Ripped ab

I seem to have an injury in my abdominal muscles. I Couldn't do the WOD I had planned, so instead did:

10 rounds for time:
10 double-unders
10 KB swings (2 pd)
10 pistols (medium band assisted)

21:21

A bit nervous due to the injury, so I only went about 80% intensity on this. I liked incorporating the pistols into the workout- should do that more often, hopefully get to a reliable pistol sooner.

Off the menu for now: pullups, box jumps, sit-ups...

Bodyweight chipper from hell

In any order, partitioned any way:

Run 5x800 meters

45 Handstand Push-Ups
45 C2B Pull-Ups
45 Ring Dips
45 Pistols
45 Toes-To-Bar
45 Burpees

Post time and partitioning scheme to comments.

DNF in 36 minutes

I appear to have messed up one of my abdominals in this workout. I thought it was due to the GHDs I did a week earlier, but now that I've been living with it a few days, my abs never hurt like this after that workout. They were REALLY sore all through camping, granted, and maybe I weakened them in that workout and then actually ripped something with the T2B. My first round went fine, and then something...tore, I guess. It got rapidly worse, and ultimately I just started cutting out the things that hurt. So I did all of the running, burpees, and pistols, and about half of everything else. Some of the HSPUs were kipping from the floor, but I don't like how that makes my neck feel, so I would switch to high-piking off a box. The pistols were band-assisted.

Recovery and some one-rep maxes

I have not been terribly good about posting entries lately - my bad. Given that Sunday workouts are under the radar, there's not a whole lot for me TO post...except Saturday, I guess. We were supposed to test our one-rep max in Deadlift and Shoulder Press Saturday, but I only made it as far as Deadlift.

Deadlift x 1: 310-320-330-335-340(pr)

I THINK this is my 1RM. I didn't try 345 because my arms were very painful. So this'll have to do until the opportunity arises again.

A word about my arms: they are concerning me. More than any particular movement, the trigger seems to be heavy loads - the heavier an exercise (ANY exercise) is for me, the more likely it is to make my arms hurt. Thus the problem with Squats and Deadlifts. Heavy Cleans are extremely bad. Bodyweight or lightweight movements are, by and large, fine. I'm still not clear on what the problem is, but I've resolved to take this week as a (mostly) recovery week, in hopes that I won't be troubled during my cert. The odds are good that I'm going to wind up doing Tabata Squats, Fran and Fight Gone Bad, which should be OK.

With that in mind, I scaled WAY the hell back on this one yesterday:

AMRAP in 10 minutes:
5 Deadlift 315/205
10 OHS 115/75
15 Double-Under

3 rounds, DL at 185#, OHS at #65.

Primary problem was the double-unders, as always. These were REALLY not working for this workout, though - I think my longest streak was five. The deadlifts were a joke, the OHS were just a matter of balance and wrist endurance.

Afterwards I felt a bit unsatisfied, so I went in to test my 1RM shoulder press.

Shoulder press x 1: 95-105-110-115(f)-115(pr)-117(f)

115 was my goal, so I'm pleased with that. Only Bench Press left to test!

Farewell to Half-volume

Today was the last day of my "recovery" week. Ironically, I feel more thrashed than I have at, I think, any time in the last five weeks. Not completely sure why. The climbing played a part, certainly, as did the very difficult OHS workout on Friday. At any rate, I felt fine this morning with this little guy:

Three rounds for time of:
30 Kettlebell SDHP 2P/1.5P
21 Burpees
Run 400 meters

7:17, half-volume (3 x 15/11/200)

The volume was low enough that I never needed to stop moving, which was nice. I like kettlebell SDHP, but that's probably because I do them wrong - by starting with the kettlebell back between my heels, I get a little bit of an arc when pulling them up, and I find this much easier than doing it with the barbell.

I can't imagine that it isn't because of yesterday's OHS, but my right shoulder is fucked. It feels like it did back in the burpee challenge. The weird thing is that it felt just fine until AFTER today's workout. I'd be shocked to get injured from 33 burpees, but something bad happened. Thankfully we're heading into rest days, and hopefully it'll clear itself up.

Owie # 2 ... Rackin' up my CF injury (accomplishment) list ...

