Sumo

The wide stance on the deadlift shortens the range of motion and allows the back to be closer to vertical than with the standard deadlift.  In theory you would be able to lift more weight this way.  How many people found this to be true, though?  Another theory is that training wide stance deadlifst

After deadlifts, we had the chance to work on handstand push ups.  For those of you that competed or watched sectionals, you know how this movement was a glaring weakness for some people.  It was for me and my only excuse is that they are hard and I didn’t do enough of them in training.  One of my personal goals is to make sure that doesn’t happen again, hence today’s workout.

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Litvinov

Bridget displaying excellent form as usual

It has been a while since we worked on the Jerk, so we will be spending the next few weeks pushing ourselves under heavy things.  I know, it doesn’t sound smart but it’s good for you.

Who doesn’t love front squats and running?  They go together like bacon and, well, pretty much anything.  As I mentioned on the WODs page, Sergey Litvinov did this workout with 405 lbs.  If you don’t think that’s impressive, I don’t know what to say to you.

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Press-ure

The pic has nothing to do with the WOD, I just thought it was a good one, and I didn't take any photos today.

4 rounds

1-2-3

Press

KB Bent-over row

Balance bar

Max L-sit hold

(add weight to press after each round)

Thus ends our current strength cycle with this lifting format.  We will continue to use it in the future, although not as frequently.  It is a useful variation, but I feel a need to get back to the tried and true 5×5 for the time being.

In conversation with Kristin today, she turned me towards an article about the “allure of the sexy met-con.”  If you’ve got a minute, I’d recommend it.

Cardio Hell

3 rounds

500m row

21 burpees

400m run

This is another workout that we’ve done before.  I don’t know what makes it so rough.  There’s nothing heavy, nothing absurdly high rep or long (although one might argue that any number of burpees is absurd), nothing particularly complex.  Still, I remember it being such a challenge that I’ve always kept it in the back of my mind, waiting to spring it on you again.

Beforehand we did Power Cleans.  As has been mentioned before, there is a difference between power and strength.  Strength is the absolute ability to produce force on an object.  Think of a heavy deadlift slowly inching upward towards lock out.  Power is a relationship between force and time, it’s a ratio.  Overall force produced may be lower in a power movement, but the ratio of force to time is greater.  Think of a Snatch or box jump.

Another analogy is that while Strength is your top speed,  Power is your acceleration.

Generally in the course of a week, we work on one power-building movement and two strength-building movements.  In the pantheon of weight-bearing exercises, there is no single movement more powerful than the Snatch.  You take a weight from ground to overhead in a single explosive movement, carrying it through the greatest range of motion the body is capable of.  The problem with the Snatch, however, is that it is an incredibly complex exercise that takes thousands of hours of practice and refinement.  It also requires (and develops) a high degree of flexibility, coordination, and balance.  This in turn requires that we progress slowly and appropriately.

All fine and well if O-lifting is a goal, but for the average person this isn’t the case, and light technical work once a week feels more like a workout wasted.  So in light of this, we’ve started including the Power Clean as an alternative to the Snatch.  The same basic stimulus is there- an explosive weighted jump to lift a bar from the floor to shoulders, but the movement is much much simpler allowing us to get greater benefit from it sooner.  You can still opt for the Snatch if you want to develop that particular skill.

Just hold on

This is a workout we did about a year ago.  I remember it well.  I changed the rep scheme up a bit, thinking that there weren’t enough kettlebell swings in it.  Somehow I don’t think that was the case this time through.  The primary challenge, aside from remembering the rep scheme, was just to hold onto the bar or handle.  By the end that was usually too much to ask of fried hands and forearms.

I’ve been toying with the idea of not prescribing weights lately.  Most of us scale as needed anyway and a prescribed weight can stop someone from challenging themselves.  For example, Derek used the 70 pound kettlebell and Andrea used the 44.  Had there been a number up there, I imagine that they might have chosen to follow what was written rather than what they ended up doing.  Plus there is something disappointing about not being able to do something prescribed, and I don’t want people feeling disappointed with an otherwise good workout simply because they didn’t do it with the arbitrary number on the board.  A problem with this approach is that it weakens the criteria for the green box.  Perhaps we’ll start making notes next to notable performances, regardless of “prescribed” or not.

On another note, we are wrapping up the Clean Eating Challenge this week with the After pictures.  The object was to have all the photos taken by today.  However, after this weekend the camera battery was dead Monday and so we missed a few people.  I will extend the window for pictures until Friday at lunch.  We’ll choose our finalists this weekend and present them for a vote on Monday.

More more more

We continued with a particular lifting format that we learned from Dan John a couple weeks ago.  We generally cycle our strength program on three week intervals, so this week will be the end of the current cycle.  I like this format because it doesn’t feel like you’re lifting a heavy weight even though you can get pretty close to your max.  It’s a way to sneak up on a weight.  The extra movements are meant to enforce a rest period between sets while also working on particular skills or weaknesses.  I heard a couple people comment today that the planks were almost harder than the lift.  To which I responded, “add weight.”

Emmi and Rory did “Annie” from yesterday and Emmi set a new gym record with 6:10.  Apparently she’s not done done killing the workouts after this weekend.  Rory, a former Young Ambassador also, finished around 6:20.

While that was happening, Chase, Mandee, and David L did tomorrow’s workout.  It looks “fun.”

Annie

If double unders are part of your skill set, Annie is a fast-paced workout that leaves you breathless and wasted.  If they’re not, it leaves you frustrated with whip marks along your forearms.  We worked a lot on basic jumping technique which helped some people.  One of the challenges with double-unders is that trying too hard is just as fruitless as not hard enough.  The rope can go too fast, you can jump too high, but this technique requires precision.

