Pulled a two a day and felt really good. I ate well and felt fairly strong. My metabolic conditioning is far from where it can be but I am okay with this. It’s not important right now. Sometimes I get a little freaked when I am not doing as well with met-cons but I have to remind myself that I am on a plan and when the time comes for met-cons to become the focus, I will dominate.
This morning I hit the second week of Snatch and Dead-lift with some accessory work and this evening I did WOD #1 from Midwest sectional. They both went okay but still not at the top. I would like to do the Air Force WOD (workout #1) again in April to see the improvement.
Here are the workouts.
Tuesday 100209
Morning WOD (10:30AM)
Snatch
132 pounds x 2
154 pounds x 2
176 pounds x 2
176 pounds x 1
Dead-lift
286 pounds x 3
325 pounds x 3
362 pounds x 5
Accessory work:
3 sets
Reverse Hypers w/ monster-mini band x 20
Glute-Ham Situps x 14
Bent over Barbell Rows (113 pounds) x 10
Evening WOD (6:45PM)
Air Force Workout #1 – Midwest Sectional
98 pounds
20 Thrusters
20 SDLHP’s
20 Push Jerks
20 Overhead Squats
20 Front Squats
At the top of every minute of a continuous clock, you must perform 4 burpees. If you are in the middle of a rep when the beep goes off, complete the rep and then complete the burpees. Can’t move on to the next exercise until the previous one is finished.
Time: 6:51
It’s a pretty tough workout but mainly because it will be new to everyone. Shoulders are beat pretty good as well as the quads. I think I will get this workout below 5:30 next time or if done within a competition. I broke up the reps at the end way too much. I think there will be about 10 guys and 5 girls that will break 6 minutes and maybe 1 girl/3 to 5 guys that get real close to breaking 5 minutes if not doing so. We’ll see
I ended up taking Saturday off in addition to Friday. My shoulder has been bothering me some and my left hip flexor, and my left hamstring. I have been pvc pipe rolling my hamstrings and quads and seeing an ART specialist. Dr. Ellis is pretty good at what he does. Everything has been feeling better but I have a tendency to shrug off pain and push right through it. Because of this, I took Saturday off.
We picked up the pace today and hit it hard. We started out with an Olympic sequence that focused on full extension of the body but also a quick pull under the bar. I feel that the sequence we followed was beneficial to all those that showed up. I try to instill in my athletes that there is not always a need for weights to feel heavy for benefit. I try to get them to understand that sometimes the need for speed is of paramount importance and the focus is to be placed there. The thing is that it is hard for most CrossFitters and lots of other athletes to understand this. If it doesn’t feel like work, then they assume that it isn’t. This is why I am not in agreement that the majority of CrossFitters be introduced to Westside Training Principles. Let me take that back. I believe they should be introduced to max effort training and repetition effort training, as well as sub-maximal effort training, but they are not ready for dynamic effort training in the way that Louie shows it.
Westside uses elastic bands to accommodate leverage. Biomechanically, humans are the weakest at the bottom of the squat, bench, and dead-lift and strongest past the sticking point. This is their weakest link. Bring up your weakest link and move more weight. What bands do is increase the resistance past the sticking point so that at the top it gets heavier where you are stronger. This will cause a few things. First off, it is good because it teaches a person to fire on all cylinders sooner in the squat as you know that more resistance is coming and you try to offset this by moving quicker, earlier. Second, it allows for certain movements to occur that wouldn’t normally be allowed in a weight room due to safety, such as barbell squat jumps. This is because the bands take care of what you would normally have to decelerate. If programmed properly, these can be of great benefit but most do not know how to program properly. Very little volume with massive amounts of rest must be utilized. This helps with maximum speed which is mandatory.
This is where the problems start to arise. Because you would only use between 60 and 70% without bands or 45 to 55% with bands, and you utilize very little volume and massive amounts of rest, it feels like you are doing nothing. Think about it. For example, a speed-strength workout may be 3-5 sets of 1 with with about 4 to 5 minutes rest with around 45% of your 1RM and probably a light band if your squat is below 500 pounds for banded box squat jumps. This sounds fun but it won’t feel much if your squat is only 300 pounds. This amounts to 5 jumps at a really light weight. If done properly, like with super fast speed, you get something great from it over a macro-cycle but the problem is lifters want to put more weight on, don’t want to rest that long, or want to use a bigger band. All this will amount to is SLOW. Now Westside uses a minute rest b/w sets because it addresses work capacity. To most CrossFitters, this is not really work capacity (use longer rest periods and let your met-cons be your work capacity) but to huge guys that usually only move big weights and eat large amounts of food, it is smart on their part to train with only a minute rest b/w sets. Plus, they have 700 to 1000 pound squats and use gear. This means that their 50% is 350 to 500 pounds and the use of gear changes their needs from lots of strength in the bottom to lots of strength at the top (lock-out).
