The truth hurts

A brutal Sunday workout. Going into my heat, only one guy had finished the WOD (Joe Celso - CF Rochester) and he was 12th overall going in and had to get his workout in early to attend a friend's wedding. (As an aside, Joe is a great trainer and his place is well worth a visit should you find yourself wondering what to do with your free time in Rochester.)

I went in pacing myself to finish the WOD within the 15-minute time-limit and things were going well. The C2B pullups were flowing (which doesn't always happen) and the cleans were heavy, but manageable. However, I started gassing late in the 8th round. I didn't slow down too much. I'm pretty sure I was leading my heat when I was in the 7th round, but I couldn't hold my pace. That itself wasn't so bad, but as I tired, my form went to shit on the cleans. I started muscling them and catching them with my ass tucked under, rather than dropping down into a deeper squat. My legs were still toasted from yesterday, and I didn't trust them to lift the weight or catch it. (BTW, my 20-minute foam-rolling session this morning was every bit the equal of the workouts for depth of pain.) Before long, my back was smoked, and in the round of 5 (which I reached with 2.5 minutes left), I just started failing miserably on the cleans. I must have pulled 9, but only 4 of them were good. I was cooked through.

I knew that my training wasn't up-to-snuff. I just didn't expect to be let down so suddenly and harshly - being simply unable to move the bar sufficiently to keep trudging on. I wasn't so suprised by it yesterday, since I've always been weak overhead, but today's Epic Failure blindsided me (in the way it happened - it was no secret that I haven't been training properly lately).

It's a truism. You can't expect to bring it all on game-day, if you don't bring it every day in practice, and I sure as hell haven't practiced much lately. Looking back on my log, I worked out only 4 days in May leading up to the Qualifiers and in all have had more off-days than on-days in 2009. Training was decent in January and especially in early February, averaging 2 days on for 1 day off (a schedule that was probably close to ideal when I was managing the CFSB volume). Work changed that. At least it the final presentation was the day before the Qualifiers - ideal timing to use my Qualifiers experience as motivation for my training.

I'm quite excited about starting up again - not because I've seen my weaknesses and need to attack them. I knew my goats (metcons greater than 10 minutes and overhead lifting, for example) but simply stopped training enought to tame them. I'm excited because now I can train for Nothing in Particular. I can focus on the fun stuff - oly lifting; gymnastics; backyard tire-flipping, object-throwing, crawling, jumping, rsled-dragging craziness; and even some LSD on the mountain bike or the hiking trails around here.

I swear I'll write-up the qualifiers properly tomorrow.

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Oh yeah, the workout.

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1:

155# power clean
C2B pullups
1.5-pood KB swings

Completed rounds of 10 through 6 and got 4 out of 5 cleans within 15 minute time limit.

Overtraining and under-recovery, Part 4 - A little physiology

This post will be the last and was by far the hardest of the series. I starting it in late March, after missing a full week of training because I'd been working too hard. I had the kids to myself for a long weekend, worked until late in the evening several days, and spent 3 days out-of-town. I had my travel kit of adjustable dumbbells, rings, and a jump rope, but the thought of squeezing a 30-minute workout in around my work commitments never quite gained traction. As I watched my carefully planned programming fall to pieces, I kept berating myself for falling off the fitness wagon, but the two times I came close to motivating myself to get in a workout, I realized that I was severely under-recovered, short on both sleep and good food. Whether my decisions that resulted in me missing an entire week of training were the right choices in each case, I don't know. However, I decided at the time that getting enough rest was more important to my fitness than getting in a workout.

I previously discussed the difference between overtraining and underrecovery, but physiologically they are often identical phenomena. Training produces an adrenal response, where our bodies enter flight-or-fight mode in response to the release of hormones like epinephrine (adrenaline), cortisol (hydrocortisone), and norpinephrine. In the short term, this has lots of helpful effects, like increased alertness, improved glucose and fat metabolism, reduced inflammatory response and pain sensitivity, even improved memory. In stress situations, our bodies respond hormonally to boost our metabolism to enable us to adapt to the stressor. This response is similar whether we're dealing with mental stress from moving, loss of a job, or our wedding or with a physical stress, like a 10K run, short-intense workout, or an olympic lifting meet. The stress response is good. It improves performance in the face of the stressor. However, when the stress levels remain elevated, the body's response to the stress changes. We can't remain in a heightened metabolic state all the time. The effects of overtaining and chronic stress begin to appear: fatigue, increased inflammation, lowered metabolism, and a weakened immune system. (Note how these effects are the opposite of those produced by adrenal homones in the short-term. It's almost like a low-level adrenal fatigue, or more likely a reduced sensitivity to the hormones (because elevated cortisol and ephinephrine levels are associated with overtraining). I'm also craving carbs more than usual - probably because my body gets used to the elevated glucose levels that correspond to states of stress.

As I balance training and my insane project at work, I've been hyperconscious of the potential for being underrecovered from one or the other. I simply can't afford a few days off to illness, and I have no desire to injure myself in advance of the Qualifiers. When I got his project I knew the two events, this project and Qualifiers would be adding stress to my life in parallel. There's a beautiful symmetry to them - the final presentation for my project is the day before the Qualifiers. (For my next trick, I will attempt to avoid a letdown after these two events.)

In coping with this fine conjunction of events, I'm pretty sure I'm erring on the side of undertraining. I've dialed back the intensity, not in the gym so much as the way in which I drive myself to workout. If I feel fatigued, I don't push it. Instead, I make an effort to eat well and plenty and get my sleep. To date, my performance hasn't suffered much. I may not be peaking for the Games, but I won't be a mess either (at least not until halfway through the first workout).

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I've been skipping out on the posting of workouts lately. I haven't been working out much, but I figure time spent doing that is better than typing away at the computer. (Remember, I started this post in March.) It two Saturday's ago that I ran a 5K. I got a mediocre time.

May 2, 2009

Run 5K - 25:12

The noteworthy thing in this was how messed up my legs felt during and afterwards. Since I have colitis, my immune system can get me jacked up when under stress. Aside from the ordinary symptoms of blood loss, I can get an awful athritic response. This run was one of those days. I pushed through OK, but my left knee hurt like hell afterwards. Some of it was IT-band related, so foam rolling helped. I'll just have to hope we don't hit a long run at the Qualifiers. I'm no good at them anyways.

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May 6, 2009

Warmup
10 C2B pullups
10 ring dips
Burgener warmup and snatch skill transfer exercises
Shoulder triplet
Boz OHS drill

Skill work
3 position: hang snatch-OHS couplet 45x3
Snatch 75x3x2, 95x3, 115x1x2

Metcon
Snatching Fran - Mid-Atlantic Qualifier WOD

21-15-9:

95# (squat) snatch
C2B pullups

13:52

Didn't push this, as my shoulder was unhappy during warmup, but it felt better as I went along and I sped this up in the 2nd and 3rd rounds.

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May 9 & 10, 2009

Attended Greg Everett's Olympic seminar. This will get it's own detailed write-up, because it's more deserving than anything else I've thrown up here. Saturday we worked the snatch, and Sunday we worked the clean & jerk. Set PRs in the snatch and clean, but was too spent to try to set a jerk PR.

Heavy stuff
Snatch 165#
Clean 225#
Clean & Jerk 185#

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May 13, 2009

Warmup
25 DB swings, 35#
10 C2B pullups
10 ring dips
Hip mobility drills
Deadlift up to 250#

Metcon
3 rounds:

10 Deadlift, 250#
15 C2B pullups
30 squats

8:57

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

Spring is in the air

Was on my way out to the Y to meet Johnny, but as soon as I stepped out the door I knew that plan would be a mistake. Around here, the first warm weather in March means the beginning of mud season - nothing so glorious as a proper spring. There are no flowers busting out (although the crocuses should show soon now); there are no girls in short skirts; and the yard and hiking trails are a veritable quagmire. Even my garage still had a coat of ice, but that had thinned (down from 4-inches in February) and softened enough that I could rip a floor mat free and set it out in the sun. A quick call was made to John to change plans to a driveway workout, where we could enjoy the first day of temps in the upper 50s since at least November.

It took a while to sweep things out and reassemble the equipment that had been scattered about from a winter of working out elsewhere, and with the sun beating down on us my kids hanging around, the day didn't have any sense of urgency. In the end, it took us almost 2.5 hours to get in our workout (not counting the requisite porch-sitting, post-workout malt beverage). As much as I love winter, it's hard to argue with days like this. The Spring air even brought out my inner city schoolgirl double-dutch skills, as I PR'd on double unders on my first attempt, after months of no progress whatsoever.

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Warmup
Jump rope 5:00 - 21 consecutive DUs (PR, previous best 13)
Star-pattern squat sequence 35x2 each
Shoulder mobility drills

Skill work
Push press 45x5, 95x5, 125x5

(looking better; John gave me a nice cue that helped with form, although I don't think I was generating as much power as possible)

Heavy stuff
Deadlift 125x5, 185x3, 235x2, 285x1, 305x1, 310x3, 325x3, 340x3 (new 3RM)
250 x 12-9-6 with 1:00 break between sets

Last rep of heavy sets and endurance sets were getting into uglyville, although the very last one was probably more laziness than lack of stamina. Here's the heavy set. Not beyond acceptable, but it's definitely time to drop weight and work sets of five for a while.



Metcon
AMRAP 10:

3 power cleans, 155#
6 box jumps, 30"
9 C2B pullups

6 rounds plus two PCs

Got this metcon from Elizabeth Terris and her San Diego affiliate. It really puts a demand on explosiveness. I loved it. The chest-to-bar modification was consistent with that theme but it slowed things down considerably. I could probably generate a muh bigger metcon hit with standard pullups (or a better pullup bar, where I could string the C2Bs together reliably). Still, I felt it. Great to be back in the home gym.