CrossFit Level 1 Certification, Day 2

Day 2 dawned with moderate soreness. Mostly I was just happy to have the Fran experience behind me. We jumped straight back into class with a Q&A session with Dave Castro, who then went on to fill in some more info from his "What is CrossFit?" section the day before. Then we went outside for a brief session on the two most complicated and frequently mis-performed fundamental movements, the push-jerk and the medball clean. From there we went straight into the WOD.

Everyone was expecting Fight Gone Bad, and when they started wheeling out the rowers and the 15# plates, we thought for sure that's what we were in for. Well, not quite. In a pleasant surprise, they gave us a team variation on FGB that wasn't anywhere near as punishing. It went something like this:

Teams of 4. In 15 minutes, perform AMRAP of:

Row: 10 calories
75#/45# Push-press: 15 reps
24" Box Jump: 10 reps
Rest

Each team member must be at their station until everyone has completed their reps, then they can advance to the next station. One designated counter marks a round when they get to the rest station.

My team, a coed team, was one push-press shy of 4 rounds. This was a pretty typical score. Two teams managed 6 rounds. I acquitted myself very well on the rower (10 calories = 12 strokes) decently on the box jumps and tolerable on the push-press. At any rate, I didn't feel like I was a hindrance to my team. I was glad they did this workout - it was more fun than FGB, which everyone has done, and was a good example of adapting a classic WOD to a slightly different format to accomodate given circumstances. Even with all the gear they had, I don't think they could have done FGB in one heat (someone should count, after all, which means two heats) and I got a sense that they really didn't like running heats.

Following the workout, Pat Barber led a session on nutrition, which quickly became a session on the Zone diet. I didn't take any notes here, as it was all very basic (and often oversimplified) stuff. I pulled my old-school by-hand mathematics out of the dusty closet to figure out my blocks without a calculator, and came up with somewhere between 16 and 17 blocks. I'm toying with the notion of doing a monthlong strict zone challenge, just so I can have the experience of having done it and come from a more informed place when I describe it to clients (it is the official diet of CrossFit, after all), but I have no idea how I'd make that work with cooking for Rebecca, leftovers, and all the eating out we do.

Another delicious lunch prepared by the Castros, and we watched the trainers do their own workouts. A brief session on the Glute-Ham Developer with Stefan followed, then we broke into five groups for a series of 15-minute skill workshops:

• PVC snatch with Stefan - he basically taught the Burgener warmup. Emphasized snatching from the hang position as being 90% adequate for lower-skilled athletes until they could reliably snatch from the ground.
• Rowing with Freddie - he went over basic mechanics then had us race 500m. I came in second, with 1:30.2 (a PR!), but this other dude who was also 6'4" but 230lbs came in first at 1:26.5.
• Muscle-ups with Pat and Jason - the rings were too low for me to get a decent kip, so they just told me to work on my ring dips. Which I DO need to improve.
• GHD with Jolie - even at its maximum extension, the GHD is too short to allow me to do back extensions (as opposed to hip extensions. True back extensions require trapping the hip on the pads). I can do hip extensions and situps, though.
• Kipping pullups with Austin. He went over the progression from the mainsite video (ie, lying on the floor, etc). Not much to learn, here, other than I could probably be pushing away from the bar more.

The trainers are good, but with groups of 12 people and a window of 15 minutes, they could really only go over the most basic elements of each movement.

Freddie led the last session on programming. He emphasized the superiority of 3-on, 1-off, but acknowledged that it's an extremely difficult cycle to make work in a real-world setting. He also went over the basic breakdown of movements (W = weightlifting, M = monostructural, G = gymnastics) and how to combine them into singles, couplets, triplets and chippers. Throughout the weekend, the coaches warned against programming too many workouts at an hour or more time domain, and also seemed leery of CFSB, CF Football and CFE - they clearly wanted the emphasis to be on plain vanilla CrossFit, at least for us. Though they said they do encourage boxes to do their own programming, thereby letting the Games be the mechanism by which they discover whose programming is superior. When the Frequently Asked Questions came up, they all came back with standard party-line responses (Go heavy and slow or light and fast? Yes. Two-a-days? If you can workout twice a day you're not working out hard enough. Etc.)

