Tag: Crossfit

The deadlifts for today felt pretty heavy, but they felt great. I did the bare minimum of five reps due to blisters on my hand from a long row the other day. The WOD was deceivingly tough, but in a good way.

Today was one of those days that I didn’t feel like doing shit. I woke up feeling tired and had a slightly stuffy head. Just enough shit in my throat to feel annoyed.

Today was a mentally slow day for me. I drank plenty last night while I watched the Superbowl. As always, that led to poor sleep.

Today’s WOD sort of repeat WOD. It had the same doublet of movements, but different numbers and a slightly different format. I was disappointed at my result at first until I relaxed that last time I used a lighter dumbbell.

Today was a great day for the first week of back squats in the new cycle. Shortly after that, I figured I would give one of the regular versions of the Vault WOD a try and surprised myself on it..

Today was a great day for my 1+ AMRAP back squats. They Felt Great. The first attempt at a WOD didn’t feel so great, and I changed my mind on it.

I don’t normally do box jumps here in the home gym because we don’t have enough room for me to safely fail in my normal failure modes. The risk with me being legally blind is pretty high to and usually just isn’t worth it to me. Today I did them for the WOD and really did enjoy them. I do love jumping.

First things first I know crossfitters like to call their gym a “box” but that’s fucking stupid. It’s a gym. Calling it a “box” doesn’t make it any more special. Crossfit is expensive. It costs more than a lot of people can think about affording. I understand why though. After all the owner of the gym has to invest in enough equipment for everyone to use it at once, unlike at traditional gym where they can get away with less.

I decided to row ten thousand meters on the Concept 2 rower today. It was the endurance WOD. The WOD actually called for a max effort 10k row which I didn’t really do the max effort since rowing has been one of those things bothering my hamstring a bit. I did row at a nice moderate pace though with no sign of it tightening up like it has been doing at around two thousand meters.

I wasn’t sure how it was going to go with the Crossfit games this year with COVID and all the drama surrounding it over the past summer. They had also turned the open into a train wreck which seemed to make it uninteresting. Fast forward to now we spent a good part of this past weekend watching all of the games events. Although it was clear Friday who the winners already were the rest of the spots were close and always changing.

I had no idea today how the strength would go having done a WOD last night with 50 deadlifts at 175 and 50 strict presses at 75. I should have gone heavier for both movements in that WOD in hindsight but I wanted to make every 30 seconds of reps and had no idea where I should be. My legs were tired today but I still managed to knock out the back squats at 215 pounds.

Although I have been doing my strength work for the past week there has been some reluctance in me wondering if I should do it or rest or back off a bit. Today’s the first day since starting back up I haven’t felt any hesitation at all. I am thankful to have that feeling back. While I love doing the WODS the strength is what gives me inner peace with myself.

With fall arriving it is and will stay cooler for a while now. I assume the spring heat prematurely killed my front squats after I’d failed the back squats in the spring. That was before we decided to put our old air conditioner into the garage window. While when I did the twenty rep squats before it didn’t really help with strength it certainly improved my endurance for squat movements and just leg movements in general.

My strength for today was all light but it’s the program and I reset all my weights after maxing recently. The squats were 3 sets of five at 200. Being that they were light, they felt and and looked really good so I decided to through in two extra sets to make it 5x5. The extra work while it’s lighter seems to be really helpful for me. Maybe next year I’ll look into a maybe more intense program.

Even though my leg felt much better last week I was still having the occasional tightness. Essentially even right after my quad popped I had full mobility, just a lot of discomfort but that slowly improved. Last week I only managed one or two WODS and we did our Crossfit total. I didn’t want to risk fucking up my leg so we could go out hiking / geocaching but that didn’t really happen as Molly was mad that the sun was dimmed.

I have known since I was fairly young that you shouldn’t turn a fridge on after it’s been laying down since my parents bought from someone at my grandfather’s work that was moving. We took the old one we had in the kitchen down in the basement and put the new in the kitchen after they took it off the truck. It ran but never got cold. We learned from someone after that that you shouldn’t lay it down.

First things first as far as lifting today I wasn’t really feeling like it. It’s hot and humid, I was hungry and didn’t really sleep enough last night thanks to alcohol from Joy’s with supper. Naturally feeling this way today was set to be an at least somewhat heavy day for my squats and bench press. I had accepted the fact that I may fail one or both of these lifts today and was fine with it.

