Category Archives: CrossFit

01202019 – Ski

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Two different ski sessions, two types of skiing and two times of winter fun!

The first session was solo at 6am with the temperature at -3f. I slipped out and was the first skier to hit the trails on the cold morning. I was working on my skate skiing. I’d go from moments when it seemed to be going well to frustration over not being able to get into the rhythm.  I know it was only my second session so I’m trying to not get too discouraged.  I also read later that colder temps make the snow slower so that made me feel a little better! I spent some more time on the flat sections doing an extra loop and going out wider to get more practice on the flats since the hills are pretty much horrible and I’m walking up them.  I did do the full loop and trudged up all the hills.  I only saw 3 other people while I was out there! 

I ended up with 6.5k total skiing in about 56 minutes. 

The second session was with the kids. I thought they might cancel lessons, but there was no wind and the temp was about 10f and sunny. It ended up being great weather for skiing. I’m not confident enough on the skate skis yet so I used my classic ones. Nadia snapped her pole during the warmup! Caleb didn’t want to give up his poles, but he did when she was struggling on one of the uphills. After warming up we went out and did the normal loop that they’ve been doing and Nadia did great on all the downhills!!

After finishing the first loop we stopped for gummy bears and then the class split into kids who wanted to play games and those who wanted to ski more. Caleb doesn’t like the games so we went for another loop. When we got to the Meadow it was just us and a father/daughter pair so we decided to finish the full loop up there instead of going straight back.  This added some good hills.  I ended the lessons with 5k on the GPS.  So the kids did an excellent job of not giving up and enjoying the downhills! 

01192019 – CrossFit

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I had hoped to run or ski before the 10am CrossFit class but that didn’t work for our schedule and it was cold out! I took the kids to their CrossFit class and joined the 10am group was we waited for 9am to finish up.

Our warm up was 5 rounds of 8 kipping knees to elbow and 3 per arm kettlebell windmills. I got some good correction on my windmill as I wasn’t doing a good hip hinge with it.

We then did a 5×3 Back Squat. It was supposed to be 75% which would have been 150 for me, but when I got to 135, that felt pretty challenging for the day. It was nice to workout with Dan a 5:30am buddy whose kids are also in the kid’s class. We did the squats together. Despite being lower weight than I should have been the 5×3 went well.

The MetCon wasn’t for time, but we did have a 10 minute time cap due to the end of class. It was another hard one!

5 rounds of

5 Strict Pullups

10 Renegade Rows (each arm) 20#

30 Heavy Russian Swings 53#

I had tried the 70# kettlebell because they were supposed to be as heavy as possible, but Coach Rica said my form was too bad at that weight so I dropped back down. I was glad too because the 53 was heavy enough at the end! I think I ended up with 4 rounds in the time cap. I did the first 5 pullups strict and mostly got over the bar, but then I added some bands because I wasn’t getting close enough anymore in subsequent rounds!

I had a good workout and so did the kids!

01182019 – CrossFit

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Finally back at the gym! I had hoped to earlier in the week but forgot to sign up and was waitlisted. I don’t usually look at the workouts, I wouldn’t have skipped this one. I think lots of people did though!

We are in a prep cycle for the CrossFit Open. And a lot of that is doing old open workouts. Mike was the only other person who showed up for the 3:30 class to do 13.1 with me!

This was rough! Here is the RX written workout from the website:

MEN – includes Masters Men up to 54 years old
Proceed through the sequence below completing as many reps as possible in 17 minutes of:
40 Burpees
75 pound Snatch, 30 reps
30 Burpees
135 pound Snatch, 30 reps
20 Burpees
165 pound Snatch, 30 reps
10 burpees
210 pound Snatch, as many reps as possible

That’s a lot of burpees and some heavy snatching! My 1RM is 110 for the snatch. I don’t remember exactly how all the scaling was laid out, but I decided to start at 65 and then jump to 95 and maybe get into the third round. The above also doesn’t highlight that the burpees are to a 6 inch target (6 inches above your arm reach). So you actually have to jump at the top.

Rich Froning completed 7 snatches in the AMRAP part. The most anyone did was 9 and several athletes in the top 20 that year didn’t make it into the last set of Snatches. All that to say this was a hard workout!

At the go I took a nice and steady pace with the burpees. You wouldn’t think jumping 6 inches is a big deal, but it does add time and quickly adds up! After the first round of snatching 65# I was almost half way done with the time. Yikes! Burpee fatigue was definitely accumulating and then I loaded 95 onto the bar for my second round of Snatch. I failed the first one. Got the second one. Failed the 3rd. Coach Bobby quickly came over and helped me drop the weight back down to 65. The bar felt super light on the first one, but the next ones hurt! I had hoped to go 10 at a time throughout, but ended up just doing 5. I ended with 114 total reps!

That was a lay on the floor afterwards workout for sure!

01032019 – CrossFit

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Finally felt healthy enough to work out! The Influenza A definitely has a long tail of getting back to 100% and I’m definitely not there yet. My last fever was on Christmas Day so it’s been over a week and I’ve still had a lot of congestion, lung mucus, and just being worn out. I’ve taken more naps in the past few weeks than I can remember! 

I decided to do Solcana’s WOD instead of coming up with my own. I might have been better off doing some bodyweight workout, but oh well! 

I had to do some modifications and did 8 rounds of 2 front support holds on the rings as part of the gymnastics/warmup.

Then on to some back squatting. I did the dynamic warmup and put 95 on the bar and did 5, then 125 at 5 reps. Getting to the actual work was a 3 2 1 2 3 ladder with 10lb jumps. I started at 165, then 175 and did 1 rep at 185 and then descended back down. 

The Metcon called for dumbbells and my sister didn’t have any in her gym so I opted for kettlebells. The devil press looked painful and not doable with kettlebells so I just went for swings. I did one armed push press with the kettlebell and switched at 4 reps. I also did hanging knee raises. 

8 minute AMRAP 

8 hanging knee raises

8 kettlebell swings 35lb

8 kettlebell push press 35lb

I was able to finish 7 rounds in the 8 minutes. Not exactly as written but it was still a good challenge that got me moving. 

Here’s a pic of the barn gym:

12142018 – CrossFit

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Ahhh.. another Friday afternoon workout.  It was actually a decent day at work so that was nice! We did a bear crawl, jog, inch worm, and lunges before heading into our tripod stand practice.  It is getting easier to get up into the tripod for sure.

This week was a Clean and Push Press 6 sets working up to a heavy set of 1 Clean and 3 Push Press. I started at 65 and then did 75, 80, 85, 90, 95. 95 was definitely heavy.  Bobby showed me how to widen my grip for the Push Press which should help me to get more leverage.

We ran out of time to do the MetCon exactly as written, we cut the breaks about a minute short for each.  I wanted to try the Platinum, but the last set of Deadlifts would have been 275 which seemed way too close to my max to try at this point.  That was a good decision as the Gold was plenty heavy at 185 for the last sets.  It was a 3 part AMRAP with scoring at each round and the total score was what was recorded.

AMRAP/4

12 Deadlift (105)
12 Burpee Box Jump-Overs
— rest 4 min —
AMRAP/4
8 Deadlift (135)
8 Burpee Box Jump-Overs
— rest 4 min —
AMRAP/4
4 Deadlift (185)
4 Burpee Box Jump-Overs

I finished 48 in the first round, 44 in the second and 25 in the last round. My watch recorded an average heart rate of 141 (including the rest intervals). I was beat afterwards!