I was ready to leave when it ended, so I collected my certificate and took off. I missed working out with my CFEB friends, and hoped to make it back in time for the evening workout, despite feeling pretty thrashed. I DID make it back in time, but the workout looked too heavy for me to do in my current condition, so I wound up going on a five-mile trail run with Alex that was a lot of fun and completely kicked my ass. I haven't been as thrashed as I was after this weekend for quite a while.

My overall review? Pretty much unchanged from before I went. The level 1 cert is not worth the (very high) cost, UNLESS you intend to become a CrossFit trainer. In that case it is valuable, and not just because it allows you to legally pursue a CF career, but it also gives you some direct experience at the hands of a variety of coaches. But the vast majority of the information taught at the cert is widely available to anyone with a CF Journal subscription, a membership on the boards, and a measure of self-motivation. There is this mythology out there that you need to take a cert in order to "be serious" about CrossFit, and that's totally not true. You'd be better served with simply going to an affiliate as often as you can. I don't feel as though I'm a significantly better CrossFitter at the end of the weekend as I was at the beginning (although I AM motivated to fix my goddamn squat), nor did I find the experience itself to be terribly enjoyable or fulfilling (Great Fran Humiliation aside).

However, I DO want to become a CF coach, so I'm glad I went. I look forward to getting the opportunity to train others, and ultimately going to a level 2 - I think that might be more of what I'm looking for.

CrossFit Level 1 Certification, Day One

Today was the first day of my level 1 CrossFit Certification, and I am pretty wiped. This hotel has really crappy wi-fi and there’s nothing on TV, so I think I’m just gonna try and write up this post, then maybe take a bath, try to do some stretches, and go to bed.

It was a long day. And highly illustrative of how much further I have to go in just about every aspect of my fitness. The certification is broken into learning sections, each taught by a different local trainer, interspersed with practical application sessions and a couple workouts. From everything I’ve read and seen, it is a highly typical cert. None of the information presented has been new to me – it’s all widely available in Journal articles and videos online, sometimes nearly the entire lectures. However, the breakaway sessions have been informative and useful in many ways, both personally and (future) professionally.

We started out with “What is CrossFit?” led by Andrew (Drew) Thompson, the overall coordinator of the cert. From there we went straight to the first fundamental movement group – the squat series (air -> front -> OH), led by a guy named Stefan. We broke into smaller groups and went outside to practice. Austin from CF Unlimited was our coach for this session, and he immediately pulled me into the center as his demo of “what not to do” – why? Because I lose the lumbar arch quite quickly, and lean way forward – which I knew. And, apparently, collapse my knees in, which I didn’t know. He gave me some effective (and painful) work to do to try and fix that, and proceed to hammer me on my knees throughout the rest of the day – nearly every movement we did, he was at me telling me to get my knees out. So, apparently, there’s something new to focus on.

Afterwards, we did bottom-to-bottom tabata squats, which were VERY painful, especially as I tried to do as much as I could with my new cues to good form – it’s so much easier to do it wrong! I scored 8, and it looked something like this:

14-14-13-12-10-9-8-8

My hip flexors were KILLING me afterwards, and I was walking somewhat wobbly.

As an aside: I’ve been thinking the past two weeks that my squat is really bad. I don’t know if it’s actually WORSE than it was, or if I’m just more aware of it, but I do know that my hip flexors hurt more than they ever used to. I suspect I may have ingrained some poor movement patterns with my poor-form heavy back squats – not to mention strengthened my body out of balance (ie, quads). I have a lot of work to do in undoing those faulty patterns and re-establishing (or establishing for the first time) proper form and ROM. I’m going to really focus on this, starting immediately, as I will never be able to do well with front or overhead squats until I get my air squat sorted out. I can’t tell you how disheartening it is to realize how much I suck at such a fundamental movement after working at this so long, but that’s pretty much the story of my whole day.

