WOD 10/1/08

“Nate”

As many rounds as possible in 20 minutes

2 Muscle Ups

4 HSPU

8 Swings (70 Lbs)

Another great hero WOD. I did this once before I had rings and it was an ass kicker.

Subs – M/U’s: 4 Pull ups/4 Dips for each M/U. In this case, you would be doing 8/8.

HSPU: If you are totally incapable of them, do a heavy press. Get as close to bodyweight as possible since that is what you would be pressing in a handstand push-up. Use either DB’s to come close to the total, or use a loaded barbell. If you are wanting to try HSPU’s but aren’t sure about the full monty yet, work into them using a high pike push-up position against a wall. In other words, your feet go up the wall, and your hands are out a few feet from the wall – you are doing a very elevated push-up. Gradually work into the wall as time goes on until you are doing them as RX’d.

Swings: A “Pood” is a Russian measurement of weight. I have no clue why we go around saying, “pood”. It sounds dumb and I’m not Russian and neither are most people around me.  When I say “pood”, I get dumb looks & I don’t particularly like dumb looks. Even the few Russian friends I have look at me cock-eyed when I bust out “pood”….there’s another dumb word, “cock-eyed”..you gotta wonder how that one came about….So, now that I have digressed a bit, 2 pood is about 70 Lbs. If you have that in DB’s or a KB, go for it. If not, go as heavy as you can. Good form people, swings can be tough on the back at high weight and crappy form.

 GO!

Chief Petty Officer Nate Hardy. Fair winds and God speed!

WOD 9/30/08

21-18-15-12-9-6-3

Lunges (25 Lbs)

Thrusters (M:95/W:65)

Pull ups

Knee to Elbows

Lunges are single count and are to be done with a 25 Lb plate held against the chest or overhead. Scale down a bit if you need to. Thrusters suck, so do your best. Ass to ankles please and full lock out at the top. Remember, don’t segment the movements – the front squat comes up, the hips explode and the bar travels up all in one movement utilizing the momentum you have created. If you segment the squat and then the press, you are going to die a slow, painful death and waste a ton of energy. Truth be told, resting with the bar in the rack position is easier than dumping it and starting over each time too.

Pull ups – get the arms extended at the bottom and chin over the bar. If you’re hardcore, go chest to bar. Beware though, every time I do them this way, I lose some skin from my hands, so tape is a rad idea. Same form tip apply if you are scaling down and doing jumping pull ups. Don’t zip through them like a flailing monkey at the zoo, instead a nice jump with some minor pull to the bar and a controlled descent back to extension will get the lats working and build up the ability to start doing these things unassisted. If you don’t believe me, you will when your lats are hellaciously sore the next day.

Knees to elbows are a toughy. If you can’t do them with full ROM, do a hanging knee up as high as you can. Control the body so you are not swinging around like a crazy kid on a swing set. That cheats the movement and uses the swing momentum to get your legs up. If you are doing full blown KTE’s, it helps me visualize doing a somersault through my arms as I hang from the bar. Try it. 

With the lunges I am sure my glutes are going to be making me look stupid come Wednesday as I hobble along gingerly. If I see you wincing as you climb the stairs the next day, I’ll know you didn’t cheat yourself. Get some!

WOD 9/29/08

Rest Day

This will be a deserved rest day for most of us on the 3/1 schedule. For everyone else, you’ll get nothing and like it! Personally, I need the day off. My shoulders are thrashed from the past two days worth of WOD’s. Today’s was the icing on the cake. My shoulders felt like hell and I was nowhere near where I wanted to be in weight today. I stopped the last set at 185 Lbs at only 3 reps instead of 5. Better safe than sorry.

To finish things up though, and being a glutton for punsihment (and maybe not so bright), I decided to get some Overhead Squat practice in. I ended up with a new PR at 205 Lbs OHS for 3 reps. I was pretty stoked and I don’t see 225 Lbs as being a problem. I will save that for when my shoulders are completely recovered.

OHS - 205 Lbs x 3 reps. This is a serious test of core strength.

I have mentioned it before and it bears saying again, rest is as important as our workout days. Without rest, the body has no time to recuperate and grow. A lot is going on under the surface – muscles are growing, tissues repairing and becoming stronger, the brain is learning from it’s experiences and neurons are creating muscle memory pathways for the next time the body is required to make certain movements come to life. If we short change our rest days, we short change ourselves in the ability to become fitter, faster, stronger, leaner and healthier.

Physical adaptation comes very quickly for new athletes and progressively slows as their skills improve. At later stages of training, it takes more to get the body shaken out of homeostasis, or it’s “happy place”. Only by shaking the body up like this do we get the gains we are looking for. That “fire under the ass” of our body is needed, but so are the breaks in between to rebuild and avoid injury and burnout, physically and mentally. New folks start to see gains quickly and are so excited to keep going, they sometime forsake the rest days, which puts them in a downward spiral away from where they want to be.