Warmup: Mobility Exercises, 10 CFEB Sun Salutations, 800m (5:16)

WOD:

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1

Advanced option A
Kettlebell Clean & Push-Press 2 pood/1.5 pood left
L pullups, or Weighted Pull-Up 25#/15#
Kettlebell Swing 2 pood/1.5 pood
Behind-The-Back Clapping Push-Up OR Kettlebell Weighted Push-Up
Kettlebell Clean & Push-Press 2 pood/1.5 pood right\

Modified:
KB C&PP 8kg
pullups - kipping attempts
KB swing 12kg
pushups
KB C&PP 8kg

Results
34:55

Round	Time	HR
10	6:18.3	152
9	6:17.3	158
8	4:28.3	164
7	4:23.5	169
6	3:14.1	170
5	3:09.3	168
4	2:59.7	166
3	1:54.4	161
2	1:22.3	174
1	0:47.9	175

Shortly after the workout started ( I was in round 9) the pull-up bar unthreaded in the middle, and i tried to hel get it back together - so that explains why my round 10 and round 9 times are nearly identical. I'm not really sure why round 8 and round 7 are so close.

Since I've felt that jumping pullups are not working me as hard as I feel the pullup section of these workout should, I decided just to count each kipping attempt at a pull up as a pull up rep. On a few rounds - particularly round 7 and 6 - i got REALLY close. I was able to get a good rhythm down, and was actually able to string together several attempts consecutively.

8kg was probably a little light for the C & PP, but I cannot C & PP 12 kg on my right side, and there is no intermediate KB between 8 and 12kg (at least not at our gym), so I was originally going to try to use the 8kg only for the right, and use the 12kg KB for the left as well as the swing, but the 12kg KB were in short supply, and i decided to opt for consistency accross my arms. Probably shoul have tried to work the 16kg KB for the swings, too - but my shoulders are only JUST starting to feel better from doing that earlier this week - i wimped out.

The pushups were possibly the easiest part of this workout - which is just totally awesome.

So - after the KB swings in round 5, i realized that my hand were really stinging. I looked down, and this is what i saw:


Ack! I'd ripped a huge flap of skin up right in the middle of my left palm. A classmate asked max to go get some tape, and I kept working through round 4 - trying to use just the fingers on my left hand as much as possible. max retuned with tape, and I finished the workout. I just couldn't bring myself to stop that close to the end of the workout. By the time i finished i big rip was opening up n my right hand as well. Ow.

Lesson learned - if there is going to be kipping or KB swings involved - USE TAPE - before my hands get shredded - not after.

Guess I won't be climbing tomorrow after all.

Back to Burpees?

*16 hour fast*

One-footed climbing at IW: 9(o), 9(o), 10a(f), 9(f), 9(o)
100 Burpees, sets of 10

One-footed climbing is pretty hard. The first climb I did was actually technically the hardest, because I left my shoe OFF my left foot, and the climb was slab on the back wall so didn't have much in the way of jugs. Try doing pullups on a pair of underclings. It's hard. After that I discovered that the inverted/roofy routes were better, as they would often have giant buckets from which to hop up the wall, and it's good to have the shoe on, even loosely, on the left foot to do little limp-maneuvers while getting the right foot up. It's weird intentionally violating one of the most fundamental rules of climbing: to use your feet. But it's a good workout - lots of big dynamic moves, and pretty pumpy. My ankle is actually feeling pretty good lately, so I think next time (Friday) I might be able to climb more regularly.

I tried simply hanging off the biggest hold on the campus board and failed. Something to work on.

So, burpees. Yeah. I was able to do 100, in good ol' sets of 10 with long rests. I weighted both feet, but kept most of my weight on the right foot on the landings. Am I back in? I dunno. My deficit currently stands at 471, with 21 days left in the challenge. Even if I did 100/day for the rest of the time, I wouldn't catch up, so it'd require some devoted effort to make it up. Not sure how I feel about it, to be honest.

The Final Fight Gone Bad

Today was FGB3, and the culmination of three weeks of FGB-specific training. Max has promised that we won't need to do FGB again for several months. Hallelujah! That said, today was actually pretty good - particularly since I was worried about my ankle dragging my score down.

