Let me start by saying that I can't stand St. Patrick's Day. It's straight up amateur night. This year was compounded by the fact that I was working, it was my turn on the ambulance (we tend to rotate between truck, engine and ambulance and this was my ambulance day), it was a Saturday and it was about 80 degrees out. I expected to be in for a long shift and I wasn't disappointed. From the "Irishman" who managed to inexplicably remove a part of his chin (he says he didn't fall or get into a fight and has no idea what happened. I suggested that perhaps he was punched by a leprechaun. He didn't laugh.), to the Princess passed out drunk and covered in vomit at the bar who decided to take a swing at me in the back of the ambulance, to the drug seekers and the psychotic who was just 20 minutes ago released from the ER but decided he wanted to go back for no particular reason, I managed a grand total of about 3 non-consecutive hours of sleep. I came home and fell asleep for another hour bringing my grand total up to 4 hours before having to go to the gym and tackle WOD 12.4.
(Incidentally when I was getting my final hour of sleep I had a fantastic dream. I don't remember much of the specifics but I remember that I was happy and having fun. Then, in my dream, I thought "Fuck! I have to get to the gym to do this workout!" and I was filled with enough panic and dread that it woke me up. This was not a good omen. The first of a couple of bad signs to come...)
"I'm a goin' ta ruin ya night!"
12.4 looked like this:
Complete as many rounds/reps as possible in 12 minutes of:
150 wall balls, 20lb.
90 double-unders
30 muscle-ups
Yet another endurance workout and another benchmark workout (this time "Karen" paired with 30 muscle-up for time with some double-unders thrown in for good measure.) Wall balls have never been my strong suit; I've described them before as having 20 pound rocks thrown at your head. What I thought I had going for me was that, coincidentally, I've had some wall balls in my training recently and this workout was at 10 feet rather than the 12 that we usually target at Windy City. I'm good at double-unders and I'm good at muscle-ups so I figured that if I could get through the wall balls I was relatively home free. Not 1 round home free, but I figured I could get in some muscle-ups at least. Mike Tyson had a quote, something to the effect of "Everybody has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth." (In fact that's exactly what he said.)
I showed up at the gym completely exhausted and too tired to even warm up. This was the second warning sign. I did some super half assed stretching, counted for a few people as they went through and decided to go for it. I set up my rings, found a wall ball station and layed my rope out. 3,2,1 Go! I grabbed the ball and looked and it was the wrong size ball. This round ended before it even started. Bad omen number 3. I waited until the workout was over and decided to go with the next group. I re-set up, made sure everything was right this time, and dove in. From the start it was a mess. I started with sets of 15 and 10 but quickly was at 6s and 7s. My left knee, which has been inflamed and sore for about 2 weeks now, was killing me with each squat and my right leg was picking up all of the slack. It got to the point where my knee was hurting so badly that I couldn't take it and I threw in the towel after 109 wall balls.
So that's it. I've decided to move my week off from next week to this week and take some time to heal. I didn't submit this score and I'm not intending on doing WOD 12.5. I'm not 100% sure how I feel about this. Sure, I've said all along that I was fairly detached from this year's Open and it's not what I've been training for specifically. But that doesn't mean that I'm not disappointed and I certainly didn't want it to end this way. The toughest thing is that my mind is what gave up first. Yeah, my knee was destroyed, but mentally I checked out of this workout before it even started and my body just followed along. I've talked before about visualization and the mental aspects of training and it's a topic that I'm still fascinated by and a skill I definitely have yet to master. This time my mind completely let me down and that's why this is hard to take. Everybody's bodies break down physically- I checked out mentally on this.
I'll get over it and learn from it, same as all of my other failures. In the meantime I'll be resting up and laying low. My plan is to stay off the grid as much as possible to give my mind a break as well. I'll do some reading, maybe a teeny bit of writing, but no Facebook and as little Internet as possible. See you in a week!
(I got caught watching The Sound of Music at work once on Christmas and I had to pretend that the remote got stuck as I was flipping channels. I truly am a terrible liar...)
I'm keeping this one short and sweet since the last one was insane and I have a couple of ideas for longer posts coming up soon.