When I first got involved in my LE career I was a non-stop hard charging cop, working whenever, however, wherever. It wasn’t until later someone told me, “Relax, crime will be here when you come back. Take some time off.” It didn’t sink in, but it’s true in anything you are involved in. So, relax – I promise the pain, sweat and fulfillment will still be here when you get back.

WOD 9/28/08

Push Jerk

5-5-5-5-5

As if your shoulders weren’t tired from yesterday’s WOD and the 30 muscle ups, now you get to do Push Jerks! This is a great strength builder. Once again, the 5×5 scheme is the best for both strength and endurance.

Start this movement from the front rack position. From here, dip straight down, drive straigh up, open the hips and launch the bar off of the upper chest/front delts. As the bar gets airborne, you drop underneath it and catch it in a partial squat – no soft shoulders here. Lock it out directly overhead and then stand – that’s 1 rep. Bring the bar back down into the front rack position and go again. You can do this from behind the neck, but I hate trying to reset the bar on my back as I usually end up hitting myself in the head or on the spine. I also prefer doing the movement from the front since that is where it will be in a Clean & Jerk.

It helps to mentally visualize and to tell yourself to “get under the bar” fast. Imagine that bar weighing a ton and you need to get under it to support the load. How do you do that? You’d heave it up and get under it. Don’t overthink it because the movement is actually simple. The reason I see most people blow it is if the dip and drive are not vertical and you push the bar up and out in front of you or they catch a heavy load on soft shoulders. Bumper plates are a big plus with this WOD.

It’s been estimated that the push press allows you to move approximately 30% more weight than the press. The push jerk allows you to move about 30% more weight than the push press. Make no mistake about it, you are not cheating anything here. This movement is still taxing and creates great strength gains. Get some!

Ouch!

I did Allison’s WOD today and I can attest to it being a crusher. The 3 movements followed by the row are tough! All major body parts take a beating – back, shoulders, legs- and a metabolic kick in the groin ensues by tying all the aforementioned parts together in a 500m row. I’ve been fighting a cold since Wednesday so I was not feeling as good as I would have hoped. Interestingly, I posted the same time as Allison at 15′37″.

On another note, some people asked me what a “weighted PVC training bar” was. I forgot to add that to the list of homemade goodies, so go take a look over there for a description. I will also soon be posting a page on proper nutrition for optimal health and weight loss with some very good resources attached to it. Keep an eye on the “pages” link on the right for that to hit the newstands. Peace out!

WOD 9/27/08

“Bad Alley-Cat”

21-15-9

Deadlift (M:225/W:115)

Push Jerk (M:95/W:65)

Swings (M:55/W:35)

500m Row

This gem is courtesy of Allison. When we work with our clients, we go over two fundamental movements prior to each workout. On this day, we went over the Deadlift and the Push Jerk and then incorporated them into a WOD with a couple of other movements. No, the clients did not do the posted weights above, those are for the fire breathers, everyone scales down, and as in the case of our clients, the most weight used was the 45Lb oly bar for the D/L’s and a 10Lb weighted PVC bar for the Push Jerks. Swing were with 15 Lbs DB at the most. If you cannot do push jerks, go with a standard press. Once again proving that CrossFit is scalable to anyone’s ability level.

All of our clients got to run through this WOD and they all did very well. I was impressed with everyone’s form and competitive times. Once again, Nicole made it look easy! Allison went at it with the prescribed weights during a break between clients and crushed it at 15′37″.

A 10 on the Suffer-o-meter!

So, do the 21 reps of each movement then row 500m. Then 15 reps, followed by a row and so on. If you have no access to a rower, well then you get to run 400m. So no, you don’t get off that easy. I like the rower as it’s movements compliment the body parts worked in the weighted movements. Either way, it’s still tough. Make sure you are not “short stroking” your rows. Get nice full leg drive/extension and open the hips and finishing the movement with a slight lean back and a powerful arm pull into the diaphragm before reversing the order. At the forward position (the Catch), make sure the shins are vertical at the most, not so far foward that the knees are over the feet as this will detract from a powerful leg drive. Don’t reach forward either, a neutral posture is all you need. Lather, rinse, repeat until oxygen debt ensues…

As a final note, we are stoked to have a couple new clients working with us. Welcome to Brooke W. and Jean B. Both ladies are determined and showing a lot of enthusiasm to be here and involved with CrossFit. I am sure your hard work will be rewarded soon enough! Nice to have you aboard!