Session two was “What is fitness?,” led by Dave Castro (whose parents own the ranch, apparently). His folks were kind enough to cook us all lunch (there are about 60 of us!), so we got homemade steak and chili and salad instead of having to head into town for food. It was awesome.

The afternoon sessions were devoted to the send sets of fundamental movements. Freddie Camacho led a session on Press, Push-Press and Push-Jerk, and apparently my chest goes forward too much even on the slight dip of a push-press. Then Jolie led the section on Deadlift, SDHP and Med Ball Cleans, and also trained our breakout group – again, she was constantly telling me to get my chest up.

The classes were done, and all that remained was the final workout. Past history suggested it would be Fran, and indeed it was. Jason Khalipa led the warmup running the hill, thereby providing me my only moment of the day of feeling relatively fit. There was an awful lot of walking and bitching as we made our way up the hill, but after the hell Gita’s been putting us through, it really didn’t seem that bad to me. I ran the whole thing, and was not more than a little winded at the top. Of course, doing it after heavy deadlifts is another story…

I had a bar claimed for the first heat, but I went to try out the pullup bar and it got stolen from me. This led to my Great Fran Humiliation, which I hope to never repeat. I didn’t get into the second heat, either, which put me in the final heat. They capped the first two heats at 10 minutes, to make room for subsequent heats. Do you see where I’m heading with this yet?

You see, I’ve never actually done Fran before. I did a heavily scaled, very poorly executed attempt when I was barely beginning, before I could do pullups and when 95# thrusters would have simply crushed me into the floor. Somehow, in over a year of extremely frequent crossfitting, I have managed to miss Fran every time it has come up. I swear it’s an accident. So, heading into it for the first time, I really just wanted to get it under 10 minutes. With all the people knocking it out in under 7-8 minutes, I began to think maybe this was something I could do. Turns out no.

I was in fairly good shape through the first round, but then my time plummeted. Part of it was Austin, yelling at me to get my knees out, which made the thrusters REALLY fucking hard. But I can’t blame him – I was slow, and my pullups (I did C2B for the first round, then abandoned that) were one at a time and crappy. In a half-full heat, the finishers narrowed down to just three guys. They called 10 minutes when I was 5 thrusters into my last set. Then Drew said “let’s let them keep going.” To which I believe I responded, “Oh, fuck.”

One guy finished almost immediately, and the other guy gave up. Which left just me, and a circle of 59 people plus coaches yelling at me to finish. It was not pretty. I eked out the remaining thrusters and moved to the pullup bar, where I did 5 pullups and then my grip failed and I nearly took a sideways spill to the concrete. The last four pullups were singles, and barely chin over bar – my grip was completely shot.

Fran
21-15-9
95# Thruster
Pull-up

12:12 RX

So there you have it. My first RX Fran, and it was NOT under 10 minutes, and it wasn’t even (entirely) chest to bar, and it was really, really embarrassing. My thrusters have always been terrible, but since I gained these 15 pounds (without really doing any pull work), my pull-up power has plummeted. So it was a perfect storm of movements I am very bad at, at least now. Yet more to work on.

I’m feeling relatively beat-up (never has work with a PVC dowel been so exhausting). All the signs point to tomorrow being Fight Gone Bad, which at least I have some experience with. Hopefully I won’t embarrass myself too much with that one.

Short and sweet

After leading two classes through a thirty-minute slogfest that earned me my share of dirty looks, I opted NOT to join the fun and do it on my own - Rebecca was waiting for me, neither of us had eaten, and greater-than-twenty-minute metcons are supposedly off the menu for a while. So I made up this quick n' dirty little sweetheart:

21-15-9
2 pood KB swing
Burpees

7:17 RX

Now that was a long seven minutes. I like the workout, but for a class I think I'd make it a down-and-up ladder (21-15-9-15-21), to add that extra je ne sais quoi of awful and bring it to the 20-minute metcon sweet spot. Sadly (or perhaps not so sadly), that did not occur to me until well after I had done the workout.