* 21 hour fast *

Three rounds of:
Wall-ball, 20 pound ball, 10 ft target (Reps)
Sumo deadlift high-pull, 75 pounds (Reps)
Box Jump, 20" box (Reps)
Push-press, 75 pounds (Reps)
Row (Calories)

Exercise	Set 1	Set 2	Set 3
SDHP 75#	16	16	16
Box Jump 20"	21	21	21
Push-Press 75#	11	11	11
Row	16	17	16
Wall-Ball 20#	16	16	14

For a total score of 239 RX(i). 14 points better than last week. I couldn't do box JUMPS because of my ankle, so I did step-ups - everything else was RX.

The plan was to do the same thing I did last week, only with one more rep per exercise per round, which should have given me a score 15 points higher. It nearly worked out that way, too. Damn you, wall-ball! I didn't realize the end of the round was so close, and paused just a little too long for breath - my 15th wallball left my hands after Max called time, so didn't count. Fortunately, I accidentally did 17 calories of rowing in the second round (my eyes were closed), so only wound up ONE MEASLY POINT below goal. Oh well - I can live with that.

I expected the step-ups to be easier than the jumps, but they weren't, really - Max pointed out that it's the same amount of work (ie, moving the same amount of weight the same distance), which is true, but primarly they're just so damn SLOW that they filled the whole minute, only giving me a few seconds to catch my breath before the push-presses. When jumping, I was able to sit and rest for ~20 seconds, which made a real difference - so they felt about equivalent.

no. more. FGB. ugh.

Warmup: Mobility Exercises, some attempts at a pullup, some pushups, some situps, etc.

WOD:

Choose ONE of the following exercises and perform 150 reps for time:
Row (one calorie = one rep)
Wall-Ball 20#/14# (AKA "Karen")
Sumo Deadlift High Pull 75#/55#
Box Jump 20"
Push-Press 75#/55#

I didn't know what to choose. Rowing is the easiest. I was tempted to choose this. I suck at push-press - 150 would have taken me all frickin day and left me tired for days. I thought I might be able to successfully jump up onto the 24" box using the wall like i did for murph gone bad on the 10" box. I tried it a couple times before the workout started. It was hard but doable. I decided to make this my exercise to see if i could move this one step closer to doing FGB as Rx.

On my 10th jump I didn't quite make it all the way on to the box, and garnered my first real CF war wound:




Interestingly, the skin never broke. It's a bruise that's as close to a gash as you can get without actually bleeding. Damn box jumps and damn balance issues.

So - since i was a whole 9 reps into the 150 rep workout - i decided that I'd just start over and switch to rowing after all - it'd keep me off my feet.

I rowed 151 calories in 12:28. My speed was realy consistent - i was at 50 calories at about the 4:00 mark and 100 calories at about the 8 minute mark. I rowed a total of 2649 meters, with a average of 2:21/500m.

James rowed his 150 calories in just about11 minutes and rowed a bit more than 2400 meters. Considering that James is much fitter and stronger than I am, I'm pretty psyched that i came in only about 1:00 longer than his time.

Karen Gone...kinda Bad

Well, like it or not (I don't.) it looks like I'm in a recovery week. In his long-running quest to make Crossfoie Gras by shoving Fight Gone Bad down our throats until we die, Max lobbed us a relatively easy one today: Karen Gone Bad.

*17 hour fast*

Choose ONE of the following exercises and perform 150 reps for time:

Row (one calorie = one rep)
Wall-Ball 20#/14# (AKA "Karen")
Sumo Deadlift High Pull 75#/55#
Box Jump 20"
Push-Press 75#/55#

100 Push-Press 75#, 16:20

I chose Push-Press, because A) I suck at it, and 2) It's one of the least ankle-intensive movements of the bunch. Still, I had a hard time getting a good drive from the legs, and wound up compensating with the shoulders and arms, making it harder. Plus, I suck at it. My ankle was starting to feel sore, so I called it a day at 100, and left feeling dissatisfied. Yeah, it was hard, but it wasn't CROSSFIT hard. This is why I'm terrible about doing 50% recovery weeks - I just feel like I'm treading water. Which is really the point, in this case - my body should be concentrating on repairing my ankle, not repairing torn muscle tissue, and I should be focusing on just doing enough to keep my body in the game so I can re-enter the game at 100% when I'm ready without killing myself like I did with that Murph after vacation.

...doesn't mean I have to like it.

Well....crap.

Went to Ironworks this morning. Warmed up on a nice 10a. Felt perhaps a bit more tired than I thought I was, but since I climbed a bunch yesterday that's totally understandable. Feeling a bit nervous, I hopped on my very first 11a ever.

