A little CrossFit at my sister’s house. I wanted to make sure I stayed on top of the Sumo Deadlift progression so I did my 4×5 at 135#. The workout was written as 70% of max. So this was just over 70% of my projected 1 rep max. It felt pretty good. 

Meg captured a short video of my last set. She said that this was the worst set from a form perspective. My back is obviously rounded. 

We then wrote our own MetCon. We decided on: 

We alternated weights and heights so that we could both workout at the harder levels. It was a nice little workout that I finished in 9:18. Meg beat me by a few seconds.  We used both a 20 and 26 inch box and 14 and 20# wall balls. 

37 Years ago…

We started a 9 minute EMOM complex with the following three movements: 30 seconds of jump rope, kettlebell rack reactive step up, and banded pull throughs.  The reactive step up was basically a touch and go step up with the foot going down and popping right back up, focusing on the glute.  The banded pull through was similar to a kettlebell swing, using a band attached to the bottom of the rig.  It felt a little weird.

Today’s strength was tempo Overhead Squats.  We picked the weight that we could 3×5 at with a tempo scheme of 3 seconds down, hold for 2 seconds, fast up and a 1 second pause at the top.  I opted for 65# and that was a good choice by the end.  It is actually a long time to be holding the bar overhead each round.  The other hard part was the pause at the top.  It was hard to catch your breath and reset for the next one that quickly.

The MetCon was another doozy.  I went with the Gold workout, it was tricky as it was a 3 minute round, repeated 5 times.  With NO rest.  So basically a 15 minute workout.  The movement?

30 American Swings 35#

Max effort burpees jump over bench.

Yup that was rough.  The score was the total number of burpees.  Here is what I remember doing:

13

13

13 (for some reason I thought we were done and then Kaitlin said and round 4.  Oh MAN!)

10

10

The kettlebell got really heavy in the last two rounds.  I know I can swing the 50# kettlebell, but I’m glad I didn’t!!

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.