Crossfit Games: 03/09/13

I am competing in the crossfit games this year.  I've always either been too poor or too broken to compete.  The games consists of 5 workouts issued every Wednesday for 5 weeks.  This was the first WOD:

17 min AMRAP:
40 Burpees
75 pound Snatch, 30 reps
30 Burpees
135 pound Snatch, 30 reps
20 Burpees
165 pound Snatch, 30 reps
10 Burpees
210 pound Snatch, as many reps as possible

I am not good at snatches and pretty marginal at olympic lifting in general.  I've only snatched a handful of times because it makes me nervous to throw a lot of weight over my dome and try to catch it.  I practiced on Thursday at Bally's. 75lb were easy.  135 weren't bad either.  I tried to do a 155. If I tried to drop under it I would have been close, but I didn't want to fail in Bally's with metal plates. I was feeling pretty confident, but I was nervous.  I like to be good at things and I knew that I was probably headed for an average performance. 

The atmosphere at my crossfit gym, Crossfit 718, was festive.  Lots of people hanging out before and after their workout to cheer on competitors.  There were judges for each competitor. I got there about an hour early so got to watch the first 1/2 hour of competitors.  It got ugly really quickly. 

I warmed up with a group of 2 or 3, much smaller than the previous groups.  This was really a race against myself.  The snatch is such a technical lift that you can't just will yourself through it.  You need to keep your technique perfect. Our coach, I guess I don't go there enough for him to actually be my coach, but he served that purpose, made a great point that this was a snatch workout and the burpees were just there to intimidate and tire you out.  He set up a slow metronome that we could use to pace our burpees.

Go! 

40 burpees: unbroken, nice, slow pace.

30 75 lb snatches: broken up into 12, 10, 8

30 burpees: unbroken, but starting to feel it

30 135 lb snatches:  I took a good minute to set myself knowing that I didn't want to miss any of my first couple of snatches due to burpee fatigue.  Holy. Crap.  This was terrible.  Right from the first one.  They went by achingly slow.  I did it in groups of 5, but even those five were broken up cause I kept dropping the bar instead of guiding it down and snatching it back up. If I had to do it again, I would have tried to get some unbroken ones in towards the middle. Ugh. My brain stopped working around 20.  I saw the target as finishing the 30 snatches, but it should have been the 20 burpees to follow.  I finished the 30 at 16:28, only 30 seconds left to do 20 burpees.  I did 8 and almost threw up.  Shit.

Then off to enjoy some goaltimate in the beautiful spring day!  I started off terrible, but rallied as I got my legs underneath me and ended it feeling strong and playing well.  Combine like activities tomorrow for the Rumble. 

Crossfit: 03/05/13

I was stuck in Manhattan for an event so I signed up for a crossfit class. 

Warmup: 2 rounds NFT
3 wall walks
5 leg swings
20 hollow rocks
20 duck walks
20 arm mobility

Build up to 15 rep max overhead squat:
Kind of a dumb workout.  I did 115, but it destroyed my hands.  Maybe if I go right to 125 I get that too. Not enough weight to get your legs involved. 

3 rounds NFT: Unbroken wall balls
35,41,33

I tried to intersperse bar stuff between sets.  Did a great unbroken set of 20 kipping pullups, even got into the butterfly motion.  Did 10 unbroken knees to elbows.  I finally got that motion down.  

Running: 03/04/13

I thought I would practice the beep test from the MLU combine so I took off with a vague idea of what the beep test was and headed to the fields near my house.  A good mile warm up to get there. A good active.  And it was on.  Except I messed up a very critical part of the workout.  The beep test tests VO2 max.  You run an increasing amount of 20 yard intervals for 60 seconds without a break.  Start with 7 and add one every minute until you can't finish.  I thought about that first one, 7 20 yard lengths and immediately convinced myself that it would have to be one length had to actually be two lengths.  So instead of jumping in at the 7 level, I jumped in at the 14 level.  After I failed the first time and then almost died sprinting and accomplishing it a couple minutes later, I realized that either I was gonna crash and burn on this test at the combine or I was doing it wrong.  Anyways 14 makes for a great workout so I did it about 5-6 more times and headed back for a mile run of slow, medium, fast 30 second intervals.

