I jumped in on the 1:00pm class today due to a change in my schedule. It was fun to work out with the 1pm crew, since I normally only see them when I’m coaching and not as part of the whole mix.
4 rounds for time of:
50 Sit ups
10 Handstand push ups (Ab-mat + metal 5# plate)
500m row 18:18
I’m always happy to work on hand stand push ups. Today I was a little frustrated because it felt really hard to get down to just the ab-mat. In the past I’ve been able to do that at least for part of workouts. Still good practice and I think I may in future classes, if there are push ups in the warm up, sub out hand stand push ups so I can get more practice and get lower.
Sit ups I went for speed so I used my arms—I was happy I NEVER stopped during any of the four sets on these. 50 straight each time.
The rows were ROUGH after IndoRow last night, but I pushed hard and was particularly pleased I kept a good pace on my final round.
Today was a full day - lots of things on the workout schedule…
9:00am - CrossFit, All Levels
Weightlifting today! Normally I like the heavy weight lifting days, but I was feeling pretty wrecked from yesterday’s windmills. Basically, I felt like (and still feel like) somebody kicked me repeatedly in the kidneys….hard!
So, I wasn’t lifting as heavy as I would like, and I haven’t been lifting heavy as regularly as a did a year ago, so that’s reflected in my numbers, too. It kinda bummed me out, but whatever—every day can’t be a PR day.
Back Squat
1-1-1-1
1. 155#
2. 165#
3. 175#
4. 175# Miss
My old PR is like 210#. Argh.
Part two of the workout was strangely enjoyable since it was a quick way to get some metcon and balance out the weightlifting.
3 minutes - max burpees 45
I think I may have gotten 46, but just to be safe I went one number lower in case I messed up my counting. I pretty much never stopped the whole time and told myself just to keep moving, keep moving. My 2 minute max burpee record is 38. Clearly the 3 min interval is a much different pace!
6:00pm - Fencing Lesson
I wasn’t feeling totally focused in my lesson today. And consequently I wasn’t feeling very good about the whole day of working out since this was activity number two and I wasn’t rocking it. Not that my lesson wasn’t good - they always are, but I wasn’t feeling like I put everything in to it and was mentally totally in it.
We worked on my footwork some more and also acceleration. One thing about fencing is it’s about being able to accelerate forward very quickly. There’s a certain rhythm to it, always building in speed with both the footwork and the sabre movements.
I also need to remind myself not to grip the sabre so hard. It’s hard to be precise and quick if I’m not gripping lightly.
7:00pm - IndoRow at Revolution
Okay, so third time is the charm apparently. Since my fencing lesson was an hour early today it gave me a chance to head over to IndoRow and take class with Josh Crosby. And finally, I got the workout rush I’d been attempting to get all day long. Phew!
We did about 15 minutes of rowing for warm up - working on technique, setting our easy, medium and full pressures, etc.
Then we did a series of 30 second sprints, alternating between full pressure and easy pressure.
After that were two 5 minute waves. Each was 2 minutes easy, 2 minute medium, 1 minute full. After the first wave, we checked out our distance covered, which for me was 1170. Our goal on the second 5 minute wave was to beat our distance. I think I got 1192 on the second one - so I did it!
Rowing Roulette was next—we broke into 3 teams of 3. Josh would call out different team names at different times and that was our cue to row 10 full pressure strokes. We didn’t know when he would call our team or if we would have to do 10 strokes back to back. It was fun and for 10 strokes, you can go REALLY hard. The great mental thing was being able to go REALLY hard again even if your team gets called immediately after you just finished 10 strokes.
Finally, we did the race. In our same teams we did a relay race. Josh handicapped the teams, so the other two teams did 100m pieces for their relay and our team had to do 120m pieces. I got down in the 1:20’s and 1:30’s on each of the three rounds and the handicapping worked out perfectly as all the teams pretty much finished right together!
I like these “complex” workouts, so I was looking forward to this one. There was a little confusion on what the advanced weights were, though, so I only did a 35# d-bell instead of a 40#. That bums me out a little, but it was still a good workout and I’m sure it’ll come around again in the future. Probably 35# was for the best for whatever is still a tiny bit funky in my left shoulder (still the weird nerve thing from sitting around over the holidays - I literally somehow hurt it by doing absolutely nothing).
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 rep rounds for time of:
Single arm D-bell Clean (35# d-bell)
Single arm D-bell Front Squat
Single arm D-bell Thruster
Single arm D-bell Windmill 14:52
I divided it up between my arms by doing round 10 on my right, round 9 on my left, round 8 on the right, etc. It made it really easy to remember which round I was on, as well. The thrusters were probably the hardest part for me, but I kept a steady pace on everything through out. Good fun workout! This is a great one to remember if you’re traveling and stuck in some bad non-CrossFit gym, too—all you need is 1 d-bell!
Devlin was the Kahuna today since last week we had to tailor the workout for the Guest Days and he didn’t really get a chance to practice teaching and get feedback.
