Fitness - Overhead Squats, Push/Split Jerk, Front Squats - 4/07

Another night of great sleep. I logged 9.5 hours last night, and I am feeling the benefits again this morning.

I was excited for a strength focused day and to get under some heavy weight.

I first hit up some foam roller action and a nice long warm up/stretching session. For me to go heavy with overhead squats I need to really make sure my shoulders are warmed up and loose. Lots of mobility work and many warm up sets before I get into it.

Work:
Overhead Squats, sets of 3
1x3 90 Kg (198.4#)
2x3 100 Kg (220.5#)
1x3 107 Kg (235#)

Split Jerks, sets of 3
1x3 107 Kg (235.9#)
1x3 113 Kg (249.1#)
2x3 120 Kg (264.5#)

Front Squats, sets of 3
1x3 130 Kg (286.6#)
1x3 135 Kg (297.6#)
1x3 143 Kg (315.3#)
1x3 148 Kg (326#)

I felt great at all of these weights. My over head squat has come leaps and bounds from where it was. I've got way more confidence in my jerk to throw heavier weight over head. And my fronts are steadily improving as well.

I need to throw in strength fochsed days more often. I think i'll have a cleans and snatches setion with Scott either Friday or Saturday. I'm pumped to try to put up some big numbers.

Fitness - Windmills/Turkish Get Ups & Tabata Tuesday - 4/06

I went to bed really early last night and got a ton of sleep. I woke up feeling awesome. My legs felt fresh as I bounced out the door.

Today we did a lot of active stretching and warmed up with some kettle bell exercises.

Focus: Windmill's & Turkish get ups, work up to heaviest weight possible
Windmills - 2, 32 Kg kettle bells (one in each hand)
Turkish get ups - 44 Kg's added

I felt great after loosening up with these movements. They do well to get your whole body involved and get the blood flowing.

WOD: Tabata Tuesday,
Air Squats
Dumbbell push press - 30# dumbbells
Kettle bell swings - 32 Kg bell
Push ups

Score/Time: Squats-155(20), PP-143(19), KB Swings-97(12), PU's-91(10)
Calories burned (including warm up & WOD): 630

The total rep score for each exercise is there along with the tabata score, which is in the parentheses. The tabata score is the lowest amount of reps in any given round per each movement.

This was another one that is right up my alley for this week. Relatively low volume, low impact body weight stuff. It was definitely enough to make me feel like I got some work in, but not too much to do any damage.

Tomorrow's another day and I plan on getting in some mad strength work.

Fitness - Back Squat & WOD - 4/05

My upper back and legs are still sore from "Karabel" on Saturday. I'm for sure ready to take it easy this week and focus on strength work. I've got no two-a-days this week having just gotten beat down by three/week in the past two weeks. I'm taking it light-ish (no weight vest with WOD's) this week before hitting another heavy cycle. Also, I've been going heavier than the Rx with every WOD so far so I plan on doing the WOD's this week but staying at the Rx and cruising through them.

Focus: Back squat, 5x5
1x5 - 110 Kg (242.5#)
1x5 - 135 Kg (297.6#)
1x5 - 150 Kg (330.7#)
1x5 - 160 Kg (352.7#)
1x5 - 165 Kg (363.7#)

This felt pretty heavy, it took a few heavy warm up sets to wake my legs up. Pretty stoked on this effort though.

WOD: 3 separate timed intervals of
50 wall balls - 20#/10'
2 minutes rest

Score/Time: R1-1:22, R2-1:26, R3-1:25
Calories burned (including focus & WOD): 621

After Saturday's "Karabel" workout, more wall balls was the last thing I wanted to see. But it actually wasn't that bad. I got all three sets unbroken without too much trouble.

Dave was quick to throw the weight vest on me but I had to remind him that we had a "taking it easy. . . ish" (his words) week planned.

Fitness - Two-A-Day, Level 2 Classes, WOD's #1 & #2 - 4/03

Level 2 Skills Class:
We started the level 2 skills class with some warm up rowing and stretching. We then got into some glute/hamstring work. Trying to exhaust and stretch out the back of the legs so they would give us less resistance later, when we worked l-sits.

So we started with hip bridges building up in weight. Then onto some weighted step ups and then the worst of all. I'm not sure what to call it but you are on your knees sitting upright and your partner is holding down your ankles. You then lower yourself to the floor as slow as possible. When you fail, you do a push up and with a straight body, pull yourself back upright with your hamstrings. This last one induces cramps almost 100% of the time, it hurts.

Our l-sit work was tough. Especially having done about 250 v-ups the day before, my abs were super sore. We did 15 second l-sit holds on parallettes for 5 minutes (15 seconds on, rest of the minute to rest). Then we did 3 minutes of 20 second l-sit holds, with the remainder of the minute to rest.

