BW DL & Wallball max rep x4
10/17 – 11/12 – 10/11 – 8/10
195 DL

••Ben••
(iPhone iRonick)

(follow-up)
Can I just say I suck :-( And last week totaly beat me up… as I’m still sore. The sit-ups yesterday did not help, as today I as the kipping pull-up was painful to the point that I didn’t do them for the warm up. For yesterday’s WOD I was going to try the GHDs but as soon as I started lean back I realized I wouldn’t be able to do it, so I did sit-ups instead. Today, my abs are still sore. I really really really need to stretch more, as I feel like I have such limited range of movement right now. Aside from my abs I thought the rest of me had recovered, but during wallball today I realized that I’m still feeling it in my arms.

I can’t believe how quickly I get out of shape. On the upside, I finally got around to cooking up a batch of chicken so I can start bringing my food to work again and hopefully start to lose some weight by eating better. Just finished my scramble, think its time for a coffee run now…

30 GHD Situp + 25 back ext
28:12 sub situps

••Ben••
(iPhone iRonick)

5 x rounds = 35:40

••Ben••
(iPhone iRonick)

With five days off and eating horribly… no surprise I’m really sucking at the WODs. Yesterday I joined late crew (5:30 pm class) at the gym for Mr Joshua (400m run + 30 situps + 15 deadlifts x5) as I figured it would take me a while… and it did. The gym was hella busy compared to the morning crew (7:00 am class), but it was greats as folks keep push to keep going and I did finish the workout eventhough I was the last person. What sucked was that I tweaked my back while rowing or somthing during the warm up which didn’t really work well for the actual workout. The odd thing is that the deadlifts didn’t really bother my back, I think it was more the running and situps. During the 2nd run I could hardly walk, but after taking a rest and lying flat on the floor for a while I did much better the last 3 rounds.

As for todays workout, it was back to the morning crew with only 4 of us there (+ Jason). The thing that sucked for me here was my grip, I really suck at endurance for pull-ups. Since I couldn’t do a L-Pullup, I did hanging leg/knee raises + pull-ups so I was on the bar for twice as long and my grip just couldn’t hold up. I started with kipping pull-ups but had switch to jumping for the last few groups since I could only hold onto the bar for 1 kipping pull-up. But I finished!

Since it was .COM rest day today, Jason came up with a partner workout for us to do… and I blew it :-( It was 15 wallballs, short run, 5 heavy deadlifts, short run, 15 wallballs… pass it off to your partner. 4 rounds for time. Ya… so I had a bad catch on a wallball 2nd round and only it to the 3rd. My partner (Jen), had to finish it off without me as my back was in a bit of pain. I am feeling better now. I hope I didn’t hurt it that bad, guess we’ll see how I feel tomorrow.

I felt kinda bad trying yelling “Come on Jen, you can do it… almost there” while lying on my back on the floor (with my forehead steaming… yes it was actually steam. I noticed it and Jason then made a comment about it). And on another note, I lost a chunk of skin from my left palm from the pull-ups the other day…. got a nice little crater there now ;-)

So I’m back to CrossFit again… After my drum corps finished up back in Sept, I spent a lot of time getting ready for Halloween and also tried to get back into a gym routine. Went back to the SGX workout but just was not able to stay motivated. I don’t know exactly why but I just decided that it was time to try CrossFit again, happen to find a small CrossFit affiliate (CrossFit Santa Clara) close to my office, and signed up… and its kickin my ass!

I’ve become part of the “morning crew” for the 7am class, and a few times getting there at 6:30am to review some of the CrossFit basic movements with Jason. One good thing is that most of the stuff I learned from the CrossFit Sunnyvale class I took is still in my head some where and I’ve been able to quickly pick it back up after a short refresher.

Thus far I’ve done Helen, Push Jerk, and Nicole this week… Jason says that my Push Jerk is pretty good and I got up to 165lbs. Today was Nicole (400m run + pull-ups) which really kicked my ass as I’m horrible at running and for the life of me could never get a pull-up. But that is what CrossFit is all about. However, with Jason’s help (and a rubberband) I went from not being able to do a kipping pull-up at all to getting 4 (before loosing my grip). I finally started to get the movement… definietly need to keep working on those so I can ditch the rubberband. That will be a great day indeed!

So I haven’t been keeping up withe Crossfit WOD between on-call, working from home when not on-call, and drum corps… The last two weeks were pretty much a bust. I’ve decided to put the Crossfit stuff on hold until after the Renegades season, as I really need to work on my endurance for playing cyms. So instead I’m going to try a physical conditioning routine outline for the junior corps with the most well known cymbal line… Santa Clara Vanguard.

On the SCV Cymbal audition page they outline a routine they use once or twice daily…

• 25 push-ups, hold cyms 1.5 to 2 minutes at flat , rest 2-3 minutes.
• 25 push-ups, hold cyms 1.5 to 2 minutes at port, rest 2-3 minutes.
• 25 push-ups, hold cyms at tap for as long as you can.

Tried it out last night once I got my cyms back. I was closer to the 1.5 mark on the first two and only lasted about 1 min at tap :-( I’ve got a ways to go. For the record the cyms weight 6lbs each, so imagine holding a 6lbs plate in each hand… “flat” is a 45 degree angle in front of your abs, “port” is vertical at eye level, “tap” is an inverted V at eye level.

In addition I bought some wrist/ankle weights to try and help push my endurance beyond what is needed. However, I need to be able to do it with cyms alone to start… Which I will be doing again after work today!