Two moves up, I slip, fall, and twist my ankle on the landing.

I don't know how bad it is. It hurts like a bitch when I put weight on it, but it fine otherwise. I stayed home today and am icing and elevating and taking ibuprofen, and the swelling isn't too bad...there is a little discoloration.

Twist? Sprain? Obscure tiny bone broken? Dunno yet. My hunch is that it's a light sprain, but I'll have a better idea after a day or two. It may have knocked me out of the burpee challenge - more than a couple days out and I'll be deeper in debt than I'm interested in paying off. More alarmingly, it may have knocked me out of the TRS comp on Friday and/or the Fight Gone Bad benefit Saturday. We'll just have to rest, recover, and hope.

Injuries are a pain in the ass.

Someday I'll climb again for realsies.

But not today.

Climbing at GWPC: 10a, 10b(f), 10a/b, 10b(f)

My arms felt pumped after the first climb, which is never a good sign - I guess they're tired from yesterday. But more than that, my finger HURT. However I damaged it (it feels like the bone is bruised), it really doesn't like climbing. Therefore I took it easy, tried to stick with climbs that had big holds and little overhang, and took a lot of right-handed rests on the wall, whenever I could find them.

Supposed to climb tomorrow with Tor. I think I might find a slab climb on the back wall that I like and just do it over and over, to practice balance and footwork. Something really stemmy would probably work, too - just not so much overhang.

The good news is that the new Evolve shoes Rebecca gave me are awesome. My feet felt like spiderman on the wall. It's a bit annoying taking them off after every climb, but ultimately I think I'm happy with my decision to go with the tight velcro instead of the lace-ups.

Also: 56 burpees, done in sets of 10 throughout the day.

Fitness Status Report

Ugh. I am really ready for the summer travels to be over and to get back to a regular schedule of working out, and a cleaner diet. I can definitely feel the effects of 'dirty' diet. Reduced energy, more weight :-p

Turns out the tight muscle on my right side that I thought was my hamstring is actually my hip. It was pretty tight before I left for Florida, and instead of getting better with a week of nothing (except burpees) it actually got worse. It loosens up with exercise, but as soon as I spend any time siting down, it tightens right back up. The only exercise I've done that it bothered my WHILE exercising (after loosening up) is running.

The drive up to Portland was made even less comfortable by my aching hip. Every time I got out of the car I had to limp around until it loosened up.

I've asked my friend Jeremy - who is an EXCELLENT body worker to take a stab at making it loosen up. Pretty sure that will happen Sunday.

In other news, I have also decided to drop out of the burpee challenge. :(

I was so sore after Murph that I couldn't do burpees for two days (46 & 47) I tried to pick them back up while I was in Portland and I got day 48 done+ 10 'make-up' burpees and then on day 49 I only got 35 done. We went to a (SUPER FUN) square dance on day 49, but that was also really hard on my hips, and arms - which in reality were still not quite fully recovered from Murph, and day 50 - our 13 hour drive back from Portland - burpees just were not going to happen. I had really hoped to make it at least to day 50, but as of yesterday, I was 147 burpees behind, and I'm pretty sure they're aggravating my hip issue, so ... between the devastation that was muph and the full weekend of long traveling, I lost my rhythm, and think it's probably just best to let them go. I got an awful lot out of it.

Looking forward I am excited to work on getting healthy(er) with a combination of body work, better diet, and some focused training with Max to work on trying to iron our my particular proprioception issues so that I can work out and get stronger without injuring myself.

Here comes year # 32. Bring it on.

Ow.

OK, on the as-sore-as-I've-ever-been-in-my-life scale, this is about an 8, maybe even a 9. Murph truly fucked us over, and I suspect it has kicked Rebecca out of the burpee challenge. Probably should not have done it 100%, looking back on it now. Well, what's done is done, we didn't get rhabdo, and we will get plenty of "rest" sitting on our asses driving up to Portland and back this weekend for a wedding. Last big trip of the summer, and then we can regain some fitness and dietary discipline next week.

Anyway, today I did 47 wince-inducing burpees and "climbed."

By "climbed," I mean I laughed my way up a couple A/B's, fell off a couple B's, and gave up. It wasn't pretty, but I hadn't climbed for a couple weeks and I didn't want to miss the chance.

