Easter Monday WODs

The first here is a 15 minute AMRAP I did this morning. The second is 4 sets of heavy back squats I did earlier this evening.

Saturday Double Header

This first video is of a more metabolic conditioning type workout that I did early Saturday morning. It is:

4 rounds for time of:
9 box jumps, 30" platform
7 squat cleans, 60lb sandbag
5 ring dips
3 rope ascents


Later in the day, I did more of a strength workout--5 sets, each 3 repetitions of overhead squats.

Sadly, shamefully, this is my first time devoting a strength session to overhead squats. My goal was to hit 155lbs, but 145 ended up being at the edge of my ability for the given number of reps. Next time, though.

Repeat WOD

I've done this workout several times now over the past year, most recently around Christmas 2010. My time then was 11:19, and today I got 9:40! Wahoooo for PRs!

The workout is:

21-18-15-12-9-6-3 repetitions for time of:
sumo deadlift high pull, 75lbs.
push press, 75lbs.

Chipper

Did this one yesterday.

"Hammer"

Wall Ball GHD Couplet

Did this one Thursday afternoon.

Deadlift PR and Another Girl. Nancy.

Yesterday (4/12) I did 7 single reps of deadlift. The loads were:
295-305-315(fail)-315-325-345-350

305lbs. was my previous personal record, so this workout shattered that by nearly 50lbs. Muy bien.

This afternoon I confronted another one of the tempestuous and demanding CrossFit girls, Nancy.

Five rounds for time of:
400m run
95lb. overhead squat, 15 reps

Now, I knew beforehand that I'd done this workout sometime in November of last year, but I couldn't recall my time. Today I did it in 17:57. I guessed my previous time to be around twenty-something but in consulting my log, I discovered it was 16:55.

I am highly skeptical of this November time, as I was not nearly as fast or strong five months ago as I am today. My guess is that I miscounted rounds. Because there's no way. No way. So, I'm considering this new Nancy time to be the benchmark from which I'll now gauge my future encounters.

Fran!

Classic CrossFit workout. A real vixen.

My apologies for the atrocious lighting in this video and the previous one.

Anniversary Helen Workout

About a year ago on this past Wednesday I was in Okinawa getting my ass handed to me by my very first CrossFit workout, the one they call "Helen."

As prescribed the workout is 3 rounds for time of a 400m run, 21 kettlebell swings (1.5 pood or 53lbs), and 12 pull ups. In Okinawa, because of my newbie status, I was only allowed to swing the 26lb. kettlebell--not even the women's prescribed weight, AND the 400m run was almost completely flat, just a small incline at the beginning.

On Wednesday I did the workout with the 53lb kettlebell and the little terror of run that is the first 400m of Noelle Lane--marked increases in the requisite power output. Even with these additions, I managed a near three-minute personal record. Yay!

Open Workout 11.2

This is the second workout of the CrossFit Open. I didn't do it earlier enough to submit my score to the website, but I thought I'd post it anyway. The workout is:

Complete as many rounds as possible in 15 minutes of:
9 deadlifts, 155lbs
12 hand release pushups
15 box jumps

The loads are light and the numbers are small, but 15 minutes is a looong time to go all out. The pushups are a bit clunky, but, by lifting your hands off the ground at the bottom of each rep, the movement becomes much easier to standardize and judge. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but try doing a few and you'll feel the difference.

New Additions to the Family

Steven's been hard at work with the measuring tape and circular saw again. So now we've got both a mountain and a mole hill to play with in our daily workouts, 30" and 16" respectively.

Kitchen WOD

No, it's not a workout. It's a quiche. Two of them actually. One for Steven: sausage and bacon and cheese. One for Amanda: spinach, tomato, bacon, and bleu cheese. Oh, and eggs.

You may be wondering: what's quiche got to do with fitness? Is Kevin going to do 50 walking lunges with each quiche held overhead? Is he going to do an 800m quiche carry, a la pizza delivery style? If so, what's the weight on those bad boys? And how about some crash pads so we don't break the nice Pyrex dish? Is he allowed to wear oven mitts? Etc...

The answer is no--to most of those questions. The quiche is for eating, not back squatting. But, quiche is most definitely related to fitness. Why? Because it's something I eat. I put it into my body. Its contents form the molecular foundation of my fitness, or lack thereof. I'm not suggesting that quiche, in particular, is the anchor of a healthy diet. But! I am suggesting that my habits in the kitchen and dining room have a far greater impact on my health than my habits in the gym.

