Training Recap Feb 15- Feb 21

Sunday Feb 15, 2009 Rest Day

Monday Feb 16, 2009 6 hours of sleep, no nap.

No strength sets.

WOD=FRAN. Fran is one of the infamous benchmark workouts. It consists of 21 thrusters 21 pull-ups, 15 thrusters, 15 pull-ups, 9 thrusters, 9 pull-ups for time. It never seems too bad on paper, but you can't image the degree to which thrusters jack up your heart rate until you experience them. The women's weight is prescribed at 65lbs and due to the fact that we have kilogram bars and plates I did it at 30kg/66lbs. I didn't do this workout until we closed at 8pm and all day I had a feeling of anticipation very similar to what one feels on race day.

Pull-ups were all chest to bar and I completed it in 7:28.

This is my first time under 10 minutes even with chin over the bar. I have been hitting some heavy thrusters a couple times over the past couple of months and they felt MUCH better. This was my rep breakdown for each round:

Round Thrusters Pull-ups
21 15/6 12/7/2
15 9/6 6/5/4
9 9 9
One chunk at a time. I hope to be under 5 minutes before the end of the summer. I just need to get myself in the right situation with someone beside me who doesn't put the bar down or come off the bar. All in time.

Tuesday Feb 17, 2009: 6 hours of sleep, 30 min nap.

Rest Day.

One thing that I have drastically changed in my training is focusing on rest and recovery as the primary importance towards training. For anyone who has known me for awhile this is a HUGE change in my mindset. I was the psycho doing a minimum of one hour of the elliptical on EZ days and upwards of 2.5hrs on my insane days. And I used to wonder why I was constantly injured. I didn't understand the fact that more is NOT always better. On top of that I did lots of bull shit lifting of isolated muscle groups.

One of the CrossFit Journal articles that really hit home with me was from the CFJ issue 29 in Jan 05 "What About Recovery" by Coach Greg Glassman. You can view a free PDF copy here. My favorite part is where Coach says, "I want to ask someday, 'Who are those amazing athletes?' to which the answer comes, 'the new resters.'"
Now, I admit that it has taken me nearly 2 years of CrossFitting to FINALLY begin to embrace this idea. I do less training now than I have since I got serious about athletics back in high school, yet I'm constantly making gains. Especially as a distance runner to do a WOD that is less than 10 minutes and call it a day can be mentally challenging. However, over time I've truly come to appreciate the idea of quality over quantity with quality equally high intensity training.

I'll touch on this more in the future.

Wednesday February 18, 2009 4.5 hours of sleep. Yikes. What did I just say about recovery?? The first month of business continues to be challenging as far as shutting the mind off at night to sleep.

Strength sets: Overhead Squat (OHS)5x 45, 66, 71.5, 77, 82.5, 87, 92lbs (5 rep PR!) 1x97lbs F on 2, 1x102 (New 1 rep PR) I had only hit 100lbs once prior to this. I'm really happy with 92x5. It felt good.
WOD: 30-20-10 knees to elbows

3- 6- 9 Overhead walking figure 8s 20 feet (boxes were set 10' apart so you had to walk around one and come back around the other to cover 20' for each set.

Used 80% of my OHS 5 rep max or 72lbs which was WAY too heavy. As a result I flew through each round of the K-E as I finally learned the kip and struggled desperately on the Overhead walking portion. My overall time was 31:50.

28 second L-sit (as pictured above). I need to work on this. Some people can hold this for 3+ minutes! Give it a try. Need some parallettes? You can make your own inexpensively. They will serve you much better than any swiss/physioball. Here's how.

Thursday February 19, 2009 Decent sleep, but still not ideal. 7 hrs + 30min nap.

Strength sets: Weighted Ring Dips: body weightx5, 3xBw+5lbs, 3xBW+10lbs, 3xBW+10, 3xBW+12.5, 3xBW+12.5, 3xBW+15(PR), 1xBW+10kg/22.5lbs (PR)
WOD: 150 feet walking lunge (took me 45 total steps), 21 burpees, 50 squats Total time: 3:19.

Short little burner. Felt good. Lunges good be faster without concrete floor and turning every 30 feet. Burpees were straight through but always could be faster. Squats were 50 straight.

Friday February 20, 2009: Rest day. Not enough sleep.

Saturday February 21, 2009: Good sleep, 9 hours!

No strength work.

WOD: 5 OHS (50lbs), 10 tuck jumps (TJ), 10 push-ups(PU), 4 OHS, 15 TJ, 15 PU, 3 OHS, 20 TJ, 20 PU, 2 OHS, 25 TJ, 25 PU, 1 OHS, 30 TJ, 30 PU. Overall time: 9:03.

Could have gone heavier in OHS. Did this one with Brutal and Eric. It was fun.

Total weekly mileage: 0

Total estimate mileage for 2009: 7