Sometimes improvements are small little hidden details and other times they’re so blatantly obvious like today’s WOD. The WOD called for 4 3 minute AMRAPS of six pull ups and six hang cleans with the sandbag. Today It felt pretty good other than my hand wanting to rip. I forgot the granddaughter had chalk all over the tape on the bar that Molly like to use. That just made it way too grippy for me and my hands weren’t feeling great from the get go.

Today was was of those strange days when it comes to strength where it just feels light. I really wish that could happen more often so I wouldn’t overthink it when it when the weight gets heavier. First up were the squats at 255 pounds. For repping, especially five reps a set this is a relatively heavy weight for me. I’ve always had more trouble repping weights than I have had with heavy singles.

Today was definitely one of those days. You know the days where normal tasks seem to be a pretty good challenge. Mentally I am not here and I’m not really here physically too much either. It started out from waking up a bit early from some weird ass dream. There was some girl who I feel like I should know that had something wrong but wouldn’t say what it was. It’s left me with that off feeling all day.

Today was a great day for my strength. Unlike the last session where even the light 135 warm up sets felt terrible and super heavy they, along with even the working sets felt great, light and explosive today. My back squats today at 245 felt pretty great save a couple of sloppy reps. Other than the couple of sloppy reps they were all fast and explosive and feeling pretty light. I had failed this weight the other day but made the decision that I would give it another go give than it’s a weight I fell I should be able to make just about any day.

I woke up early today and well rested. It’s been a while. Finally we’ve been able to sleep with just the fan instead of the air conditioner which always allows me to have a better night’s sleep. The air conditioner is nice to make it more tolerable but the sound of them tends to keep me awake or annoy me a bit 95% of the time. The fan is quiet on low and it lets some of the outside noises in which tend to relax me.

I was watching lifting videos this morning and I noticed the belt and it dawned on me that I have never used one. I haven’t even tried using one since I never felt the need. It’s kind of hard to even test out using one if you don’t have one. It just never occurred to me before to even consider getting one thinking it would be like the other things I was told I’d need for Crossfit.

I have to admit I didn’t really have any high expectations for my strength workout today. Shortly before I was going to do it part of my one quad just suddenly started to cramp a bit. That just came right out of the blue and have no idea where it came from. I took a little time to stretch and warm up a little bit to felt things out. See I do stretch and warm up if I feel I need to!

I woke up pretty early today so I did my strength work somewhat early in the morning since I already had my coffee for the day. Not as early as I would have liked to have done it but I feel like the right thing to do is be respectful of the neighbors. I don’t know what they can here but we don’t hear much from them. Today was the first time in I have no idea how long that the air conditioner wasn’t necessary while doing my strength.

I have been feeling pretty run down the past few days. I think the biggest reason for feeling so run down the past few days is the fact that this annoying heat and humidity is back yet again. It kills me. It kills my appetite too and I think that it is stopping me from eating enough. It’s the middle of August so that shouldn’t be an issue much longer now.

This day was one of those days. I decided to get off my lazy ass and do a WOD. Enough of the excuses of being tired or hot or what ever else I could come up with. I’ve been wanting to do this week’s sandbag WOD but didn’t get around to it do to being so run down the past few days. The WOD consisted of 21 lungesters and then 21 sandbag power clean and toss over the box, rest a minute than 2 rounds of 15 of each.

First things first I have to acknowledge that we work out in a home gym now so we can do things our way and on our schedule. There’s a possibility I may even go do a WOD in the middle of writing this post. The post I saw on Reddit last night was about whether a coach should call out a member for being late to class in Crossfit. The comments mentioned various punishments that their gym used and it got me thinking.

If there is one thing that I can always count on after doing a WOD with either heavy or high rep deadlifts it’s the unsatisfied raging appetite. No amount of food seems to fill me up and no type of food does. My stomach just growls and growls. The WOD it self was 30 deadlifts and 20 burpee pull ups, three rounds of them for time. I chose the RX weight on the lower end at 165.

