Unloading a trailer full of dirt (about 1 cu yd) right after CrossFit isn’t necessarily the best idea.  Especially after having loaded the said trailer the night before by the shovel load!  It wasn’t actually that bad, but I felt really tired afterwards.

Today’s warm-up included Banded Kettlebell Swings, Cossack Squats and Thoracic rotations in a straddle position.  The Banded Swings felt really weird as the Kettlebell kind of shot back down really quick.

Monday is Sumo Deadlift, so we added 10#’s to last week’s lift.  Today’s 155# tied my PR for the lift. We had only done it one other time outside of this cycle and that’s when I hit 155.  At that time a coach probably gave me a percentage of a traditional deadlift and that’s what I did.  155 felt heavyish but I didn’t have any trouble with the 5×7 workout.

The MetCon was a doozy.  Not a true chipper workout, but it sure felt that way!  The workout was:

30 Overhead Lunges with a 25# dumbbell

15 Pull-Ups

15 Toes to Bar

30 Overhead Lunges

15 Pull-Ups

15 Toes to Bar

30 Overhead Lunges

My toes to bar are a little shaky still so I was somewhere between Toes to Bar and Hanging Knee Raises. I got a couple correct, but struggled with continuing to kip for the T2B.  The lunges felt a little easy at 25#, but that felt good to be able to push through them.  The first round of pull-ups I did in sets of 5 and the second round in sets of 3. I think that my kip is getting better for the first 3, but after that it falls apart.  All in all, this was a tough workout.  My time was 10:53.

Today’s accessory warm-up included bent hollow holds, single-unders, single leg dumbbell Romanian Deadlifts, and banded hip extensions.  This was a continuous 8 minute warm-up.  I’m liking these warm-ups!

Our strength portion for the day was an 8 minute EMOM of 5 second plank hold variation, slow lower, and 5 second hold at the bottom.  This looks “easy” but is actually hard to do, 8 times! My variation was using the rings (really low) and doing a ring plank hold.

The MetCon was a gasser though.  It was tricky since it included significant rest, but not really complete recovery. It was 3 rounds of 6 minutes with 3 movements. The score was your slowest round.  My Silver level movements were:

30 calorie row

20 alternating dumbbell snatch (25#)

10 deadlifts (135#)

I might have been able to increase the weights to the Gold Level, but this work was hurting at the end.  My slowest round ended up being my first.  My thought was to not kill it on the first round, but I could have gone a little harder.  My rounds were:

3:29

3:19

3:09 (after the last deadlift I just laid down on the floor for a minute!)

Beach body… just kidding, but when we do Bench Press that is what I think of!  The warm-ups in this cycle have been longish and I think are also getting some nice accessory work in.  I really felt the donkey kicks from Monday when riding later in the day.  Today we did reverse bridge which I think will hurt later too.

The Bench Press was 4×3 building up to a Heavy 3 and then reducing the weight 15-20#’s and doing 2×8+.  I started with 95#’s on the bar and increased 10#’s each set so I ended with 125#. It felt heavy, but not max out heavy. I then went down to 115#’s for the sets of 8. After doing short sets of 3, 8 reps felt like a lot, but the reduced weight wasn’t too bad.  On the last set we could do more than 8 if we wanted.  I was able to get 10 reps in.

The MetCon was a 12 minute EMOM with 3 different movements.

Minute 1 was 12 Calorie Row

Minute 2 was 12 Box Jump Overs at 24″

Minute 3 was 24 situps

That went well.  Unfortunately we had to cut it short by 2 minutes as we can over time.

I noticed this morning that it is starting to get noticeably darker now at 4:50am when my alarm goes off.  But it is still light out early which is nice for summer fun!  Today we had another longish warm-up that included planks, side planks, donkey kicks, and Jefferson Curls.

We are in the second week of the Sumo Deadlift cycle and we added 10lbs to last week’s heaviest weight.  That meant today I did 4×7 at 145lbs. After I put the 45# plates on I almost added 10# plates that would have been a big jump, but I caught my mistake and added the 5# plates like we were supposed to!  They definitely felt hard but not too horrible.

Here is a video of the Sumo Deadlift:

The MetCon was an easy couplet that could go on for infinity!  It was a 9 minute AMRAP off Burpees and American Swings.  The first round was 3 of each, then 6, then 9, etc. I completed the workout at the Platinum level with a 50# kettlebell.

Of course the first round flew by.  Then somewhere in the second round I screwed up on counting.  I think I did 9 burpees when I should have done 6.  Or maybe I was right.  Oh well.  That what happens sometimes.  The next round I did 9 again.  You would think it’d be easy to keep track of these things!   I finished the 9 minutes and completed 93 reps which meant that I made it through the round of 15 and got 3 swings in.  Oh… I think I realized what just happened.  In the second round I screwed up my order and started increasing the reps on the swings instead of the burpees.  So I was actually right when I did 9 burpees, I should have followed that with 9 swings.  Ugh.  Oh well.