To Helen with You

Crappy, rainy day today. Led the two regular CFEB classes in the morning, then rushed off to GWPC for the Firebreather WOD:

Bench Press x 1: 135-145-155-160-165(f)

And that concludes February Firebreathers. 160 is 91% of my bodyweight, and actually closer than I thought I'd be able to get. It went up fairly steadily, and I don't think 165 is far off. Hopefully this upcoming strength cycle will get me to 175, and one of my few remaining level II skills. My cumulative score for the month is 417%, and although the results are not completely tabulated yet, this should put me DFL for men. I could make excuses about tall & skinny and blah blah blah, but that's really all they'd be - excuses. The rock doesn't care about ape indexes, watts and joules or bodyweight percentages. The rock just needs to be moved (assuming a scenario in which there is a rock that needs moving, of course).

A few of us stuck around afterward to do Helen in the rain.

Three rounds for time:

• Run 400 meters
• 1 1/2 pood Kettlebell X 21 swings
• 12 Pull-ups

11:15 apparently not quite RX
(splits: 2:55 | 3:44 | 4:40)
(previous PR: 3:50 | 4:27 | 4:37)

I've been aiming for <11:30 on this workout for months, and was not going to be denied today. The joy over finally getting the benchmark score is somewhat blunted, however, by Rebecca's discovery that we were not running quite far enough. It's hard to tell, but it looks like I was maybe 30-40m short per round. There were a few other obstacles to slow us down, though - several corners and puddles to run around (and through), as well as a 180 turnaround.

I pushed, though. The first round was totally unbroken, the second KB swings were unbroken and pullups were 6-6, the last round was much worse. I felt truly horrible, afterwards, and it took quite a while to return to feeling human. I had a sharp, acrid metallic smell in my nostrils that I found somewhat alarming, and looked it up tonight. The internet is full of theories on this score, but a fairly common one seems to be that the alveoli in the lungs, overstrained to get the CO2 out of the blood, actually pass some number of high-iron blood cells through the membrane. These become airborne during exhaling, causing a metallic, bloody taste in the back of the throat. Ew. Diagnosis seems to be that it is relatively common during very hard anaerobic workouts, and not something to worry about overmuch.

Today was the end of my week subbing in as the CFEB trainer. I led 10 workouts and a total of 103 people (some, obviously, counting multiple times). I learned a LOT, and by and large really enjoyed myself. It is more tiring than I expected it to be, having to be "on" through the whole hour and really focused on the athletes, driving them to push harder while keeping them safe. It's also a lot lonelier than I expected - not getting to participate in class meant doing the workouts on my own, which can be nice in the not-having-to-share kind of way, but definitely is not as much fun or inspiring as doing it in class. Keeps you honest, though.

The feedback I got was universally good, which is satisfying (though I'd have to be pretty horrible for someone to actually TELL me I sucked). Many people asked when/if I would be getting a cert and if so, would that mean more classes with two trainers available to teach. That would, of course, be ideal for me - a combination of leading some classes and taking others - but the decision is ultimately up to Max and the folks who run Ironworks and GWPC. Max has said I should look at getting my cert sooner rather than later, so I'm keeping an eye on the calendar. There's one in San Diego in May that looks promising - we have friends that live down there, and maybe would be able to stay with them.

Kettlefran

Since I would be leading the classes this evening, I went in to the gym in the morning to do the workout myself. I'm pleased to get the opportunity to try my hand at leading classes for a whole week, but it is going to be a bit of a challenge squeezing in my own workouts around class times.

21-15-9
2P KB Swing
Pull-Ups (Men C2B)

9:53 (pullups were on rings - don't know if that's RX or not)
(splits 2:48 | 4:14 | 2:50)

I thought I had a pretty good idea of what this workout would be, and I was right: it's Fran with a kettlebell. The weight is lighter and the movement easier than a 95# thruster, so I know I'm still nowhere near a 10 minute Fran RX'd (no surprise there, really).