Yesterday I did the Open WOD 12.3. It looked like this:
Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 18 minutes of: 15 Box jumps, 24" box 115 pound Push press, 12 reps 9 Toes-to-bar
Eighteen minutes is almost a CrossFit marathon. This was a much more "traditional" CrossFit style workout and it was nice to see more than one movement for the first time during this games cycle. I feel like my body is in the process of falling apart, however. In addition to my shoulder soreness, my knee tendinitis has decided to flare up as well. So I have that going for me. Which is nice.
The workout itself was every bit as awful as I thought it would be. Beforehand I got some advice to pick whichever of the three movements I felt best about and try and get those unbroken for as long as possible. For me that's probably the toes-to-bar. The box jumps standards required that the hips had to open up while the athlete is standing on the box. No more opening up your hips on your way down into the next jump. It slowed the jumps down a bit but I used the standard somewhat to my advantage and did a lot of my resting on top of the box. The push press I did in groups of 6 and I kept my strategy of unbroken toes-to-bar throughout most of it until the last round or two when my body refused to hang onto the bar any longer. It's amazing how long eighteen minutes can feel. I had a wonderful judge who was encouraging and strict (she correctly called one or two "no reps") and did a great job of keeping me on somewhat of a pace. When I finished she cheerfully told me that I got 6+66. When I mentioned that this wasn't possible she recounted and came up with 6+52. Strike two. Someone reminded her that there were only 36 possible reps in each round after which we settled on 6+27. The 27 I'm sure is correct but I lost track of the rounds somewhere in my eighteen minute delirium so there's an outside chance it was 7+27 (hell, it could have been 5+27). In the end I'm pretty positive that the score is correct and, either way, it doesn't really matter that much.
My thoughts on this are summarized by this lovely video below (some NSFW language....even if your boss is deaf):
Today's training:
A. underhand med ball throws to ceiling, 10lb: 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1; rest as needed
B. standing triple jump - tech/practice - 10-15 minutes
C. snatch complex x 3; rest 1 minute
D. clean & jerk - power of 10: 10 solid reps - can be doubles or singles; rest 3 minutes between
E. pull-up: 20 unbroken x 3; rest 2 minutes
A. This is starting to prep for the underhand shot toss in the OPTathalon which I was spectacularly bad at last fall (Seriously...it was bad enough that it could have been YouTube worthy). These throws, however, went fairly well. Hitting the ceiling was no problem and I concentrated on using my hips more than my arms.
B. My best jumps here were around 24', the longest I've done since San Diego. I'm getting some tips from a friend at the gym who, come to find out, was an All American triple jumper in high school. (this guy. For real.) Hopefully in the next week or so we'll be able to get together and work on some things but, in the meantime, just talking with him improved these jumps.
C. 40kg, 45kg, 50kg. I kept these pretty light today and focused on landing tight in the catch. I have a habit of kicking one of my legs out to the side on power snatches which Coach Cori said means that I'm using mostly one leg when I pull. She said to concentrate on driving up with both feet. I did and this seemed to help.
D. 60kg x 2, 70kg x 2, 75kg x 1, 79kg x 1 (power clean), 81kg x 1 (power clean), 83kg x 1 (power clean), F at the jerk at 83kg, 83kg x 1 (power clean). I said earlier that my knee is inflamed and it really bothered me catching these in a full squat so at the heavier weights I just did power cleans. And, to put it bluntly, my jerk sucks. Cori helped me again afterwards and gave me some really great advice. I need to do some tech work on this, probably every day, as part of my warm-up.
E. 20, 20, 20 (technically 15+2+2+1 but I never let go of the bar. I'm probably cheating a bit calling that "unbroken" but screw it.)
I realized that I haven't written anything here in almost a week which means that there are a bunch of training sessions to get to now. Oops. I'd like to say that I was super busy doing all sorts of exciting shit but, um, not so much. I did take a pretty important test at work earlier this week so I was studying for that a bit (I aced it by the way) and I coached (or co-coached with Justin) my first couple of classes at Windy City which I actually couldn't be more excited about. It might not be very many classes but that's just fine with me. At this point I'm pretty much at one of two places- the firehouse or Windy City CrossFit. Seriously...if someone wants to assassinate me those are the two places to look for me these days. I also did the CrossFit Games Sectionals WOD 12.2 which I'll get to later. But first...