I couldn't hold it during the 20 second intervals because my abs were killing. I had to ditch the l-sit and just go to as high a tuck as possible.

With the rest of the level 2 class time the three of us got after a little 10 minute AMRAP where only the number of kettle bell snatches was your score. Most snatches wins!

WOD #1: AMRAP in 10 minutes of:
100m farmer's walk - 32 Kg kettle bells
Kettle bell snatches - 24 Kg bell
Row for calories

Score/Time: 75
Calories burned (during entire class): 820

It broke down like this: There was one of us at each station and the person doing the farmer's walk was the time keeper. So as soon as he got back to the gym, we'd all rotate (walker to snatches, snatcher to rowing, rower to walking).

There was just enough time so that everybody got through a full three rounds. It was a nice little met-con.


Level 2 Met-Con Class:
We got after a tough one today in the Level 2 met-con class. As my third two-a-day this week I knew it was going to hurt.

Scott had "Karabel" in mind for us today. Karabel is a mash-up of "Karen" (150 wall balls for time) and "Isabel" (30 Snatches for time).

WOD #2: "Karabel" is 10 rounds for time of
3 Snatches (ground to overhead) - 61 Kg (135#)
15 wall balls

Score/Time: 10:28
Calories burned (including warm up & WOD): 663

I'll be happy to not do this one again for a while, It was brutal. Fun, but honestly brutal. I was trying for a sub 10 minute time but that was not going to happen. An average of 1 minute per round would have been hard to keep up if I were fresh.

I'm looking forward to a day of rest tomorrow and a de-loading week next week. I'll be doing mostly strength work and no two-a-days, that's for sure. Two weeks of three two-a-days/week has taken it's toll.

Fitness - Ring Dips & WOD - 4/02

Focus: 4x8-10, weighted ring dips
4x8 - 16 Kg added

WOD: 10 rounds of:
AMRAP in 1 minute of 4 BW dead lifts, 8 v-ups
1 minute rest

Score/Time: 31 rounds
Calories burned (including focus & WOD): 708

I actually went above prescribed and instead of using BW (91 Kg - 200#), I went at 105 Kg (235#). This was pretty brutal. Myself and one of the other trainers, Matt, determined that being able to hold a 3 round average per minute of work would be a pretty good effort.

We did a lot to push each other and staggered our starts (he worked while I rested and vice versa) so we could give encouragement.

Towards the end, my ass was on fire and my abs were cramping up but Matt kept me pushing hard. In the end we both ended up with 31 rounds, we both got 3.5 rounds in the first two minutes of work.

Fitness - Agility/Plyometrics & WOD w/vest - 4/01

Man, I'm super stiff from yesterday's long run. We might run a mile or two during a workout but it's broken up into 400 and 800 meters. I haven't gone and done miles a time in a while, and my legs were feeling it this morning.

Focus: Agility/Plyometrics
We started off with some speed drills and agility training with a plyo ladder, some cones and boxes. Running through various stations in groups of 3 or 4.

WOD w/12# vest: AFAP
200 air squats
150 sit ups
100 push ups
75 pull ups

Score/Time: 17:56
calories burned (including focus & WOD): 683

This took me longer than I expected. The vest probably had something to do with that. Believe it or not, what took me longest and was most debilitating was the air squats. My legs were just so stiff form yesterday, after only about 50 or so my legs felt super fatigued and I had to break them up into smaller sets.

The sit ups got pretty hard with the vest as well. The pull ups and push ups didn't really give me too much of a problem though. Overall, it was a good effort. I really worked on not wasting time transitioning and when I felt like I wanted to stop, getting 5 more reps at that movement.

Fitness - Two-A-Day, WOD #2 - 3/31

Well i guessed it. The weather was nice, so it was time to run.

Dave had plotted out a nice little 1 mile neighborhood loop for me to run, complete with a gnarly hill section.

I was to run to the start of the loop (which started about a quarter mile away from the gym), then run the loop three times then head back to the gym.

WOD:
Approx 3.5 mile run.

Score/Time: 25:32
Calories burned (WOD only): 760

It was good to get this in. I'm going to start working some longer runs more often. I found the pace wasn't that hard to keep, except for the hill section. It was long and the beginning and end of it were steep. It had my legs and ass on fire (in large part due to the 175 sdlhp's I did this morning).

I stretched and rolled out when i returned to the gym, then did a super easy 800m jog, just to cool down and work out some knots. All in all, it was good.

Fitness - Two-A-Day, Kettle Bell Freestyle & Kettle Bell High-Pull Hell - 3/31

Today we started off with a nice warm up and some kettle bell work.

Focus: 10 minute kettle bell freestyle
The goal is to keep the kettle bell moving with as many different movements as you can. This was a great way to stretch out and get the entire body involved.

