance to try these for the first time. Way easier than ring muscle ups if you've got a big kip. Take home message: I need more deadhangs.)

Burgener warmup
Tall cleans
C&Js up to 135#

Workout
15-12-9:

C&J, 135#
HSPU

DNF - got through the last set of cleans in 19:50

So simple on paper, but this was awful. Even concentrating on form on the jerks (to the extent I'm able to execute well), the HSPUs were brutal - way, way harder than the 21-15-9 in Diane. They took Forever. By the end of the second set, I was teaching myself how to kip them and got pretty decent with it - a skill I'll put to use at the Qualifiers, if necessary, but not something I ever intended to learn. It's kind of stupid, really. Talk about non-functional. At the end, I was perfectly happy to accept a DNF rather than wasting time doing 9 more kipping HSPUs.

I don't relish the idea of doing HSPUs at the Qualifiers. Therefore, once I recover from this effort (my traps are killing me), I'll be greasing the groove on HPSUs - sets of 5 or less whenever I get the chance. (I wonder if there's somewhere at work I can do this without them deciding that I need to be laid-off for my mental health?)

Sean finished this workout ahead of me, having the sense to scale and do strict form using bands - what I tried to do in the last round with Zero success. (I couldn't budge myself). As a result, I got some helpful coaching in my last round. The highlight of the workout was when Sean told me to think of the Third Law of Newtonian Mechanics right as I was about to attempt my last rep. I decided I better stick with the previous cue about pushing myself under the bar. We had a good laugh over that one later, but he did bring up a good point. I had spent so much time working my form on the simpler push press that I've gotten out of practice with the jerk. No worries there, really. It's already at the top of my list for exercises to incorporate into my workouts over the next few weeks, and it's a skill that I know I've got in the bag of tricks somewhere.

Snow day

With the family out of town for the week, I decided to get in a ski day before it was too late. Drove up to Stowe to enjoy their closing day. It was an absolutely perfect day in the mountains. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and temperature hovered in the 40s all day - enough to soften the snow, but not so much to turn everything to slush. Mixing runs through the soft bumps, with high-speed cruisers, and adventure runs through the trees (where the late-season conditions left a few more rocks, stumps, and streams kept things interesting), I got in a little of everything out there. The quads started to go, but I figured I was skipping a CF WOD for this, so I kept pushing through to the end of the day. Finished up with a nice tailgate party until the sun went behind the mountain. A fine day. I owe you all some pictures on this blog, but the camera went with the kids for the week. (They're a lot cuter than me.)

16,000 vertical feet in 5 hours
3 beers and one t-bone steak in the parking lot

You're never ready. It's just your turn.

They say it about death and bullriding. I often find myself saying it about CF workouts, so the last time I asked myself whether I was (or would be) ready for the Qualifiers, I just said "Screw it." It was time to find out. There's no more time to patiently build strength or perfect technique. I need to hit some of those heavy Qualifier workouts and just see what happens. Enter Qualifier workout #1 - Fat Helen. I bottom loaded my DB, so it would swing more like a KB. I'd never swung a 70# DB for more than a few reps before, and the longer lever arm of the bottom-loaded DB was a rude shock to the system, but it wasn't any worse than a bunch of heavy DLs. I don't feel great about my performance, but it didn't totally suck either, so I can't complain.

I've got another four weeks to train before the Qualifiers. The objective - make the time cut in every workout, and don't finish DFL in any heat. (Anything better will be a pleasant suprise.) Regardless, I don't intend to be suprised by the workout elements. There will be a lot of heavy metcons between now and then.

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Warmup
Jump rope 5:00
CFCC Dynamic mobility
Shoulder mobility quartet
Burgener warmup (just because)
TGU 35x3
DB Swings 35x10, 55x5, 65x3, KB-style 70x3

Metcon
Fat Helen

3 rounds:

Run 400m
21 KB swings, 70#
12 C2B Pullups

15:20

C2B's were broken into singles and doubles, because the swings took so much out of me. Swings were broken into 10 to start but mostly 4-6s thereafter. Pretty sure I could get down near 14 minutes, now that I know what a bunch of 2-pood swings feel like on my back.

Ring work
5 STC, pike through to L-hang (gotta get back to more of these soon)
MU progressions
4 consecutive MUs (PR)

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