Strength and Olympic lifting log for Thursday, December 31st

A night out with my fiancee (or as Delilah said my beyoncé) a couple of drinks and a bit of congestion in the back of my nose/throat I slept in again, by choice.

Work day new year's eve ended at noon, after we were given the okay to leave for the day, I headed to the Y for my last workout of the year.

Started with squats, since I forgot my gear yesterday.

I worked up to a heavy single of 305#.  I wanted to try for a double, but the weight went forward on the way up. I was able to recover and stand it up, but I was no longer interested in going for another one.

So, then I moved on to cleans.  I figured why not see what I can muster towards my goal of 100kg.

After switching to singles at 185#, I jumped to 205# and it went up very well. Then I was going to go with 215#, my current PR.  At the last minute I figured why not add 2.5# plates for 220# and make it a new record.

And doing the maths, turned out that it would actually be 100kg: my stated goal (although my real goal is two plates, 225#).

Well 220# went up like 205#, I was really stoked, so there was no way I was leaving without at least trying 225#.

I recruited a buddy to film the attempt, and somehow I got it.  Didn't catch it as solidly as 220#, but I got under and had no trouble standing it up.

So new PR for my last workout of 2015.  That's pretty cool.

New Clean PR.  

Strength:
Bench: 230# November 19, 2014 (up from 225#)
Dead Lift: 365# September 17, 2014 (up from 355#)
Press: 145# September 9, 2014 (up from 140#)
Back Squat: 315# March 2, 2015 (up from 305#)
Front Squat: 280# September 29, 2015 (up from 275#)
Overhead squat: 155# September 22, 2015 (up from 145#) 

Power:
Power Clean: 205# July 4, 2015 (up from 195#)
Power snatch:  140# Dec 5, 2014 (up from 125#)
Push Press: 185# Sept 15, 2014 (up from 175#)
Clean: 225# Dec 31, 2015 (up from 215#)
Jerk: 205#  Dec 13, 2014 (up from 185#)
Snatch: 145# Apr 23, 2015 (up from 135#)
Clean and Jerk: 205# Dec 13, 2014 (up from 175#)

Strength and accessory log for Wednesday, December 30th

Late night, and up in the night so no Crossfit.  Grrr.  Planned for the Y at lunch but after leaving the house realized I forgot my lifting bag.  Double Grrr.

So I did what I could:  strict press, 3 rep max, followed by heavy rows, 3 sets of 3 at 165#

Press went well, hit 125# for 3, knew 135# wouldn't happen, so I tried 130#, got two! But the third just wouldn't go.  I'll take it.

Hit the row pulley machine at 105# for 8, 135# for 5, then 3 triples at 165#.  Felt good.

Will to 3 singles at 180# next week.

Strength and accessory log for Wednesday, December 23rd

Went to the Y at lunch, again, since I'll be a slug until after Christmas, and worked on overhead and accessory work.

Got a Christmas surprise, the new barbell arrived just as I did and Seb let me be the first to use it.

Nice bar. bushings not bearings (as expected), but smooth rotation (new bar), and pretty good whip.  I liked it.

Did press, push press, jerk, building up to max strict press of 135# and max push press of 185# (hadn't hit that in a while) but failed to lock out 195# with the jerk, but I was tired and sore, so I called it after that.

Then I followed up last Wednesday's accessory work with 5 triples of supinated rows on the pulley machine at 155#.  Went well.

Next week, if I can get to the Y I'll hit 3 triples at 165#.

Crossfit log for Wednesday, December 23rd

Didn't want to get out of bed this morning.  But since it will likely be my last Crossfit class until after Christmas, I dragged myself out of bed and planned to go easy. 

When I signed up just before leaving the house, there 14 of 14 spots left, I would be the only person. Thankfully Kyle and Véro where there when I arrived. I guess they hadn't signed up for the class.

Warm up was 3 rounds of 5 pull ups (strict), 10 empty bar thrusters, and 12 sit ups.  Did two rounds.

Started with a clean complex EMOM for 7 minutes:  1 high hang clean + 1 hang clean + 1 clean.  Don't drop the bar until after all three are done.

Did 135#, 145# and 155# for the first three rounds and stayed at 155# to the end.

Last couple of rounds were getting rough.


Then, after all those heavy back squats yesterday at the Y, we had 1 rep max back squat. Crap. 