In my own experience, I struggled with them for 2 years before they finally clicked. It required the right rope and for me to get too tired to over spin it.

The following is a video that covers some of what we talked about today.

Double Unders from Patrick Cummings on Vimeo.

Sectionals

Now that I’m recovered, coffeed, and have dragged my stiff muscles in front of the computer, I think it’s time for a recap of the weekend.  The event took place at the Evergreen State Fairgrounds.  After a long drive we pulled into the lot at 7am, following signs for “Crossfit Sectionals, Swap Meet.”  The building was a large arena with seats along one wall, a wooden half-wall to separate the spectators from the competitors, and a large open area with a cement floor.  In front of the seats were a series of scaffolding towers set up with cross bars between them and rings hanging from the bars.  The building was cold and never got warm despite the sun on Sunday.  This was worse for the spectators since as soon as an event started, the building felt very warm to the participants.

There were 5 events over the 2 days.

Event 1 was a run and shoulder to overhead each minute for 8 minutes.  Athletes started at their bar (100 for women, 155 for men), at the call they had to run across the arena (around 100 feet each direction, I’d guess) touch the far wall and return to their bar which they cleaned to their shoulders.  At that point they could use any technique to get it overhead and could return to the front or back of their shoulders.  They did this for the remainder of the minute.  When the call came at the end of the minute, they had to drop the bar and run again.  The goal was to get as many shoulder to overhead as possible.  The winning strategy was to take it easy on the runs, and do everything possible to maximize the reps before putting the bar down.  We watched several competitors sprint, only to have to catch their breath for several seconds before picking up the bar.  The weight was sufficiently heavy that nobody was running out of time before the next run, their shoulders were getting too fatigued to continue.  So get what you can and when you can’t get any more, put the bar down and rest until after the next run.

Event 2 was 40 handstand push-ups and 40 front squats (105 for women, 155 for men).  There was a 5 minute cut-off for the hspus, after which point, if you weren’t finished with them, you would have to progress to the front squats.  There were a lot of people who were unable to finish the hspu’s in the allotted time.  Hspu’s are a difficult movement no matter what, but doing 40 of them shortly after a shoulder-taxing first event was doubly hard.  Surprisingly (to me) few people kipped them.  Part of this was due to the fact the the scaffolding provided little support for the hips at the bottom, but of those who were trying to use a kip, few were able to get the timing right.   A lot of individuals who did very well on other events really struggled with this one.

Event 3 was a modified Fight Gone Bad.  There were 5 stations- Wall Ball (W-10lb, M-20lb), Power Snatch (65/95), Box Jump 20″, Row for Calories, Rest.  Spend 60 seconds at each station attempting max reps.  Our women benefited from the lighter than normal ball.  We usually train with 15lb balls in the gym, so 10lbs felt easy by comparison.  The Power Snatches were challenging, but I liked the quality of technique that we displayed.  Box Jumps were what made or broke this workout, with fast men (sorry don’t know what the high rep tallys were for women) at 50+ per minute.  Row was the usual gut check.  The interesting feature of this workout is that a point is a point, no matter if it’s from a box jump or power snatch.  If you consider the amount of work that you need to do to get a rep of each and rank the movements from easiest to hardest, you get Box Jump, Wall Ball, Row, Power Snatch.  A smart strategy was to maximize the Box Jump and Wall Balls, while sacrificing the others.  Thus we would try to go hard on the Wall Balls, and only hit a target number of PSnatches or only do them for 30 seconds and rest the remainder of the minute, then go hard on the box jumps, and pull at a moderate pace on the rower to allow for some extra recovery there.

At the end of Saturday, all of our women were on the leader board in the top 20, although I hear there was some confusion about the scoring.  I happened to be in 3rd place with Leon and Pat in the 20’s.  After an exhausting day we all returned home, or in a couple cases, to the hotel, fed our faces, showered and passed out.

The next morning with screaming quadriceps and shoulders, we returned to Monroe for day 2.

The 4th event was a 5 rep deadlift.  Some minor curve balls here were that the lifter stood on a mat while the plates rested on a surface a little below that, meaning that the bar was lower relative to the lifter than is standard.  I didn’t notice any real difference however so this wasn’t a big deal.  The plates were iron to reduce the lifter’s ability to bounce them from the floor.  Again, I didn’t think this was a big deal.  Lastly was the condition that all 5 reps had to be completed in 20 seconds.  This wasn’t really an issue for any of us except me.  Since it took me 22 seconds to do 5 reps on my final set they didn’t count.  This event was a chance for the stronger people to make up some ground on the faster people.  All Tacomans (except me and Emmi) finished in the top half of this event.

The 5th and final event was 5 rounds of a sled push (a metal sled with weights stacked on top 90 for women, 135 for men) 50′ and back, followed by 18 double unders and muscle ups (2 for women, 4 for men).  For the purposes of scoring, a premium was placed on skill.  There was no substitute for double unders and if you were able to do only 2 muscle ups, you were ranked higher than anyone who had to sub pull-ups, regardless of finish time or total work done.  A big factor in this event was the smoothness of the floor where you were pushing the sled.  There were patches where the surface finish had been worn away revealing the coarse aggregate underneath.  When a sled hit a rough patch it would bog down and get almost impossible to push.  You had to navigate around them, or be fortunate to be in one of the better lanes.  I was in one of the good ones and never really had a problem with the sled, which undoubtedly helped my time which was the fastest of the event and made up for my poor deadlifting.  It put me in 8th.  Brianne was one of the only women who managed to finish it as prescribed, cementing her place in the top 10.  Leon was fast and strong enough to make it into the top 20 at the end of the day.  Andrea was ever so close, and if she had managed 2 muscle-ups would definitely have broken into the top 20.