This was training for Monday, February 27:
vertical take-offs (double-leg) w/jogging between: 5 take-offs x 6 sets; rest 2-3 minutes
+
A. snatch complex x 4 (1 power snatch + 1 overhead squat + 1 hang squat snatch + 1 snatch) ; rest 1 minute
B. hang squat clean cluster (hang above knee - use blocks if you want): 1.1.1 x 5; rest 2-3 minutes
C. press/push press/push jerk: 1.2.3 x 3; rest 2-3 minutes
+
muscle-up/ring dip @ 30X2: 1.5 x 5; rest 2 minutes
The jumps felt good. I worked on not landing hard with two feet before the jump and focused on stepping into each take-off. Another one that's hard to explain but it felt right. The gym was pretty packed when I was doing these so I did them in the hallway outside which maybe spooked a few people who were working late at some of the other businesses next door. On the extremely remote chance that one of those people is reading this (hey- you never know)...sorry.
A. I did the snatch complex at 45kg, 50kg, and 55kg x 2. The very last rep was very, very ugly but I didn't miss at anything. I worked on the explosiveness and being tight in the catch. As a side note I managed to get my foot caught in the space between the platform and the weights when putting my weights away. Don't ask me how I did it but I was legitimately stuck for a few seconds. I'd like to say I was super smooth and nobody saw but, of course, that's not the case. Fortunately I don't think people are surprised at all with me looking like a jackass around here anymore.
B. The hang squat cleans were at 75kg. These were a bit awkward at first because I don't use the jerk blocks very much. Coach Cori was there and she gave me a few pointers on form and that helped tremendously. I focused on exploding right away and being very fast under the bar.
C. 55kg, 60kg, 65kg. The 65kg was a 5kg shoulder press PR. It has been a long, long time since I've even attempted a press PR so it was nice to get it, even if it was a struggle. The push press and push jerk portion felt better than last week.
The muscle-up/ring dip portion went well although I ended up doing and extra rep of the dips on most sets. What happened was, as I was lowering myself down and counting the three seconds, I repeatedly got confused as to whether I was counting rep three or second three. So I did an extra one just to make sure. I know...I'm not expecting any invites from Mensa anytime soon.
Apparently this is what goes on in my head as I train...
7 pull-up
rest 30 seconds
+
10 sets:
run - there back there back; rest 30 seconds
This was another MAP session and, quite frankly, another one that I was dreading. Wall balls have always been a terrible movement for me and this was a lot of them without much rest. This is one of those movements where tall people have a huge advantage. For someone my size it's like someone's throwing 20lb rocks at your head. My goal was to get all of the sets unbroken and I was successful on all but two of the sets (all of the double-unders were unbroken). The first six sets started out strong but the last four were a bit of a struggle and my time fell off a bit. The set times were: :34, :33, :35, :39, :36, :37, 1:03 (5+3+2), :50 (8+2), :43, :48.
The burpee/pull-up times were: :34, :35, :37, :38, :39, :37, :37, :37, :38, :34. These were pretty consistent throughout. In each round I finished the burpees then took 4-5 breaths before hitting the pull-ups. During one of the later rounds, I think round 8, I felt a wee little bit of puke in my mouth as I went into the burpees. If you stop reading now I'll understand...
It turns out when Justin says "there back there back" he means from the garage door to the far wall. About 40 meters distance (four times for 160m total). It was a super nice day out so I did these outside which was nice considering it was technically still February. I did the runs at about 80% effort and focused on breathing. The times were: : 36, :39, :37, :37, :36, :36, :36, :36, :37, :36.
Wow. This is going to be a bit of a marathon. Tell you what...why don't you take a break, get some food, stretch out, go to the bathroom and then come back and we'll finish up. A bit of an intermission...
Everybody back? Good. Moving on...
This was Thursday February 1.
A. front squat w/chains: 4-4-4; rest 3 minutes (sets across - same weight)
B. incline bench press w/chains: 4-4-4; rest 3 minutes (sets across - same weight)
+
weighted pull-up (20lb vest) - max 1-3 ladders in 7 minutes
+
handstand wall run: 60 total steps - rest as needed (quality over speed)
A. 80kg + chains. These were pretty tough but I was able to stay tight and focus on driving up and keeping the elbows high.