Got up to 295# and called it there. 

The WOD was a 21-15-9 couplet of deadlifts and box jumps, 245#/30" for the men and 165#/24" for the women.  There was a 10 minute cap.

As I hummed and hawed, I remembered my plan to go easy and figured if I wanted any chance of finishing under the cap I should just go  women's Rx for everything and for get about using the 30" box or splitting the differenct on the deadlifts.

So I did women's Rx and had a great workout.  Finished right in the pack at 7:13.

Very happy with that..

Strength and accessory log for Tuesday, December 22nd

Had a great workout at the Y today.

Wanted to lift heavy.  Torn between cleans and back squats.  Since we did a ton of power cleans this morning and when in doubt you should always squat.  I voted for squats.

Decided to do 5 singles, and see how close I could get to that elusive repeat of last March's PR of 315#.

Warmed up to a double at 275# then began my singles at 295#.  Then 300#, 305#, which went up easily, even smoother than 300# did.  At 310# I fought a bit, but I got it.

For the fifth set I tried  310# again, looking to make it smoother, like 305# was over 300#.  Got it, much less fight. 

Very happy with that.  Maybe next time I'll try a double at 305# or 300#.

Then I did some RDLs, a warm up of 8 reps at 135# and a working set at 205# for 6 reps. 

That was good too.   Took a bit of a steam and headed back to work.

Good workout.

Crossfit log for Tuesday, December 22nd

This wasn't going to be fun.


Back to back mini WODs for Tuesday's f
15-10-5
- Power Clean  135/95#
- HSPU

 - Then Directly into -

15-10-5
- Hang Power Clean 135/95#
- Ring Dip

Used women's Rx, and it actually wasn't too bad.   HSPU sucked after the first 10 reps.

Ring dips, usually my strength, are a lot harder when you triceps are trashed from HSPU!

But I got through it.

Today was a day for scaling.  The post WOD was 2 6 minute EMOMs with 2 minutes rest between.


6min EMOM:
- Row 15/10 Cals

 - Rest 2 mins -

6min EMOM
- 5 C2B + 10 Push-ups + 5 Box Jump Overs

Rows went 15 cal, 12 cal, 12 cal, 10 cal, 10 cal, 15 cal  (last one, took the whole minute).

Second part did regular pull ups, scaled to 7 push ups.  Made 2 rounds like that, the dropped to 5, 5, 4 and the last round, having more time with no need for rest did a full 5, 10, 5.

So there.  Spent, but it went better than I expected.

Crossfit log for Monday, December 21st

Monday Crossfit.  Rough, of course.

Even the warm up was rough.

It was a sprint chipper of:
- 25 Medicine Ball Cleans
- 20 Wall Balls
- 15 Sit-ups
- 10 Superman Rocks
- 5 Squat Snatches, 75/55 lbs
- 2 Shuttle Runs

I was just about ready to go home after that.

Then we did snatch balance, working up to a one rep max.  I stopped at 135#.  Did it twice because the first one was ugly.

Then 1 rep max overhead squat.  Also did 135# and also did this twice.  Didn't get deep enough on the first one.

Granted my warm up going split snatch balance wasn't quite a OHS warm up like most everybody else, but it was okay.  

Then the WOD, teams of 2,  worked with Dave and Justin shadowed us.

2 rounds for time of:
- 20 Overhead Squats, 115/80#
- 20 Toes-to-bars
- 10 Squat Snatches, 115/80#
- 10 Bar Muscle Ups (scaled to 15 chest to bar pull ups)

I scaled to weight to 95#.  Dave did 85# and Justin did Rx.   Dave was really struggling with the OHS, he stopped at 8, so I did my 8, thinking we'd do 2 and 2 to finish off, but he was talking to the Coach Alex, so I just did my 10, as Justin was waiting.  Then I just did the remaining 2, that's what teamwork is for.  So we were able to go to the T2B.

These were okay, a bit slow, but we did our 10 each.

Snatch was even harder on Dave, but his last rep, running out of arms to muscle it up, he totally pulled himself under the bar, if he had caught it in the slot, it would have been the best snatch of his life.  But he caught it forward and lost it, but we counted it anyway. 

I did my snatches (I think I did an extra for his missed one, not sure) and moved on to the CTB.

Again, slow but done.  Then on to the dreaded round 2.