I killed the first round - the swings were unbroken, the pullups were 7-7-7. This vigor did not last into the second round, clearly - I had to take three rests in the swings and the pullups were 5-5-5. The last round was done 5-4 each.

I'd like to think I could have done better in the higher pressure of a class setting, but can't be sure. My pullups would have been on a bar, which would slow me down.

All week, I'm going to be substitute-coaching the CFEB classes in Max's absence. Tonight was the first two, and they went quite well. I'm constantly impressed by how hard our veteran CrossFitters push themselves - I exhorted them to push their intensity as hard as they could, and they did. They're so experienced at this stuff that all a coach really needs to do is start the stopwatch and then yell at them a bit. The newbies were a bit more challenging - evaluating what weight to recommend to someone you don't really know is iffy, so I erred on the side of safety and tried to get them to watch their form as much as possible. The first class was a walk in the park - only 9 people, none of whom were completely new. The second class was more challenging - 26 people forced me to break it into two groups, but thankfully the workout was so short that there was still time afterward for some easy stretching. I'm nervous about tomorrow - Diane - and the number of available bars for deadlifting if the class is crowded. I've done it with Max before in, I think, three or four waves - hopefully it won't get that crazy.

Life is like a bowl of pennies

Today marks a milestone for me - more than just the first of the year. Today was my first experience leading the WOD!

Max knows that I am pursuing my ISSA and, eventually, CrossFit L1 certification, and hopefully with the growth in interest in the classes at Ironworks and GWPC, there will be room for me to join CrossFit Eastbay as a trainer once my certifications are complete. Today, however, with the Touchstone gyms closed and no worries of liability, Max asked if I would be interested in coming up with and leading the WOD offsite at Gita's house in Oakland. Of course I jumped at the chance.

It being the first of the year, I wanted to come up with something that commemorated the occasion, and also felt drawn to the idea of a group-based workout. After some tweaking, the final workout looked like this:

"2009"
1 200m Run up the hill
1 200m Run down the hill
20 Sit-Ups
10 Push-ups
9 Burpees

There will be 49 tokens in a bowl 200m up the hill. Each round will consist of running to the bowl, collecting a token, running back down, doing the reps, and then putting the token by your name chalked on the ground. Once all the tokens are collected, the athletes will have performed a total of 2,009 reps (each run = 1 rep). Your score is how many tokens you've collected.

This is similar to the original workout I had conceived, but we made some last-minute changes. Originally the runs were 400m all the way to the top of the hill, but that fucker is STEEP. I did a test run to the top and back, and it was brutal. Since the WOD gets easier the more people show up, I decided I wouldn't set the distance that far unless more than 15 people showed. 11 came, and there was MUCH apprehension about the steepness of the hill, so I relented and put the bowl halfway up. This turned out to be a good thing. The original workout was also supposed to be 20 pushups and 10 pullups (instead of situps and pushups), but we nixed the pullups after it became clear the wall we'd slung the rings over was structurally unsound - and not really good for pullups anyway (too low).

The final token (I used pennies) was delivered at 19:50, which put the WOD right in the sweet-spot of metcon time domains. 11 athletes completed between 3 and 6 rounds (Matthew won with 6 tokens - no surprise - and Rebecca H. edged out Evelyn on delivering her fourth token), and they definitely looked like they were working.

I'm very satisfied with the way this turned out, but I was pretty nervous leading up to it. Since the WOD was not an absolute, but depended on the number of people who showed up, I wasn't completely sure of the scaling until everyone was there, and even then I wasn't sure how far up the hill to place the bowl. I think folks sensed my indecision, and took the opportunity to apply some vocal pressure to make it easier (except lunatic Gita, who was disappointed the bowl wasn't at the top of the hill). As for the actual "training" during the WOD, I was really more of a photographer than anything. Everyone who showed up was a regular at CFEB, and was plenty familiar with the movements, so I didn't need to coach anyone. I could definitely have been better at the exhortation - I'll need to work on that. It was a tremendous learning experience all-told, though, and has given me a lot to think about for the future.