WOD 9/26/08

30 Muscle Ups.

It must be deja vu or something because I honestly thought this workout was going to come up today as I rolled out of bed before coming into work this evening. Seriously – I have no idea why. I actually did this WOD about 10 days ago and the blisters on the butt of my hand are just now healing. So, if you have rings and have been wondering what to do with them, nows your chance to put it them to use. If you have never done a muscle up before, this is a good time to try it. If you need to make rings, you’re in luck as I just wrote about how to do just that – check the sidebar on the right.

If you have to scale, you can lower the rings to a point where you can sit on the ground and pull yourself into the position. Or, better yet, a plyo box underneath you will allow you to jump slightly into the movement, much like a jumping dip or pull up.

Scaling the Muscle Up. Photo courtesy of CrossFit.com

Regardless of whether you scale or not, you must know how to hold the rings in a “false grip”. This grip allows the turnover of the hand from the pull up to the dip. The false grip shortens the arm on a third class lever, the forearm, and greatly reduces strength required to pull-up. The muscle-up is nearly impossible without a false grip.

False Grip - Hands are "rolled" over and up the ring. Photo courtesy of CrossFit.com

If you do not have rings, may God have mercy on your soul, because I sure won’t! Okay, it’s not that dramatic, but I figured that would sound good about now. The substitute for MU’s is 4 pull ups/4 dips for every 1 MU. Yes, that means a total of 120 pull ups/120 dips. Do them in the sets of 4’s – pull ups and then dips. Prior to having rings, I did them like this and it’s a tough workout.

A full ROM MU will have you starting in the hang position from the rings in a falso grip with the hands turned out, not in. Pull up, pull the rings inward towards your centerline chest area as you roll up and over with the hands. You should aim your head up and forward at a diagonal instead of shooting it straight up. Once the hands roll over, keep the rings tight against the torso and push yourself up out of the dip position and to full lock out. Reverse the order, slide the hands back into the false grip, and drop down to the hang with outturned hands and full arm extension before going for the next rep. I’ll be the first to admit, mine really don’t look quite that nice – I am still fighting my way through them with “Ian form”, but in a perfect world, that’s how they should look.

As a final note, this is rated as an easy move in gymnastics! Once you get up on rings and experience the stability issues that go along with them in something simple like a dip or L-hold, and then consider a move like the Iron Cross, it kinda makes you respect gymnasts that much more! No wonder those guys are so strong and ripped!

WOD 9/25/08

Rest Day

Take it easy and recover. Work lightly at a skill or do nothing. If you are into doing nothing, it may be time to re-evaluate your diet to promote maximal gains in fitness and large decreases in bodyfat. Diet is a HUGE part of successful fitness. You may get some results by just eating OK and CrossFit, but once you throw the Zone or Paleo into the mix, you will make huge gains in fitness and health. It’s not as hard as you think and it does not mean you will eat bland, boring foods. Don’t think of a diet as a weight loss program, think of it as a way of eating. Here are some resources to get you started.

I would highly recommend taking a look at some of the available info out there in cyberspace to get you started. Here is the CrossFit Journal #21 on the Zone. This is a great starter resource to put you in the right direction.  Going hand in hand with that CFJ issue is this one on Metabolic Derangement as it relates to diet. This issue provides a resource guide for further reading and education.

If you are on a program or wanting to start one, I always recommend people track their food intake for at least one week. Everything you put in your mouth, you write down. An even better tool is to use the free account at www.fitday.com . Enter the meals you have eaten and at the end of the day you have a nice graph and all the info about how much you at of particular macronutrient groups. This is a huge help in tweaking or setting up a diet plan to work for you. We did this with Allison when she plateaued in her efforts. We reduced the carbs some more and upped the fat and bingo, she leaned out even more.

I have a library of info available on everything from cholesterol, to Paleo, to fats for anyone interested. If those topics or any others seem appealing, drop me a line and I’ll send them your way. Education about what we put in our mouths and bodies and their effects is paramount to our longevity and success, so your time reading about it is time well spent.

Take care and enjoy the break!

WOD 9/24/08

Squats

5-5-5-5-5

Back squats are an incredible strength building exercise. Under proper form the movements is very safe and recruits muscles from the entirety of the body to make the lift successful. The 5×5 scheme has been found to be the best for developing strength and endurance. If you recall, strength + endurance = Power and power is the measure we use in CrossFit to gauge our progress. Everything we do in CF is quantifiable, meaning we can attach a method of measurement for the purposes of gauging fitness to all exercises in one form or another.

A few things to consider with the squat. Legs should be under the hips, toes turned out about 30 degrees. When descending, the knees should track over the toes and even extend a bit beyond the toes dependent upon bar position style and personal anthropometry. The back should maintain an angle that will keep the bar directly over the center of the foot on the way down and back up. The bar’s placement is key too and there are two ways to do it, no real right or wrong. I have done both and prefer the low-bar position.