Although I do very much enjoy box jumps in spite of my visual handicap I do think they are used wrongly and over used in the program we do. Regardless of that there’s something primal about jumping on an object. It brings me back to being a kid growing up with 3 brothers. Among other things it was one of the things you did, if you saw something you tried to jump on or over it.

As I’ve posted before, Molly had the bright idea to do a thousand burpees in the month of March challenge. Me being me I had a minor lapse of better judgment and decided to do it with her. No, honestly I’m usually game for bad ideas like this. We both decided we wouldn’t count the burpees in programmed WODS because those were ones we’d do anyways. This would have to be a thousand additional burpees.

I have been genuinely thankful that we have our garage gym set up now. I am even more grateful now with the pandemic and things that being closed. Our gym never closes.

I still remember and think of the kind words that Mike Jenkins, the strongman had said to me. He just seemed to be such a genuine person.

After doing the WOD this morning I realized that the bench was out of the way of the pull up bar so I gave l pull ups a shot again. For quite a while I’ve been able to do sloppy ones but yesterday they looked and felt nicer than ever before. Pretty cool being able to do stuff that I don’t even practice as much as I should. I really haven’t worked on strict pull ups in months other than a few here or there or some weighted ones here and there.

Even though I’m not giving Crossfit my money to sign up for the open I still like the idea of using the WODS as a personal benchmark. I know not going to a gym will probably limit my ability to to some of them because of equipment or height restrictions in the garage but I’ll still do what I can. I’ve always struggled with power snatches, not with weight or getting it over head but the lockout so I always was working on trying to correct that.

We’ve been in a very long rut with getting into the Crossfit gym for various reason but mainly because of scheduling. By the time Molly got home from work we had to wait to get into the box at 6pm. It was just enough time to almost eat supper and digest before going into the gym. The biggest benefit to this change is we’re able to schedule our workouts around what works for us?

Most years since I’ve done Crossfit I’ve signed up for the open. Not to win or qualify for anything but to push myself out of my own comfort zone. Last year I did not sign up because I’d been out of thyroid meds and between doctors so my cardio was a steaming pile of shit in the beginning. I did do the WODS but didn’t think I should push myself too much having not done a lot of fitness related things for a couple months other than pure strength work.

I’ve been trying to get my cardio back so I’m starting to row again. Last winter I did that and it did wonders for me and my breathing during WODS last year. I think it helped some physically but really helped mentally. Basically made me realize that yes this sucks but you can keep going. Last year when I did it my rowing for was pretty shitty. I knew it was shitty and knew what I needed to do to fix it but just couldn’t make that brain body connection at first but then it clicked.

DT is another one of my personal benchmark WODS. The first time I did it it was at 95 pounds with some insane time. I wanted to quit but Richard wouldn’t let me. He said as long as my form was okay I was finishing it. My lungs really sucked back then Obviously I’ve gotten stronger since then but worked on rowing longer distances at home to improve that and today showed how it paid off

I have been on the hunt for a 32 kg kettlebell for the garage. The normal place we got them before locally changed the coating and I didn’t like it. I bought a Kettlebell Kings one and really like it.

Grace is 30 clean and jerks for time Grace is the benchmark WOD for me. it was the first named one I did Well Karen was the first but not being able to see the ball bounce oddly off the target then my face puts a damper on that one as a benchmark. I did Grace for a fund raiser a few months after I started Crossfit. It was painfully slow and only at 95 pounds but I finished it then.

I decided today would be the day that I try something stupid. I’ve been wanting to do it for a while but my rowing sucked and I knew it. I had know I wasn’t finishing the pull for years and that I needed to slow the stroke rate down but just couldn’t seem to figure out how to do that. Having it in the mid 30s just isn’t efficient and kills your ability to keep going.

I upgraded my birthday burpees to burpee pull-ups. I wanted to do something more challenging with it.

So in Crossfit yesterday preparing for the open we redid 14.1 and I noticed a world of difference this year from last.. Score of 98 vs 70 I think from last year. Back then my snatches were ugly with poor form. I was just starting to get it and double unders were a real struggle. This year the power snatches aren’t great form but I believe it’s much improved over last.

I am still doing Crossfit. I’m signed up for the Crossfit open again to challenge myself for new things.

I am legally blind, and I have been doing Crossfit. I will make some posts on here about how my visual impairment challenges me for different Crossfit movements and aspects.