Monday February 24th, 2014

A. Snatch technique work. 15 minutes. Work on speed, transition under bar, moving fast. 

Worked up to #135, #145. These felt better for most of the reps. I felt like I was able to drive lower than usual. I still need to work on not being quite so wide. I'll post video later for this. 

B. For time: 30 Chest to bar pullups

1:14 opened with 18 straight and then broke the remaining into 2s and 4s. 

then for time:

250m row

10 KBS #70

10 Burpees

10 KBS

10 Burpees

#250m row

FInished in 3:34. This left me gasping at the end. I held the pace during the first row in the sub-1:30/500 pace. The KBS went fine, I tried to find a smooth flow to the burpees. The second set of KBS started a bit rough, then smoothed out. The second burpees were not as smooth, but I kept moving. I was able to hold the last row in the high 1:30s/500 pace. I was spent from this, but my recovery time felt pretty good as I cooled down and finished up for the morning. 

Less than a week til the Open! Almost Go Time!

Attacking Weaknesses

As you can see, it was a very brisk morning as I went back to the normal routine this morning meeting the boys at 6:00 AM (hey, we had a PD day and they didn't need to report til 8:00 AM). I did really enjoy that extra half hour of sleep. Coming in from the long weekend, and still recovering from my competition this weekend, I wasn't sure how my body was going to respond to the work. 



After a dynamic warm-up and a wall squat stretch, we continued to warm-up with the movements using light weight and working up to the weight we would be using for the workout. 

Strength:
EMOM (every minute on the minute)
6 x back squat at 75% of 1 rep max (195 pounds for me)

then 4 minute rest followed by

21-15-9
#125 power cleans
toes to bar

(1 partner works on cleans, other does toes to bar and then you switch)

I felt pretty good with the 195 on the bar, as I was able to fully complete the 10 minutes and flush out some of the lingering soreness from my legs. Soon I retest my Crossfit Total to see if I have made gains from the fall. The metcon portion of the the WOD was the right amount of work, and my partner was really pushing a heavy weight (70% of his body weight) and getting out of his comfort zone! I was trying to go unbroken on my portion, by that wasn't happening today. 

The weather continued to stay in the teens during the afternoon, so I skipped the ride to invest some time on the rower. I rowed a quick 1000 meters, and then practiced some pulls at the various damper settings to see how each felt. It was a pretty good investment of 30 minutes, and continued to flush the lactic acid from my system.

One last comment on the Crossfit Countdown Throwdown from this weekend. Ger was kind enough to send my the excel file with the results, and I invested some time looking through my results. I finished 8th overall, out of 26 competitors. As I would have predicted, when work capacity was tested, I performed well. The rounds for times (7th), AMRAP (6th), and gymnastics (burpees! - 4th) I placed in the top 10. When it was a max effort (watts - 14th, clean ladder - 13th, and 400 meter run - 21st) I suffered. Strength is something that I need to invest time developing. I recognize that I have a bias against those types of work, but you have to attack you weakness and turn it into a strength (yeah I know, bad pun). So, over the next four weeks, I will be working toward that capacity.  

Switching gears, i do have to give a shout out to my wife, Julie, for making some delicious paleo pumpkin muffins! They was very tasty!