A high bar, resting on the traps and across the rear of the delts, will force the lifter to maintain a more upright posture. Under heavy load, as the lifter tries to keep the bar over the foot, many will find the back angle becomes difficult to maintain. This is partly due to the high bar position and as the lifter compensates to keep the bar over the mid-foot, the load at the top of the spine can place a lot of shear force on the back due to the lever arm it becomes. That being said, Oly lifters prefer the high bar position over a low bar position due to the upright posture which more closely translates to the Oly lifts and the posture needed to complete them. 

The low bar position rests a couple more inches down the back, right below the upper edge of the scapula. There’s a nice little pocket there that the bar can rest in, pinned in place by your arms wedging it tightly to the back. This position keeps the bar, and thereby the weight, lower on the back. This means less of a lever arm and less torque on the lower back. The bar maintains an easier position over the mid-foot with less compensation by the back in maintaining the proper body angles and bar alignment. This allows you to squat more weight, which is why it is favored amongst power lifters. I did not believe it until I tried it. It was also easier on my low back. It does tend to be a bit uncomfortable on the scapula for long periods of time under heavy weight, but if you are a total Nancy, you can pad it with a towel. I would not recommend using a foam pad as it can spin/slip and the bar will zip down your back at high speed. Your shoulders tend not to like this violent tearing motion, so avoid it.

Also, a neutral head posture is important. I don’t know where the stupid “look at the ceiling” thing came from, but that is murder on the shoulder girdle and cervical column. You are seriously putting some unnatural angle on the spine and under load, this is no bueno. Instead, you should be looking at a spot about 7 feet in front of you on the floor or at the most, directly ahead. This maintains a neutral head position and less bad things going on in the spine.

As for the argument about squats being had for the knees, well those people are right – if you are doing squats above parallel. When you fail to squat to a point below parallel, the adductors, quads and other supporting muscles start to exert a tremendous amount of pulling force on the knee. In a complete, ass-to-ankles squat, this force is compensated and relieved by the hamstrings which actually are what provides the bulk of driving force from the bottom, along with the glutes. If you are doing good squats at depth, you are getting total leg recruitment – quads, glutes, hams and all their friends. If you only go halfway, the only thing really working is the quadriceps. There is a lot more going on here, but that’s the condensed version of why squats are NOT bad for your knees and why we need to go below parallel.

Be smart, don’t get hurt here. Work up to a heavy, yet manageable weight that allows you to get in deep while still maintaining a good lordotic arch (low back). If your hams are tight, this arch will go away as you get to parallel. If this happens, don’t try to be the hero and squat a bunch of weight below parallel since the lack of nice back posture will cause things to hurt….bad. Instead, I would rather someone works a light weight to a safe depth and make improvements from that point on. In fact, I will not give my clients any weight to speak of until their air squats are perfect everytime. You should do the same. Squats also kick out a strong neuroendocrine response, and that’s important on so many levels. Have fun, work hard and GET SOME!

WOD 9/23/08

30,25,25,20,15,10,5 Reps

Virtual Shoveling (M:45 Lbs/W:25 Lbs)

Push Ups

This is an OLD CF Workout from WAY back. I haven’t seen this in a long time. It’s a weird one, but I’ve done the virtual shoveling thing a couple times before and it’s fairly taxing, so in this rep scheme and couple with push ups, I imagine it will be a decent workout.

The basic gist of this is to load one end of a 45 Lb Oly bar with a weighted plate and “shovel” the weighted end over an obstacle. Hold it like a shovel and move accordingly. Switch up sides too, so one hand is not always forward. As usual, don’t try and do 45 Lbs if you are new to this or not strong enough. Your back will let you know during or after that this was not a good idea, so don’t be that person. Hell, your back is probably going to let you know it’s displeasure any way you cut it.

Also, don’t do the shoveling over something you value. Find something that is okay to get dinged up, or in worst case, get bent or broken if you blow it while digging your grave. Your 4th Century Ming vase or two year old son is not a good obstacle to use in this WOD. Cats and dogs are okay, but you’d be better off with a plyo box or something else sturdy.

For those of you who can’t picture this movement for love or money, check this video out here, courtesy of CrossFit.com.

Push ups are chest to deck. Don’t halfway them or touch your thighs and call it good. I will make you do it over until the cows come home. If you have to go onto your knees, do it as long as the form is good the stress placed on the body will be more beneficial than crappy form in your advancement in fitness and adaptation.

Lastly, I wrote a new page on homemade equipment for all you low budget folks out there like myself. Hopefully you can get some ideas and use them in your own home gym. Get some!