Rumble Tryouts: 03/01/13

We ran a very successful tryout this Saturday.  I think we had around 40 guys from the best of best to fresh college kids out to their first high level event.  Over the next couple days we will put together a great team of eager ultimate players ready to compete in the MLU. 

I put them through one fun workout that caused a lot of discomfort. 

Grab a partner, starting line is one sideline.  On go player A assumes plank position and player B takes off for the far sideline.  When player B gets to the far sideline he does 20 pushups and then sprints back.  When player B gets back, player A takes off for the far sideline and player B assumes plank position.  Exercises are:
20 pushups
20 situps
20 squats
20 burpees

Woof.  I couldn't maintain the plank during the burpees, but I think I held it during the first couple. 

Great tryout and excited for the combine on Sunday. 

Ben

Gym: 02/28/13

Warm-up: 3 rounds NFT
50 double unders
20 step ups @ about 24 inches
10 HSPU

Deadlifts:
5 @ 225
5 @ 245
5 @ 265
5 @ 275

3 rounds NFT:
6 thrusters @ 135
6 pull ups @ 35

3 rounds NFT:
10 ball slams
20 trunk rotation slams

Crossfit: 02/25/13

I went for a run, did some plyos and ran some sprints in anticipation of the second Rumble tryout.  Maybe I'll write a post about my decision to play with the MLU.  It wasn't just to get a sweet one pager on the website. Well it wasn't 100% about getting a sweet one pager.

I saw a sweet crossfit workout and I jumped on it. Nice little 6 mile bike ride warm-up right into the real warm-up.  Then into a fun crossfit workout:

6 min AMRAP:
250m row
25 air squats

Then 25 pushups

We got rushed through this a little unceremoniously.  Actually it ended up sicking a little bit.  They cut us off after 3 reps rx'd.

Front squats: build up to 5 rep max
5 @ 205
5 @ 215  
5 @ 225: This was pretty clean, but I really had to dig deep for the last rep and I wasn't about to test my back

Front squat AMRAP: 2 X 2 minutes
2:00 22
2:00 16

10 RFT or 10 minutes: 10 knees to elbows; 6, 30 in box jumps
only got 7 reps done.  I wish I had partitioned the time better.  Get the knees to ee's in in 30 seconds and then bang out the box jumps.  I actually had trouble jumping down from the 30 in box and tended to step down instead.  Anyways, fun.

Gym: 02/20/13

I made the wonderful mistake of only packing my shoes for the gym.  Getting ready to ride a bike in the winter is extremely time consuming and anyone who knows me understands that any additional thing I need to remember in the morning has an exponentially negative effect on remembering everything else.  And it just takes a shit load of time to get ready.  I was at the gym and had already put my helmet, my neck warmer, my hat, my gloves, my reflector vest, my two jackets, my wallet, keys and phone in the locker when i realized i only had gym shoes, no gym clothes.  Everything back on, back to my bike, unlock both locks, head home to change and drive to the gym.  It was a long process, but lex was flying into JFK at 10:30 pm so I still had a good amount of time.

500 m row: Listen, I'd like to do something else as well, but there is no where to do anything worthwhile warmup wise in this place.  Give me some ideas.
1:43
1:38; I love these row machines cause you know where you are target time/RPMs at all times. 

Good mornings: Haven't done these in a while and my goal is to build up my spinal erectors over the next couple weeks
6 @ 115
6 @  125
6 @ 135

Front squat: Impromptu front squat cause it felt good to have the bar across my shoulders.
6 @ 135
6 @ 185
6 @ 225

Pendlay Row: Looked great for lower back and upper back strength

I need to record better. Not sure what I was doing.  Maybe (3) 8 @ 115

Medley: Not for time, three times through:
Bulgarian Split Squats; 8 @ 45 lb DBs
pull ups; 3 @ 45, 5 @ 0
DB shoulder press; 8 @ 45lb

Concluded with the hammer strength apparatus that mimics a muscle up and some knees to elbows and toes to bar.