At my Level 1 certification, this often overlooked reality was phrased to us as the 23 and 1 rule; that is, there are twenty-four hours in a day; say you spend 1 hour at the gym or working out at home; what do the other twenty-three hours of your day look like? Are you getting enough sleep? Enough water? Are you eating food OR food products? How much? At what times? How about sunshine? Or your social life? Or your stress level?

Bilge pumps will not indefinitely keep a ship afloat. At some point the breach must be repaired. I'd wager the "breach" in your average American lifestyle--concerning health anyway--is food related. A single daily workout--no matter how intense--will not balance an otherwise toxic day of living and eating. GI tract trumps workout every time. Or, another way to think of it: 23 > 1. Big time.

So even though I won't be push pressing these Pyrex masterpieces, they still represent an integral part of my endeavor for better fitness. In an effort to spare you reader(s?) a soapbox-style nutrition lecture, I'll simply make these two points concerning food:

1) The CrossFit dietary prescription for avoiding disease and optimizing athletic performance (note: if you don't think of yourself as an athlete, you're missing out on life. seriously. life moves. you should too.) is to "eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that support exercise but not body fat." And if you're looking to compete at an elite level in any sport, you'll probably need to weigh and measure your food, giving careful attention to the macronutrient composition of every single thing that goes down the pipe.

This prescription (excluding the weighing and measuring), in my opinion, is hardly a puritanical or stifling way to eat. Before yelling in outraged outrage and disagreement at your computer screen, consider the fact that our Paleolithic ancestors, who subsisted almost exclusively on meat (in its broadest sense--animal flesh) and vegetables (latitude depending), dined on as many as 100 to 150 different foods. How many different animals have you eaten? Or, perhaps more to the point, can you even name all the vegetables in your grocery store's produce section?

The truth is most of us tend to only eat between 15 and 25 different foods. If this figure seems inaccurate, try keeping a food log. Remember, real food only has one, maybe two ingredients. Kellog's Special K is not food but a food product. Food is typically what you find on the perimeter of the grocery store, you know the same place you find the refrigeration containers and the misting sprayers. These products were once alive and, were it not for our storing methods, they would soon be either compost or carrion. Have your Rice Krispies ever decomposed in the pantry?

Hair splicing and nit-picking aside, an honest food log will reveal a remarkably impoverished spread of foods when compared to the diets of our ancestors. Thus my claim: "meat and vegetables" is hardly as Spartan as it might seem at first blush. The seeming frugality of the category is a failure of our curiosity, effort, and interest, not of the content itself.

2) Food is intensely personal. Everyone has heard the expression "you are what you eat" but few of us are quick to evaluate ourselves in that light. Though I've certainly made an effort to inform myself on human nutrition, there's still no book or magazine or news report or government agency or even medical doctor to which I'll give more heed than my own experience with food--how what I eat affects how I feel and perform. Daily life should be the ultimately proving grounds for what constitutes healthy eating--I eat one way and feel like shit, I eat another way and feel like a superhero; at what point do I need a doctor or the FDA to solve this for me?

Excuse Me, You Dropped Your WOD

Big news on the homefront: my older sister Amanda recently earned her Level 1 certification at Iron Major CrossFit over in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. As such, she's now easing into her programming grove by writing workouts for both Steven and I. I tried this one yesterday:

In 20 minutes, complete as many rounds and reps as possible of:
20 double unders
15 GHD sit ups
10 power cleans @115lbs

I managed to squeeze out 8 rounds plus 31 reps (so 20 double unders and 11 GHD sit ups) in the allotted time. For just getting started with programming, I was really impressed with Amanda's combination of movements and time duration. It was a great workout, better by far than many that I've programmed for myself or others. Go Manda Panda!

Holy Hamstrings

Poor ole hammies!

Rotary Park WOD

I found myself in Kirksville, Missouri brainstorming potential WODs yesterday afternoon on a playground in Rotary Park. Here were some of my initial ideas.

WOD: Climb and slide. 20 minute AMRAP.
Problem: other kids climbing and sliding at a sissy pace; parents whine when I push their little twerp kids out of my way.
WOD: 10,000 merry-go-round spins for time.
Problem: motion sickness.
WOD: Freeze tag.
Problem: no friends.

I may have been friendless and a little above the average age of playground participants, but I wasn't without my trusty 1.5pood kettlebell, with which I threw together this little Helen-esque WOD:

3 rounds for time:
400m run
21 KB swings
5 HSPUs
Finished in 9:29.