Dave shed 10# from the bar to 75# and he was a new man.  Too bad he hadn't done that from the start.  Breezed through the OHS, mine were fine until rep 8, really had to fight to maintain shoulder stability. But managed to get through my 10.

T2B were even slower 2nd time through.  Snatches went really well for everyone, and finally struggled through the CTB to finish off.

It wasn't a ton of work, but it was hard work.   Good job team!

Crossfit log for Thursday, December 17th

Wow, that was a killer.

The warm up was not too bad,  3 rounds of 15 ring rows, 10 glute bridges and 5 burpees.   Fuck burpees.

The strength was 5 sets of 5 close grip bench press.

Started at 165# for the first 3 sets then bumped it to 175# and finished up with 185#.  Happy with that, worked hard.

The WOD was horrible

4 tabatas in a row:  4 minutes of 20 seconds all out, 10 seconds rest, for 8 rounds each:
- back squats 135#
- toes to bar (scaled to sit ups)
- dead lifts 135#
- handstand push ups  (scaled to regular push ups)

I may have lost count a couple of place but guestimates conservatively for a total rep count of 209#  (on par with the others)

I Rx'd the bar work because I knew I'd be scaling the other two.

Back squats were good, but went downhill quickly,  Like 11, 10, 8, 6, 7, 5, 5, 4

Completely missed out on the first round of toes to bar, between trying to get set up and failing on the first one, I switched to sit ups and 20 seconds was up!

Got to just over 100 reps  in the remaining 7 rounds

Deadlifts sucked so bad.  First 3 rounds were fine, the rest was a suckfest.

Lost another round trying to get a handstand push up, switching too late to regular push ups.

Fought hard to get over 200, made it.

Workout log for Wednesday, December 16th

Too sleepy to get out of bed this morning.  So I really had to get to the Y at lunch.  I also had an appointment this morning, so I got in late and made my Y visit short as a consequence.

Quickly go into the Skills portion of today's WOD: Work up to 1 heavy set of clean complex with jerk:  high hang clean + hang clean + clean + jerk.

Did 95#, 135#, 155# and 185#.  The jerk wasn't pretty on the last one, but the cleans were solid. 

I was going to try the WOD which was a 21-15-9 of cleans and ring dips, completely doable at the Y with my rings.  But I didn't know how long that would take me and I realized it was Wednesday and I was supposed to do my row strength development work I started last week.

So I got set up on the row pulley machine, warmed up at 105#, supinated grip rows.

Then I upped it to 140# for the first of 3 sets of 5.  Went well, on the last set I upped it to 150#.  I think that would have been too much for 3 sets, but as the last set it was okay.  Next time I'll do 155# for 5 triples.

Then I called it a day and hit the showers.

Accessory log for Monday, December 14th

YMCA at lunch.

Started with Romanian deadlifts.  Used Dave's bar as he was working up on his clean.

Did 95# for 8 reps to warm up and since last time was so easy at 135#, I upped it to 155# and still managed to hit 8 reps without much effort. 

So I decided to do an additional set at 185#.  That was more like it.  Next time skipping the 155#, I'll warm up at 135# and hit 205# for reps.

Then I did some 1 armed rows on the pulley machine.  The warm up at 90# was harder than expected, and the reps at 120# weren't full range of motion. Next time I'll warm up at 75# and rep out at 105#.  Lesson learned.

Then I did my hip rotators drills, but didn't have time for the all-fours breathing, I was too busy watching and filming Dave hit a clean PR at 130kg.  It was a thing of beauty.

Crossfit log for Monday, December 14th

Hopefully the start of a normal week of training. 

Warm up consisted of 3 rounds of 25ft banded monster walk and 15 band pull aparts.

Then we went right into a snatch emom.  1 snatch every minutes, 80% for 3, 85% for 3 and 90% for 3.

Did 115#, 120# and 125#.  155# went well, and the last rep at 125# well.  The rest all had something lacking.

Then we quickly did back squats,  3 heavy doubles.  After a short warm up I did 245#, 250#, 260#.  Happy with that.

The WOD was a killer

3 rounds for time:
- 5 handstand pushups
- 10 power cleans 135#/95#
- 15 burpees
- 20 kettle bell swings 24kg/16kg
- 25 wall balls

Oh man. 

Back in September I did a WOD with 21 hspu, this would be 15.  That time I managed 19 and ran out of arms for the two last reps.  This time I hit the wall at 12.  Hmm...  Oh well, next time.

