Crossfit training

[XRe]

Participated in my first weight lifting meet today! A competitive CrossFit Total - I lifted 753.5# (342.5 kilos). Did 280.5# squat, 132# press, and 341# deadlift. Squat and deadlift were personal PRs. A press attempt at 143# failed - it was ugly, but I got it over my head, but the bar stopped upward progress along the way. Such is racing, I suppose

We do so little lifting at limits, right now, that I'm not dialed in for it - need to learn the mindset to get that stuff rolling better... The guy that won the meet was, like, late 50s? Amazing stuff, there... won his weight class, and with the coefficient that they use to allow comparison between body weight classes, he stomped everyone else. Very inspiring!

[carinab]

Wow Dave!

Hubby and I did Lynne today. Bench press was occupied so we opted for max push ups as a sub. I actually did all my push ups military style! Pull Ups were gravitron assisted (90# pull up essentially). Five rounds of max reps looked like this: 17 pull ups / 14 push ups, 14/10, 10/10, 9/9, 8/8.

[Putty]

I did two Lynnes today. One with overhand pullups, one underhand with 185lb bench. averaged 1-2 reps on the bench, and 30 on the pullups. Not feeling it......yet.

[carinab]

WOD run 10k....Uh, needless to say I scaled this one down! Especially since I did my 90 minutes of sweaty bikram yoga! I ran 5k in 33:27.

WOD was 5k; including a two minute warm up, I ran it in 29:15...Again after doing my yoga this morning. 4 minutes better than a month ago. Two hours of working out? Dang, no wonder I'm hungry!

[Chris Conley]

Looks like no surgery for me!!!!! Dr. said that the tear in my quadtricep tendon is already healing. Plus it feels much better than a week ago. Still need to lay off it for 3-4 weeks. He also sent me to get a high speed knee brace made and for me to wear it for a while when I shoot matches and work out. Man that thing feels good. Going to start back doing some upper body crossfit tonight with some abs thrown in. Good to be back.

Chris C.

[Jake Di Vita]

Good to hear. I'd definitely look at doing Rip's rehab program if that is the issue.

[Chris Conley]

Just watched the video again about the kid that has no arms and legs and is a high school wrestler. I'll quit crying from now on. Puts things into reality.

Chris C.

[XRe]

So, just after I mention a lack of lifting at limits... we have a week of strength workouts! Excellent! Thought I'd share the week's work with everyone - these were really fun, in that CrossFit kinda way...

Monday - a Big Mike special:

As many rounds as you can complete in 20 minutes of:

12 hanging squat cleans (95# prescribed for men, 65# for women)

6 pullups

I managed 8 rounds, which tied several of the elite level guys at the gym. Only one guy did more, and he did 10+!!! Monster! The thing about this one is - by the time you hit the 6th round, your shoulders are killing you and you can't grip anything anymore. That has a real way of slowing down pullups, since you simply get to a point where you can't hold onto the pullup bar. Who'd've thunk cleans would hammer your shoulders like that? I've done cleans before, obviously, but never noticed them hammering my shoulders - totally makes sense, though.... This is definitely one way to an iron grip, though... that and Farmer's Carry!

Wednesday - Running Lynne (a modified "girl" workout):

5 rounds of:

Max reps bodyweight bench press

Max reps pullups

Run 400m

I ended up using 165# on bench, instead of my bodyweight of 185#, to insure that I could get a decent number of reps - the idea is to be between 5-15 reps in each round. With that in mind, 165# was perfect. I started adding slightly assisted jumping pullups in the 3rd round to get more reps there, doing as many pure pullups as possible first, then jumping. I did: 11/5, 9/3, 7/10, 7/10, 6/9. The cool thing about this was - that was the first time I've actually bench pressed more than 135#, if you can believe that Body weight for a few reps shouldn't be any problem at all....

BTW - you get some rest in between rounds. I was getting a couple of minutes, due to the size of the group and number of benches. 1 minute or so is probably about right, though - I was ready to go pretty quick....