Rebecca got me snazzy new climbing shoes for my birthday, and I'm very stoked. Didn't wear them today as I think I need a slightly larger size or maybe a different shoe, but SOON I will get to climb in something that doesn't smell like an alcoholic skunk's morning breath, and is not full of holes. Sharma better watch out, cause me and my new shoes, man...just wait.

Foul Temper

I am in a bad fucking mood. Today sucks.

I injured myself yesterday. Twice, apparently. Doing stupid stuff.

First, I fucked up my foot playing frisbee. We were playing barefoot, and I rolled up my jeans so I wouldn't step on them. Then, while running, I caught my right big toe in my left pants cuff, and busted something on the top of my foot. It didn't feel that bad - like a stubbed toe, basically - but got a lot worse as the day wore on.

And then, since I'm an idiot, I climbed on it. Three times. It did not like that, no it didn't Precious, but I did it anyway. Just to show it who's boss, I suppose.

And in doing so, somehow busted my hand. I don't even know how. It just started hurting, and hasn't stopped. Curiously, the pain is exactly in the corresponding location on my hand as it is on my foot. So clearly God is out to get me via the tendons on the back of my starboard extremities. Asshole.

So vacation starts early for me, it seems. No Crossfit today, which sucks because I've been wanting to try running 5k for a while. And it looks like I'll have to call off climbing tomorrow with Tor, which I'm deeply unhappy about.

And to top it all off, our cat got in a fight this morning and landed us a $400 vet bill and a messed-up leg. So he's unhappy, I'm unhappy. At least Rebecca's doing OK.

She gave a good rundown of 'To the Limit,' though I think she was too generous to the filmmakers and their fascination with Lebowskiist Philosophy. I swear, I was ready to reach through the camera and start smacking Dean Potter around if he uttered one more tortured metaphor about climbing as a means of spiritual expression. I mean, Dude.

Snatches and Pullups, and a tweaked shoulder

So yesterday after my burpees I noticed a bit of pain in my shoulder (left deltoid, specifically). It quickly got worse before it got better, enough that I was pretty concerned - Tuesdays are my one pure rest day, and I did NOT want to be starting the workout week feeling injured!

Sleep helped a bit. The mouse that Felix brought in that scurried under the couch at 2am did not. Rebecca and I wound up tearing apart the living room before we finally got the mouse out from under the rug (!) into a shoebox and out of the house. Rebecca was thoughtful enough to document the epic battle:


So for today, and for the near future (until it feels better), I'm no longer doing the burpees in a straight set. Sets of five, sprinkled throughout the day. We'll see how that goes. I've also found that it's helpful to do a little stretching and mobility work before the burpees - I suspect that repeatedly jumping into sets of 20+ burpees while totally cold is what did this to me.

So, with the shoulder thing, it was with some trepidation that I approached today's WOD:

45 pound Dumbbell squat snatch, left arm, 21 reps
45 pound Dumbbell squat snatch, right arm, 21 reps
42 Pull-ups
45 pound Dumbbell squat snatch, left arm, 15 reps
45 pound Dumbbell squat snatch, right arm, 15 reps
30 Pull-ups
45 pound Dumbbell squat snatch, left arm, 9 reps
45 pound Dumbbell squat snatch, right arm, 9 reps
18 Pull-ups

34:44, 30# Dumbbell

Splits: 14:15 | 13:39 | 6:50

Worried about further injury, I was very cautious today. I chose a lighter dumbbell than I really needed, focused hard on form, took frequent rests and stretched whenever I could. I think I made it through OK - my shoulder has the same dull ache it had before class, so I don't think I made it any worse.

So it is with that in mind that I don't feel too bad about this time, despite its being one of the slowest times in class. I think I was getting the hang of the squat snatches, particularly once I started thinking of them as weighted jumping squats. Still, I was never really going low enough on the landing.

I was pretty pleased with the pullups, actually. 90 pure kipping pullups in one class is a PR for me. I did them in sets of 7 or 5, and think I'm getting much more efficient in my kipping form - not leaning back so far or yanking my shoulders so hard in their sockets, and coming to the top in a vertical position (rather than curled up in a ball). The GTG pullups that I'm doing at home are definitely helping. At this rate, 20 kipping pullups can't be too far away!