“WOD Around the House”
Teams of 4, 2 people working at a time - Devlin, Mtanwyck, Vanessa, Me
200 Squats
200 Push Ups
200 Hooverball Sit Ups
200 Pull Ups
200 Wall Ball (14#)
800m Buddy Carry 20:49
Vanessa and I worked as a pair and Devlin and Stanwyck worked as a pair. They routinely did around 115 reps, and we did around 85. Push ups haven’t felt strong for me lately due to some funky thing with my left shoulder, so I did sets of 5 at first, then sets of 3. Pull ups and squats felt good. Hooverball Sit Ups took a while, but weren’t hard at all. Wall ball….now that’s a different story. Those sucked. I haven’t done buddy carry in a long time and I think Vanessa and I made a good pair. We broke it down into 50m chunks to cover the 400m that we needed to as a pair.
9:00-10:30am - Fencing Class
So yesterday the fencing club owner, Daniel, invited me to come to the junior’s class today so I could experience real fencing, since I can’t make the adult class due to my schedule. The kids there today were all in the 12-17 year old age range, I think. I asked a few of them how long they’d been fencing for and most of them seemed to have been there for a few years!
Daniel had told me I could come late to skip the warmup and footwork drills, but I decided since it was my first time it was good to experience a whole class. We played soccer with a nerf ball to warm up, then did a bunch of laps of the room doing high knees, butt kicks, carioca steps, etc. After that we stretched, then did a bunch of passes back and forth across the room practicing fencing footwork. Some of it I knew from my lessons and could do, and other passes I was just trying to match whatever the people next to me were doing!
Then we suited up to fence. Daniel’s son, Michael, who is 15 and has been fencing for eight years, helped me with the gear. Today was good if for nothing else than I got comfortable getting in and out of the gear and getting plugged into the electric scoring system. At first all the gear (multiple layers on top, glove, mask, cables connecting to the wall, etc.) felt cumbersome, but I got used to it very quickly. I fenced with about five different people, of all different levels. Although I didn’t do great, I did manage to get a few points here and there, so that made me happy. Michael said I did better than most people their first time really fencing, so that was nice.
I think it was really good for me to experience the real game of fencing and now I can go back to my private lessons with more of a context of what is happening. I’ll probably stop in on this Saturday class again in the future on the weekends I’m not teaching at the gym.
I wasn’t really feeling in the mood for this today, but talked myself through it and figured I would feel better once the workout got going. And, as it turned out, I really enjoyed the workout. Go figure! My diet and sleep have been off lately, so starting this coming week I’m really getting back in gear on both those things—it makes a huge difference and I’m tired of feeling like junk.
But, back to the workout—which was actually a lot of fun…
20 Sumo Deadlift High Pulls
200m run
20 Thrusters
200m run
20 Squat Cleans
200m run
20 Push press
200m run
20 Pull Ups
200m run
20 Snatch balance
200m run
(all weighted movements done with 62#) 21:13
I think I kept a pretty steady pace on this for the most part. Might have been able to push it harder on a couple of the runs, but the rain was INSANE. For one of the runs the rain was coming at us sideways and I literally couldn’t keep my eyes open.
I tried to break the movements into sets like 8-7-5, 10-6-4 or 7-7-6. That worked on SDLHP, thrusters, and push press. Cleans I would clean and drop every time so I just tried to keep a rhythm and not break too long. Pull ups I did in two sets of 10. And snatch balance….well, that took a while. I actually love this exercise, but we don’t do it very often so it takes a few reps to get back in the groove. Once I got about 10 in I felt really good and finished strong.
5:20pm - Fencing Lesson
We worked on some new movements with the sabre today. It’s always fun to learn new stuff—it takes me a few lessons to process it, though. Today it REALLY occurred to me (finally) that when Daniel, my coach, and I fence for points at the end of my lesson that I should expect him to behave in a similar fashion to the drills we did for the first part of my lesson. This is total common sense, I know, but in the moment when you’re going “live” I’m not always sure what’s happening in my brain. I feel, once again, like the “right of way” rules are making more and more sense and therefore I’m able to make correct choices in strategy more often.
The other coach at the school, also named Daniel (and just to be more confusing, he was the other Daniel’s coach originally), asked me after my lesson when I was going to “play with other people.” I told him I can’t make the Wednesday night beginner adult classes, so he invited me to come train with the kids class tomorrow. He said they’ll pull out some equipment for me so I can plug into the scoring machine and fence for real. I’m excited! I am also quite sure the kids will kick my ass.
I’m investigating buying my own mask and glove. I guess this means I like this stuff.
Because I didn’t get enough rowing yesterday, apparently!
We did our usual warm up - refreshing ourselves on technique, then determining our light, medium, and full pressure speeds.
Then, since some of the people there are preparing for the indoor races in Long Beach this Sunday, we did a 1000m piece at medium pressure, then a short break followed by a 500m piece at full pressure. I think my 1000m at medium was around 4:20? And my 500m was 1:57. The water rowers are calibrated a little differently than the C2’s, so I’m not sure how exactly that translates.