B. 55kg + chains. My left shoulder was pretty sore on this one so the weight felt a little heavy but I got all of the reps relatively easily with no sticking point.
I did 8 rounds + 1 pull-up for the weighted pull-up part. This was mostly a question of muscle fatigue and a few of the third reps were a bit questionable. I think it works out to about 49 pull-ups.
I skipped the handstand wall runs because my shoulders were killing me at this point. I've never tried those so I'm hoping I get another chance at some point but I didn't think it was a good idea to do them today.
The rows generally felt very good. The rower has a "pace boat" that you can use to keep you on track as you go. I set up the boat for a 1:40/500m pace and I was just hoping not to get lapped by it. Instead I kept up really well and even beat it for all of these sets. In your face pace boat!!! The times were: 50.1 sec (1:36 pace), 49.7 sec (1:37 pace), 50.2 sec (1:38 pace), 50.5 sec (1:38 pace). I set the damper at 4 which, after some experimenting, seems like a good place for me. My wind felt fully recovered between rows but my arms were still slightly fatigued going into each set.
The airdyne bike might be the most evil invention since the rack. Especially if you are sprinting on it for longer than 20 seconds. In my case I had to endure for :45 seconds which feels horrible. I swear time stops on this thing. The first set I kept between 85-90 rpm for the whole time. That was as good as it got. The last three sets started between 85-90 and ended somewhere around 75-78 rpm (this still represented 95% effort though- it was legitimately all I could do). The lactic acid in my legs was almost unbearable and I could hardly walk for a bit afterwards. Fortunately for me I wasn't done yet...
The power cleans and burpees felt surprisingly ok after the airdyne torture. Each set was exactly :43 seconds long. The cleans felt very good and light and I pushed through the burpees as fast as possible.
CrossFit, in all of their infinite wisdom, came up with this for WOD 12.2 of the CrossFit Games Sectionals:
Proceed through the sequence below completing as many reps as possible in 10 minutes of:
75 pound Snatch, 30 reps
135 pound Snatch, 30 reps
165 pound Snatch, 30 reps
210 pound Snatch, as many reps as possible
Ugh. I'm not even sure where to begin with my thoughts on this one. What's the main issue here: is it the fact that the snatch is an incredibly technical lift that, at heavy weights, is designed to measure strength and power, not endurance? Or is it the fact that of the 60,000+ people competing in the Open this year a large percentage of them will not have mastered the snatch at these weights and will now be completely discouraged (a fact they will discover only after giving CF their $20 entry fee)? Or is it the fact that this is a great case for weight classes in CrossFit competitions (it's a hell of a lot easier for a big guy to endure 7 minutes of burpees than it is for a smaller person to snatch his body weight or more for 30+ times). Or is it the shoulder injuries that this puts many people at risk for?
For me, the biggest issue was the potential for shoulder injury. I've been nursing inflamed bicep tendons in both shoulders for a few weeks now and I was really nervous about making things worse with this. I was back and forth all week about whether or not I would even do this workout. In the end I decided that, if I didn't, I would feel like a huge quitter and I might regret taking myself out of the game this early. I know that I wouldn't be able, mentally, to just do the sets of 75lb and then stop, that I would have to move forward. My most recent 1RM snatch is 70kg (154lbs) and that was in August so, while the 165 seemed a bit out of reach, the 135 was definitely in my range and something I hit regularly. Just maybe not 30 of them. (For the record 30 snatches at 135lb is "Isabel". I definitely wouldn't warm up for "Isabel" with 30 reps at 75 lbs beforehand. But I guess that's the point here...)
So I decided to go for it but to listen to my body. At the first sign of shoulder discomfort I was going to pull the plug. Luckily my body held up pretty well throughout this and I was able to work the whole time. I knocked out the 75lb snatches in 3 sets of 10 and then did singles for the 135s. I focused on set up and form each time and tried to stay tight and do legit snatches for each rep, both for efficiency (I didn't want to have a bunch of failures and waste energy) as well as for safety. In the end I managed 51 total reps (30 at 75lb and 21 at 135). I'm generally pretty happy with that.
Here's a video of Behdad Salimi setting the world record in the snatch at 214kg:
