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.

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 Supposed to Hurt

"Are you alright?"

I get the question occasionally at the end of a brutal metcon, as I make myself comfortable on the floor of the Y. The looks that you get doing CrossFit workouts are priceless. Nobody knows quite why you would punish yourself that way on a daily basis, but they know that you're obviously training hard. Then, there are those whose world view is simply too challenged to accept the fact that intense CF workouts are a good thing. While I was doing a bunch of DB swings in a short metcon the other day (a great time to talk, I might add), I was engaged in conversation the other day by a women taking a break from her tricep kickbacks to say, "I'm a paramedic, and that's a good way to hurt your back."

"Not if you do it with good form," I grunted.

She wasn't done. As I was finishing up, she decided that my concern for my fellow man might be a better avenue to my conversion to her enlightened path. Referring to my workout partner, she flatly stated that "He's going to hurt his back doing that." The best diplomacy I could manage was "You don't know what you're talking about," and the conversation went nowhere. Clearly, she wasn't about to accept the radical notion that back injuries are prevented by making backs stronger. She obviously thought her routine of 20 minutes of cardio followed by moving some light weights around was a better path to fitness. She wasn't interested in challenging herself. We know better. We know fitness only comes through hard work.

It's easy for us as CrossFitters to accept the basic principle that exercise consists in challenging our bodies to do things to which it's not accustomed, that we need to push ourselves past our current limits to get stronger. But getting stronger does not mean things will get easier for us. The truth of the matter is that improving at CrossFit fundamentally means you have to be willing to suffer more. In fact, the better you get the more it hurts. We see superstar athletes and assume they have it easy when they succeed, but there's no denying the suffering of elite CrossFitters when they finish first in a workout. This is something I understand when thinking about a workout, but the concept isn't quite as clear when I'm in the midst of a gruelling metcon and my instincts are screaming at me to stop and breathe. Today's metcon was a reminder of that. I did roughly as well at it as the last time out - not bad, but no apparent improvement and I did stop and breathe and grab a drink in the middle. If I want to do better, I simply have to be willing to accept more pain. This is not a reassuring thought.

Warmup
Jump rope 6:00 (never got my DU rhythm going, after my rope exploded and needed repair)
Shoulder mobility (dislocates, wall slides)

Heavy stuff
Shoulder press 45x5, 95x3, 115x1, 115x5, 120x4x2
Push press 3 x (95, 100, 105, 110, 115)* 115x3, 45x8, 95x3, 95x3, 75x5

* Density style - reps on the minute until form breaks down. By 115, it was clear my form was awful. I've got a fairly fundamental fault here of driving off the ball of foot that needs corrrection, which means practice, practice, practice. Even 95# may be too heavy for this practice, as that's where things seemed to start to slip.

I've lost quite a bit on the shoulder press since this summer. It's on the list to work on a weekly basis, thanks to the CFSB article. Now, I'm sure that's a good idea.

Metcon
5 rounds:

5 burpee box jumps, 20"
5 DB snatch, each arm, 55#

6:19

This was 16 seconds slower than the last time I did this. However, I did squat snatches in the first round, which really put the hurt on. My work capacity for this is probably improved from last time. However (and this is the kicker), I didn't push this as hard as I should have. I was again asked if I was alright, but laying there I knew that I shouldn't be able to get up and so convincingly say that I was.

Core work
3 rounds:

10 KTE
10 hip & back extensions
5 cable cross-chops each side, 60#

The gym mercifully closed before I could get in the last round of hip extensions and cross-chops. I was done anyways and ready for my rest day.