Scaled the bar to 115# and in the last round dropped it to 95#.

Burpees suck so bad.

KB swings were hard too.  Broke them up every time.

Wall balls, which I'm usually fairly strong at, I've been having trouble lately. Broke these ones up a lot.

Really glad it's over.

Accessory and physio log for Friday, December 11th

Got to the Y at lunch, starting to feel normal again.

I tried my ring dip EMOM, 7 rounds of 7 reps (8 on the first round, for 50 reps).

Horrible.  Made 5 rounds plus only 3 reps in round 6. So with the extra rep in round 1 that makes 39 reps total.  Ugh. Maybe I should go back to 10 rounds of 5.

After that I did some ring rows in to a bottom of dip position.   3 sets of 8.  Getting good.  I think all this mid-back work may  help my muscle up. We'll see.

Then I did my physio drills: all-fours breathing and hip rotator drills.

Then I hobbled to the showers

Good work.

Crossfit log for Friday, December 11th

Finally got back to Crossfit this morning.  Kiza arrived last night at bath time, so I went to bed early and was up at 5:00am

Showed up ready to go.

Warm up was 25 cal row, 20 med ball cleans and 15 burpees.

The rowers were all taken so I started with the burpees. Got them done while I was still fresh.  Good call.

Then we did a 9 minute EMOM of 1 clean and jerk, first 3 at 80%, second 3 at 85% and the last 3 at 90%.  I did 165#, 175# and 185#. Went well, the 8th rep was my best at 90%.

The WOD was killer.  Basically Grace plus Karen.

3 rounds for time of :
- 10 clean and jerks at 135#/95#
- 50 wall balls.

Looked harmless enough on the board.  As predicted the first round went beautifully and then the wheels came off big time.

I kept up with Kamil (we both scaled to women's Rx) until round 3, I would finishe after him on the C&J each time but I would catch him on the wall balls, but round 3 I had nothing left.

Finished in 18:10. 

Good to be back at it.

Strength, accessorty and physio log for Thursday, December 10th

This morning's trip to the physio exposed some new issues.  Yay.

Since my lower back was still experiencing discomfort in some positions, he checked my hip mobility and found an imbalance.

Sitting with feet dangling, hold a pencil between your knees.  If you can do that without your aductors cramping, you already ahead of me.

Then move your feet away from each other, sideways, you should be able to create a gap of 40 plus centimetres.  I can manage only 21cm.  My hip muscles don't feel that this is a worthwhile endeavour.

So after some acupuncture I was given some drill to activate the hip rotators.  I did those at lunch at the Y after my strength and accessory work.

Started with back squats.  Needed to lift heavy.  Got up to 305# and tried 315# once again, and again I couldn't get out of the hole.  Meh.  305# is still good. Likely 310# would've made it up.

Then I did some RDLs, a set of 8 at 95# and a set of 8 at 135#.  I think I can start to go heavier on these.  I'll wait to see how I feel in two days before making that decision.

After that I did the hip drills and finished up with the All-Fours-Breathing drill. 

Just keep chipping away at the weaknesses. 

Olympic Lifting and accessory log for Wednesday, December 9th

Made it to the Y.  Thank goodness.

Needed to lift.

Worked on snatch. 

Slowly worked up to a max lift of 135#, roughly 60kg.  It went up so well I was sure 145# was in the books, but alas. 

I did managed a split power snatch, with ugly press out at 145#, but I won't count that. I'll check my power snatch PR, I may take it.

But even the second attempt was a no.

Oh well.  Then I did some supinated rows on the pulley machine at 135#, for 5 sets of 5.  I think I'll follow my strength development plan for these, I think I could really benefit from seriously strengthening my mid back.

Feeling good.

Crossfit log for Tuesday, December 8th

Oh man, have I been delinquent posting my workout log!

I have two back posts to make after this one.

Today was my first normal day in weeks, at least that's what it feels like.  And it won't even be a normal week, Kiza is out of town yet again,  so Wednesday and Thursday are out of the question for morning Crossfit.

Today was okay.  A lot of volume on the WOD.

Warm up was 3 rounds of Cindy: 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, 15 air squats.

Basic stuff.