Our second wave was full of random full pressure intervals, with light pressure in between. Chris, the instructor, just announced them as we went. I think the full pressure intervals went in length from 30s to 60s to 90s. This was painfully reminiscent of yesterday.
Finally we did a 2000m race with a partner - dividing up the work however we wanted. My partner and I were of difference experience levels, so she did 100m chunks and I did 200m chunks. I did a total of 1300m by the end. I think I was in the 1:40’s for most of this, probably in the 1:50’s for the final couple chunks. I was mostly tired by that point, but trying to push hard!
All in all this was a good set of intervals and a good workout.
Yay for fencing! I feel like I’ve made a little leap (small frog jump?) in my fencing abilities. Today I “graduated” to wearing the mask during my lesson and using a heavier sabre, so that was fun. With my old coach I used to wear the mask all the time, but since I switched to this new school (Avant Garde) we had been working without the mask. Eventually someday I’ll get to wear all the gear! lol!
I think my footwork is slowly getting better, also. If nothing else, I do have an ability to replicate things well once they are demonstrated to me. My coach showed me something at one point, then had me do it three times, and then exclaimed, “Why can’t I have more students like you!” That felt good!
I still put my shoulders into things a bit much—no doubt due to the boxing and kickboxing in my background, so I’m working on FINESSE and being loose.
I learned a few new cuts and we fenced a bunch of points at the end of the lesson. That was surprisingly winding, but really really fun. I feel like a few of the “if then” statements are starting to make sense in my head when it comes to fencing actual points now, too. My coach is darn fast. Which, you know, would probably have some relation to the fact he was an Olympian.
Today was all about rowing intervals. The 6am class decided that six 1 minute rowing sprints was better than 6 sprints up Franklin Hill, for the simple fact you didn’t have to row back down Franklin Hill.
Rowing sprint intervals:
6 rounds
1:00 row
3:00 rest
I was alright with these distances since I’m still getting my cardio back this last week or so. I felt like I did a good job of holding myself accountable throughout each interval, too, and not letting myself give up on any stroke. For the most part I was right around a 1:48 or 1:49. I didn’t get as smooth of a start as I would have liked to on the very last interval or I think I would have eeked out a couple more meters. Felt pretty crushed afterwards. Good stuff.
ARGH! I was excited about today because I suck at push ups. I have good form that I have been super diligent about, but my improvement on them has been slow over the years. So, I was looking forward to getting to work on them…until I actually started the workout.
For time:
800m run
5 rounds of:
12 Jerks (115/85)
24 push ups
Finish with:
800m run 34:47
Most of my time was on push ups. The runs weren’t speedy, but I wasn’t super slow either. The jerks I did in 2-3 sets each time. The push ups were AWFUL. I started out on the first round doing 3 at a time and by the 4th and 5th round I was doing them 2 at a time. I have some funky nerve thing going on in my left shoulder that started over holiday break, which I’m sure doesn’t help matters either, but my goodness this took forever! lol! I was happy to go run in the rain by the end!
Hung out at CFLA in the morning for Josh Crosby’s rowing seminar and helped out a little. Great to see everybody there make such big improvements in their rowing technique!
7:15am - CrossFit, Instructor Training Program Class
A little bit smaller crew today, so we played freeze tag for warm up. Except when you’re “frozen” you actually have to do ten squats and then you’re unfrozen again. Fun way to warm up and do something different.
The workout was a partner workout in anticipation of the many guests we were expecting in the later classes since it would be the final day of CFLA Guest Days!
2x (partnered with John Burch)
3 min max reps thrusters (55#)
1 min rest
3 min max reps burpees
1 min rest
3 min max reps pull ups
1 min rest Total: 387
Broken out by rounds, we did
Thrusters - 63, 61
Burpees - 62, 56
Pull Ups - 71. 74
We actually improved on pull ups, which was cool. I definitely felt like my shoulders were more warmed up and able to kip properly on the second round. Thrusters were the hardest part for me. My left shoulder has been achey since Christmas (which is bizarre since I did NOTHING over the holiday break) and I could feel it on the thrusters so I didn’t want to push too hard.
Today is the second day of our “CFLA Guest Days” so we had some friends and family of students in our classes all day today. I was honored to do the workout today partnered with Kenny K’s friend, Ashley. She pushed really hard and was a great partner!
“Team Helen”
12 Rounds for time of:
250m row
11 KB swings
6 pull ups
- alternate rounds with your partner
- your time is the total time for you and your partner to finish all 12 rounds 24:45
I was happy I kept my time below 2:00 on all my rows. I was down in the 1:40’s on my first round and then in the 1:50s on the next 5 rounds. I did all sets of kettlebell swings and pull ups unbroken. My grip was really suffering by the end!
I like this format—hard sprints and partner work. It was a good workout AND a lot of fun.
**No fencing lesson tonight - it was canceled since my coach is out of town for a tournament. Bummer. Will be back to my regular two scheduled lessons next week, though!