Thursday - another Big Mike whirlwind:

15-13-11-9-7-5-3-1 push jerk (95# men, 65# women) alternated with

14-12-10-8-6-4-2 heavy dumbell deadlift (heaviest you can find/manage - I used 45# DBs) then...

run 1 mile

I did it as prescribed in 19:40. I started having cramps in my calves during the run, and had to walk for parts of it to keep them from locking up. After two heavy upper body workouts during the week (those cleans on Monday technically work the legs a bunch, esp. with the squat, but they hammered everyone's upper body much more, it seems), this was almost entirely a leg workout. Big Mike at the gym did it in 12:02!!!!! Holy crap! And Mike doesn't run for crap - probably an 8 minute mile, meaning he hammered the weights... Of course, Big Mike is 6' 4", weighs 235#, and is completely ripped up, so that's no surprise...

I've been working on another blog article around fitness, but keep getting side tracked. Its tough to articulate what I'm trying to say in the article... I hope to get it posted by the end of the weekend... Its almost more of a musing than a well thought out type of thing (which makes it worse)... but I'm trying to tie in some interesting effects I'm seeing in my shooting performance as a result of the improved fitness... Stay tuned, good stuff - hope it makes sense to y'all

[Jake Di Vita]

Did those first two sets of pullups in Lynne dead hang didn't ya.

[XRe]

Did those first two sets of pullups in Lynne dead hang didn't ya.

Yup. Me got no kip yet. Working on that angle... still no pullup bar at the house, so I'm somewhat limited on working on it for the moment... There were 3 deadhangs on each of the other three sets, too, FWIW.... My grip was still torched from Monday, too, which was basically the killer on those once I started doing jumps (which were jumps where my feet were barely flat when my arms were fully extended, so not much jump assist). Pullups are slowly getting better for me - 6 months ago I couldn't move out of a dead hang position, so I'll take what I've got for the moment

[Shawn Knight]

I am up to 7 Kipping pull-ups now! i can only do 2 normal pull-ups. For a guy like me that is awesome!! I can't wait to hit 10 and then 20 and then (drum roll) 30!!!

[Catfish]

Did a CFT.... Worked out to 850#, broken down to a 300# squat, 175# press and 375# dl.

I'll take it! The press and dl are PRs - and I guess I could say the squat is as well, although I have squatted about 325 before, but with poor form and not going down as far as I am today. I'd have to say the 300# squat was a better lift, technically, but not as heavy. So I will have to work on that.

[Jake Di Vita]

Awesome. 175# press is nice - that's my weakest lift.

[Catfish]

Awesome. 175# press is nice - that's my weakest lift.

Thanks Jake!

[XRe]

Very very nice, man Anything over 800 is pretty strong, in terms of CF stuff... That's a monster press. The strong guys aren't doing much more than that....

[Catfish]

Very very nice, man Anything over 800 is pretty strong, in terms of CF stuff... That's a monster press. The strong guys aren't doing much more than that....

Thanks Dave - I was looking around CF's site last night and couldn't find the chart that broke down where you fall in the CF spectrum; that's good info to know since after the DTC I'm going to hit CF workouts only through the rest of the shooting season. I'll go back to 5x5s after the season is over, then another 7 weeks of timed total tonnage, and then CF during the season. It's taken me 3 years to figure out a decent system to use for building pre-season strength and then a system to maintain strength and build speed/power during the season itself without being dead every time a match rolled around.

Time will tell, but I think that for me, this should work pretty well.

[XRe]

The chart you're looking for is in the FAQ: http://www.crossfit.com/cf-info/faq.html#WOD6 - an 850 puts you in the Intermediate band, but realize that those are comparisons to elite level power lifters (and, I'm making assumptions about your body weight...).

