All posts tagged Health

WOD #3: Burpees, the Life-Blood of Crossfit

If you read my post WOD#2: Goals! then you’ll know that my short term goal is to be able to rock a double unders workout without having to resort to those measly single skips. If you’re unsure what I’m talking about not only do I explain it all in that post, but I tossed a neat little instructional video in there as well. Anyway, I felt at though there was a bit of progress made during my warm up for this workout! I was able to nock out several sets of double unders and reached a new personal record of 7 in a row… 7! How sweet is that! I am looking to keep consistency up with this skill and will update you when I see improvements or have any realizations about the technique of it.

Front Squat:

2-2-2-2-2 [110-160-170-175-180] 

For this portion I needed to focus quite a bit on my form because I don’t have the best front rack positioning. What continually seems to pop up is my lack of mobility in a lot of areas and while Coach Alex said that I improved quite a bit after this was pointed out, it is still an area needing improvement. What you want from a good front rack is high elbows with the bar resting on your upper chest collarbone region. What I was doing in order to get my elbow height to increase was bringing my elbows closer together. What I didn’t realize is that you really want your elbows to come straight out ahead of your shoulders giving you the maximum stability for when you really load up the bar.

AMRAP – 5 Minutes:

1-2-3-4-5 … Reps: This round I made it to 6 even. I was feeling very good with a whole lot of energy left. 

Thrusters (95/63) [85lbs]
Bar Facing Burpees

rest three minutes

AMRAP – 5 Minutes:

… 6-7-8-9-10 … Reps: 9+14 So I didn’t quite get through all of my burbees to start the next round. I was breathing rather heavily at this point and knew mental toughness was going to be key in the next AMRAP set.

Thrusters (95/63) [85lbs]
Bar Facing Burpees

rest three minutes

AMRAP – 5 Minutes:

… 11-12-13-14-15 … Reps: 11+13 Was my final number. I wanted to make it to 12 total so I was almost at my daily goal but fell 9 burpees short. 

Thrusters (95/63) [85lbs]
Bar Facing Burpees

Mobility:

Low Back Recovery done with the lacrosse ball or foam roller. Make sure to get those nots out of your muscles or you’ll pay for them later! Be sure to check out my other posts and to look for my other project to make an appearance… Nom Nom Food will hopefully have its first addition by Sunday!

Found this video talking about mobility on MobilityWOD.com that you should check out if you’re also struggling with your front rack positioning.

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by tstyx617 on January 31, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in It's A Crossfit Life
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Posted by tstyx617 on January 31, 2014

https://tstyx617.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/wod-3-burpees-the-life-blood-of-crossfit/

Pushed and Pressed Out

So here’s the deal. I feel sort of weird about posting about my workouts. There are so many different workout no-nos, 1) No photos of yourself in the gym 2) Don’t take videos and post them on the internet 3) No ridiculous grunting. Now, currently I’m not doing any of those things, but blogs are so much more fun with pictures… This will be quite the experiment for me to be sure; as being healthy takes a whole lot of commitment both in and out of the gym. After a weekend chowing down on Dominos, Jimmy Johns, and sucking down about a gallon of delicious apple juice its going to be a challenge to get out of bad habits that I’ve accrued over the years. But golly gee I’m going to give it a shot.

Here was the Workout of the Day!

Pre-WOD Mobility:

Thoracic Extension: This portion consisted of laying on a foam roller at your upper back. While doing this you extend your arms up and over your head attempting to touch the ground above you. This helps with your overhead mobility, specifically relating to our workout today in the push press.

Push Press:

4-3-3-3: This was done where we added weight for each rep. I got a few warm up rounds at lower weights around 65lbs and then pushed myself to match my partner who is a pretty experienced Crossfitter. Respectively we went 135-155-165-170, I felt pretty good through the first three and with the last round I wasn’t keeping my core activated to where I would be able to keep my form. So I failed on the last one.

25-20-15-10-5 Reps for time: This took me 11:19 I understand that this paragraph below is a bit confusing, but as we travel down this path I’ll get significantly better at describing these motions.

Shoulder to OH (115/83) – Basically anyway you can bring the bar up over your head that would be acceptable. You could strict press it, push press which adds a little dip to it, or press with jerk where you do the push press but drop underneath the bar and stand up. For the most part I switched between the push press and push press and jerk.
Pull-ups – These for RX were to be done as kip-ups which is a very fluid pull up motion where you time shifting your legs to “kip” your body up to the bar.

What I’ve learned from this workout is the importance of activating your core muscles for stability and that I am terrible at pull ups. Not only do I need to work on the Kip-ups themselves but I also need work on my endurance with this specific type of workout.

To wrap this post up I’m wondering where you have struggled in your level of fitness? Come back tomorrow for my next post and even though I’ll be breaking gym etiquette I’ll get photos for here eventually!

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by tstyx617 on January 28, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in It's A Crossfit Life, Uncategorized
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Posted by tstyx617 on January 28, 2014

https://tstyx617.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/pushed-and-pressed-out/