WOD: High-Pull Hell
100 sumo dead lift high pulls - 24 Kg (53#) kettle bell in each hand
rest same amount of time 100 sdlhp's took
50 sumo dead lift high pulls - 24 Kg (53#) kettle bell in each hand
rest same amount of time 50 sdlhp's took
25 sumo dead lift high pulls - 24 Kg (53#) kettle bell in each hand

Score/Time(s) - 100 SDLHP-3:56, 50 SDLHP-2:13, 25 SDLHP-:44
Calories burned (including focus & WOD): 583

The prescribed WOD for today was a 2k row. Since I've been doing a ton of rowing I changed it up a little and went after this one with one of the coaches, Matt. Because a sumo dead lift high pull is essentially the same movement as a stroke on the rower, it seemed to be a nice twist.

It broke down as follows: This workout had a 1:1 work to rest ratio. The time it took to do your 100 sdlhp's was the exact amount of rest you had before starting the round of 50. And however long it took to get the 50, you had that much rest time before starting the round of 25.

It was pretty brutal. My body was pretty fired up after just the first round. My glutes, grip, and upper back were rocking pretty hard, which made the set of 50 a grind.

I wanted to end on a good note so I shot for getting the last round of 25 unbroken, and I got it. My ass was on fire and my arms were too, but It felt good not to have to drop the bells.

I've got another workout tonight and because there's a little break in the rainy weather today, I'm anticipating a lot of running.

Fitness - Dead Lifts & WOD w/ vest - 3/30

Had a little mis-hap this morning and locked my keys in my car. I had to hit up the 8 am class instead of the 7 am (also put me an hour late to work, shhh).

This later class had a pretty interesting affect on me, but we'll get to that later.

Focus: Dead lift, 5x5 cross sets w/ chains
2x5 - 160 Kg (352.7#)
3x5 - 175 Kg (385.8#)

Felt pretty good here. this is a continuation of training to improve my dead lift max without maxing out each time this lift comes up. So today i went on the heavy-ish side. I added the chains so it gets heavier as you pull it off the ground.

WOD w/ 12# vest:
21 thrusters - 61 Kg (135#)
21 knees to elbows
20' rope climb
15 thrusters - 60 Kg (135#)
15 knees to elbows
20' rope climb
9 thrusters - 60 Kg (135#)
9 knees to elbows
20' rope climb

Score/Time: 8:15
Calories burned (including focus & WOD): 673

Ok, so remember when i said the later class had a weird effect on me? Here's why.

Usually I wake up and workout on an empty stomach, I'm just not that hungry first thing when I wake up. Today i was really hungry so I had a spoon full of almond butter and a few dried apricots. just a few hundred calories to get me going.

My metabolism must have been in overdrive because this only made me 10 times more hungry than I was. My body flew threw that little bit of nourishment and wanted more. I figured I could wait an hour or so until after my workout, then eat right away.

The only problem was that I locked my effing keys in the car so I didn't workout for another 2 hours because i had to wait for AAA to rescue me. By then I was downright starving, my stomach hurt because I was so hungry. i thought I could get away with just drinking a lot of water to trick my stomach into thinking it was full, but not so. I had absolutely no gas in the tank, and it hurt.

When i was finished, i had an insane headache and felt dizzy, severe cotton mouth and it felt like I was going to throw up. Literally, the first thing I did when I finished was hover over the garbage can for a minute or so.

I mean, this was a brutal WOD. 135# was heavy for thrusters and wearing the vest was pissing me off. It's just so uncomfortable to breathe in. It also made the rope ascents really hard, my grip was spent. And contracting my abs during the knees to elbows only made the stomach discomfort (and grip) worse.

Anyway, I've learned my lesson and from now on I'm getting up and making sure i eat something more substantial before every workout.

Fitness - Strict Press & Interval WOD - 3/29

I was happy to see that today was sort of a light day. My body is still kind of beat up from last week.

Focus: Strict press, 4x12-15, cross sets
4x15 - 47 Kg (103.6#)

This was a nice little spin on the strict press. We usually do heavy sets of 3 to 5 but this was a body building approach. about 50% of 1RM and try to bang out 4 sets of 12 to 15 reps. I was feeling the burn for sure, this kind of work stings a little bit.

WOD (no vest today): Intervals, 4 rounds of the following:
30 seconds bent over row - 43 Kg (95#) barbell
30 seconds squat jumps
30 seconds pull ups
30 seconds rest

Score/Time: 191 total reps
Calories burned (Including focus WOD & finisher): 558

This wasn't too bad. The bent over row and pull up combo was a lot on the back but overall I'm happy with the effort.

We finished things off with some medicine ball ab work. Having one partner throw the med ball either over our head, at our chest, to our left or our right side and we'd have to do a sit up and throw the ball back.

It was a nice way to ease into the week.