Tacoma Strength and Conditioning

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.

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