WOD was 4 rounds for time:
- 7 clean and jerk  165#/110#
- 14 toes to bar
- 21 box jumps  24"/20"

Scaled to 125#, should have done 135# like Kamil but I was scared with that many. 

Scaled the t2b to 10 reps, those just kill me.

Box jump were fine for the first 2 rounds, then started with step ups and got slow.

Three rounds would have been okay, I really slowed down in round 3 and round 4 was a crawl.  Got capped at 16 minutes with 3 rounds + 18 reps.

Man that was not easy.

After that we did 7 rounds of row 1 minute rest 1 minutes.


This sucked but I was able to keep a good pace the whole time, likely thanks to the upper back work I've been doing with the dumbbell and barbell rows.

Strength log for Sunday, December 6th

Another delinquent post.

Because of my lack of workouts I used my Sunday, while the kids were in swimming lessons. Normally, I'd just do mobility but I needed to squat.

I decide to do a complex of 2 front squats + 3 back squats, for 5 sets.

Worked up to 225#. Did 3 sets at that weight then bumped it up to 245#. 

That was a bit harder, but I managed the two last sets.

Felt good to move some weight.

Crossfit log for Thursday, December 3rd

This is a delinquent post.  I'll have to search my memory to provide any useful commentary.  Thankfully the workout is available at Beyond the Whiteboard.

Coach Connor added a warm up with I think was a mistake, but whatever.

We did 3 rounds of 10 strict press (empty bar), 15 push press, and if memory servers 5 burpee box jumps.

I arrived at the last minute and by the time I got setup, I only had time for two rounds, and the second round I did only box jumps.  Fuck burpees.

We started with 2 rep max push press.

I had recently maxed out at 175# for a single at the Y so I made that my target.  Working with Kamil, we both hit 165# with not too much fight.  Kamil thought we'd just done 175#, so set us up for 185#, I just figured he wanted to go big (or go home), so I ran with it.  We both failed on the first rep.  Then he realized his math mistake. We had a good laugh, and called it quits

Then we did close grip bench press for 4 sets of 4.  I did the first 2 sets at 145# then when I upped it to 155# on set 3, I was too close to the rack and after hitting it twice, I re-racked it and set up again for 4 which were rough, essentially doing 6 reps.

I was going to go for 165# on the last set but with the screw up on set 3, I did 155# again and it went smoothly.

The WOD was a revisit of CrossFit Games Open 13.2
Complete as many rounds as possible in 10 mins of:
- 5 Shoulder-to-Overheads, 115#/75#
- 10 Deadlifts, 115#/75#
- 15 Box Jumps, 24/20 in

I had only found one record of this workout in my log, from last October where I scaled the bar to 95# and 4 rounds plus 24.  So I was moderatly happy with my new score of 4 + 28, 2 reps shy of 5 rounds.

But I just looked again an found my original 2013 Open log entry.  I did 115# (because there was no choice in the Open back then) and I got to 6 box jumps, so 4 + 21, with an extra 10# and with Strep.  I even re-did it on the Saturday, to have 2 extra days of anti-biotics and some rest, and hit 5 rounds plus 24!  A full round more than last October at 95#. 

Crap.

Olympic lifting log for Tuesday, December 1st

My appointment with Rob is Wednesday, so I didn't go to Crossfit today, as they had deadlifts on the menu and I don't want to make matters worse until I see Rob.

But doing nothing all day isn't an option. I went to the Y and did some overhead work from the rack.

Started with strict press, until I maxed out at 135# then switched to push press, going up to 175#, which was a real fight.

At that point I switch to jerks.  Every time I unracked it, I was thinking man this feels heavy and yet I jerked it each time without issue.  185#, 195#, 205#... bam, bam, bam.

So I had to go for 215# to match my recent clean PR, but I couldn't do it.  Soon.

Happy with that.  Then I did some grip strength work with bar and dumbbells and my "all fours breathing"

Looking forward to tomorrow's physio visit.

Olympic lifting log for Monday, November 30th

Went to the Y to do something.

Decided on a clean complex: 1 power clean+1 hang clean+1 clean

Worked up to 185# where I did only the power clean.  at 175# it was fine, but my back was still out of sorts so I called it a day.

Before leaving I did some supinated rows on the pulley machine at 120# for 8 and 165# for 5.  Not easy. Couldn't get full range to the chest, I may drop a bit of weight next time.

Then I did my "all fours breathing" drill and headed back to work.