OHS and Fran variation

The last round of the OHS cycle, which I'm afraid I only made like 5 workouts of (out of 13):

OHS 15RM

95#

Pretty happy with this, though - 95# has long been troublesome for me to OHS, and to knock out 15 in a row (on the first try!) felt pretty damn good. Then...

45 Thruster 95/65
45 Pull-Ups

12:40(ish) RX

Failed to write down the proper time. Focused much more on form than on pushing, and as a reward my back wasn't TOO unhappy with me afterwards, and I was only ~25% slower than my best Fran time. Did the thrusters 10-10-10-5-5-5, and the pull-ups 10-10-10-8-7. For at least one of the thruster sets, I felt like I was actually achieving some level of efficiency with them.

Benchmark Blitz

WOD 100706
Minute 0:00
"Fran"
21-15-9
Thruster 95/65
Pull-Up
Minute 15:00 (cannot move on if DNF or scaled)
10 rounds:
5 Pull-Up
10 Push-Up
15 Squat
Minute 30:00 (cannot move on if DNF or scaled)
"Diane"
21-15-9
Deadlift 225/155
Handstand Push-Up

Minute 45:00 - limit
Post time for all three workouts plus total time (sum total of all three) to comments.


DNF
Fran 10:03rx (15 seconds over PR)
1/2 Cindy 14:53rx
Diane DNF (21 deadlifts, couldn't even get into a handstand)
I suppose it's a tribute to the mental exhaustion this caused that it didn't even occur to me to scale Diane down to piking pushups.

Joining the sub-10 Fran club

A little over a year after starting CrossFit, I did my first bonafide, RX Fran. And it was a deeply humbling (and humiliating) experience. That was four months ago. Tonight, I revisited The Hardest Workout in CrossFit for the first time, with considerable butterflies in tummy.

21-15-9
95# Thruster
Pullup

9:48RX (pr)

Sub-10 was my goal, but I wasn't expecting to actually DO it. And a PR by nearly 2:30, to boot! I came off the pullup bar and promptly collapsed onto the floor, whereupon I was not able to actually stand up for any length of time for a solid half-hour. I felt so whipped. Jesus, that workout is horrible.

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.

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.

Fran

Three rounds, 21-15- and 9 reps, for time of:
95/65 pound Thruster
Pull-ups

11:30

Max's mods: 24kg KB (53#), jumping pullups at double volume for 2nd and 3rd rounds.

The thrusters felt a bit too light - I think Max was looking out for my knees. I still feel totally whupped, though, after the past couple days. Hobbling around like an old man.

Fran

Three rounds, 21-15- and 9 reps, for time of:
95 pound Thruster
Pull-ups

8:04

My first Fran, and there's LOTS of room for improvement. The thrusters were 55# and about right in terms of being able to do them unbroken right at the limit of reps. The pullups were mostly jumping, and VERY broken. I had to stop and breathe several times in the last two sets to clear my head.

Followed by spin class with Lara. She ran intervals in the last 10 minutes, nearly killed me.