One thing to consider is doing CF WODs interspersed with strength training - search the CF forum for BB or BlackBox stuff. Don't skip out on the metcon CF type stuff on the off-season - in fact, that's the time to push it hard. There are many gains to be had there that you're not getting out of pure strength training. In fact, that blog article you've been dying for discusses some of that!

http://re-gun.blogspot.com/2008/03/shoot-b...o-practice.html

[Jake Di Vita]

Derrick,

I'm doing pretty much the same thing you are. I'm focusing on strength until around May 1st and then starting back up with MetCon. You definitely can mix ME and MetCon at the same time, but something is gonna be lost in the translation. The body just simply wasn't meant to gain endurance and strength at the same time. You can do it but it won't be as effective as doing one or the other.

What you described is pretty much how I'm gonna run my training for awhile.

[Catfish]

I'm basically approaching my shooting season like I used to do when I was racing bikes back in the dark age.

Early part of the year was a lot of long slow mileage building rides to build endurance and some strength, which I equate to the strength building workouts now. Early springtime, getting ready for the big races I'd stop doing LSDs all the time and start throwing in some speed work, like the 7 weeks of timed total tonnage I just finished. Come race time, it was all either recovery from the weekend's racing or short, hard, intense interval work to keep me primed and ready to go each for each weekend's racing, which I equate the CF workouts to today.

I figured it worked very well for me 20 years ago, so why not now?

[Jake Di Vita]

The main difference is you were working different metabolic pathways back then than you are now.

[Putty]

Good Fight Gone Bad~ 271 Not pushing it, starting to coast on some WOD's....Recovery lacks?

[carinab]

Last week was all about recovery for me. I only did yoga and yard work (not that taking out an apple tree stump with a hatchet wasn't a work out). The kiddo was off for spring break as well. Today was the first day back to the gym. The recovery seems to have done it's thing. Instead of today's WOD, hubby and I did a scaled "michael" since he tweaked his shoulder at aikido yesterday. Three rounds of 800m, 35 sit ups, 35 back extensions. Total time was 26:40. I threw in 30 pushup into my warm up - all military style - which went fairly easy as three reps of ten. No more bench push ups for me!

[No.343]

I've been doing this crossfit for three weeks now. I like the challenge of it. I hate the fact that there are many exercises that I can't do. Pull ups frustrate me because during my misspent youth I could them, but now I can't. I've been using one of those pull-up/dip assist machines and it's great to be able to exercise the muscles that I know I couldn't exercise if I had to push my entire body weight. I initially set a goal of about five pull-ups at my body weight, but I think that 30 would be a better goal from seeing the few WOD that I've seen. This leads to the question: With a goal of being able to do 30 pull-ups, non-stop, should I use a lot of assistance to try to do a lot of pull-ups or struggle through a few in each set?

[Jake Di Vita]

It's been my experience that jumping pullups are best to do when you are just starting out. You can also try controlling the negative as well, but be careful because that is usually when Uncle Rhabdo comes over for a visit.

There are also a bunch of good threads about this on the CF message board.

[XRe]

The best advice/experience I could share on that would be to get to fully prescribed loads as soon as possible (form permitting - get the form right first before moving up in load), and then improve on the number you can do at once. You'll get stronger more quickly that way. So, I'd look at getting body weight pullups first, and then try to connect a number of them together. I'm at 5 unassisted, deadhangs myself - almost got a kip working the other day, still working on that angle. Its amazing how much easier maintaining that momentum makes doing a pullup - just gotta keep that rhythm going.

You'll eventually be able to do 30, but, frankly, that's a pretty elite level performance. For now, 5 is a good starting goal. If you can break a WOD down into groups of 5 pullups, it might take a while, but you'll get through it and get stronger in a big hurry rather than doing assisted pullups. If it gets to the point where you're only doing 1 or 2 or 3, put a platform below you, just enough so that your feet are flat when your hands are gripping the bar with arms fully extended, and do jumping pullups for the rest of the set - that gives you just a little bit of assist so that you can maintain some pace and metcon viability. In a WOD w/ a lot of pullups, I'll do as many as I can unassisted, and then do jumps like I stated for the rest of the set. Next set, again as many as possible unassisted, then jump. The idea is to use as little assistance as possible in that case...