Does this all make sense? It should. We are not Power-lifters, and if you are, you aren’t Westside good. Don’t be a hero, stick to your skill level (as Brian McKenzie says). Utilize the simplest means to get the results you want and your upside becomes large. Utilize the most advanced programming and your upside dwindles plus you might fuck yourself up. In the end, you already use dynamic effort training anyways. If you use the Olympic lifts at percentages, this is dynamic effort training. Remember the bands helping with deceleration I mentioned earlier? Olympic lifts and their variations do the same thing.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I have been trying to get athletes to understand the importance of training weights and that not all weights have to feel heavy in order to get a training effect and at the least, it allows technique work. There is max effort training and dynamic effort training. They are different. If you don’t get it, replace dynamic effort with sub-max effort or keep with high box jumps, Olympic lifts (below 85%), etc. I wanted to say more but I loss track of thought so I’ll end here.
Sunday’s WOD (100207)
Hang Squat Snatch + Power Snatch + Overhead Squat
x 5 sets @ 132 (63% of 1RM Snatch/70% of 1RM Power Snatch)
Even if it feels light, stay with same weight. Forget about the want to go heavier and focus on moving so fast that it feels heavier to feed your ego.
followed by,
3 rounds for time of:
15 Thrusters (132#/93#)
2 Full flights of stairs (three floor building)
25 Pushups
Time: 11:22 (not a good day. My eating is stupid and it is really starting to affect my training)
It’s been a rough first week but that is mostly because this is a peaking week for our guys that are going to sectionals. I am giving them a chance to really beat down and get a feel for three brutal days of WODs. I am liking my strategy so far. The only thing is that my diet is going to be forced into being spot on. I can feel what it will be like down the road if I don’t get the ball rolling with eating a lot better. I am not that young anymore (training age, not chronological age). I have been doing this for a long time and it is especially harder to keep the intensity super high all the time. You really start to learn the importance of recovery and rest. It’s a precise game that needs to be taken seriously.
So far the template has been Sunday strength development, Monday off, Tuesday, strength development in the morning and met-con in the evening, Wednesday met-con, Thursday, strength development in the morning and met-con in the evening, Friday off, and Saturday the money met-con. I am super ready for the day off tomorrow and then focus on a good met-con on Saturday. This Saturday met-con will slowly rise to 5 met-cons over a wave-like process of going up and down until I reach 5 in one day. That is the plan anyways. Gotta be ready to adapt at a moments notice though.
This seems to be a pretty good process at the moment and only time will tell its benefits and/or costs. I am going to stick it out and see where it takes me though. I am not in competition shape at all but my mind is always on. It’s always ready to push to the limit but my body won’t let it go quite yet. After regionals, I may lose the strength development in lieu of high rep, moderately heavy met-cons mixed in with sprints, prowler pushes and drags, and the like.
Today’s workout went like this:
Thursday’s WOD (100204)
1:45PM
Power Clean & Jerk + Jerk
142 x 3
157 x 3
181 x 3 x 2
Overhead Squat
120 x 5
142 x 5
162 x 10
3x
Ring Dips (no kip) x 15
ss w/
Dead-Hang Pull-ups x 8 (throat to bar)
7:15PM
3 rounds for time of:
50 DB Zercher – Squats, Walking Lunges, or Both (35 pound db’s)
50 Box Jumps, 20 inch box
Time: 12:39
(the deal was that you could do all 50 reps with squats, all 50 with lunges, or you could mix it up and do any combination of the two, so long as 50 reps in total were met. You also had to hold the dumbbells in the crease of your arms and your hands had to touch during execution of either the lunges or squats, depending on what you were doing at the moment. You could rest with your hands separated, but when you attempted the squat/lunge, you had to touch your hands back together.)
Wednesday’s workout was pretty good in terms of taxing recovery. On a smaller scale at least. The workouts are posted for today’s on the CFO blog. It was three different workouts with about 6 minutes between each workout. The first one was a time based workout where the emphasis was on attaining a maximum number of reps within an 8 minute time period. The workout was a distant relative of “Cindy.”
Next came an easier workout in terms of technicality but a solid skill component in double unders. The focus of “Annie” is speed, skill, and abdominal stability endurance. It’s funny how much faster your time is when you don’t trip up at all with the double unders. If you do trip up, you will tend to take longer to re-start them, on average. There was a ten minute cut-off given to the gym for this workout.
Last came a test of mental fortitude. Not on a large scale but rather a manageable level. Complete as prescribed and you give yourself a boost of confidence, a sense of accomplishment. These involved heavy kettle bell swings where you were penalized for resting at the wrong time. You were given specific reps to reach that when reached, you were rewarded with an opportunity to rest. If you didn’t reach your rep requirement, you faulted and thus were required to begin anew. Once milestones were reached, they didn’t have to be repeated either.
It was a cool little three WOD’er that gives most a sense of what competition is like on a smaller scale. Minimal rest but more if you finish fast, multiple workouts in a short period, and different modalities and skill sets. For some, it may even bring on a little stomach churning. In any case, a change of pace to what is done on everyday.
Wednesday’s WOD 100203
WOD #1
As many reps as possible in 8 minutes of:
5 Clapping Push-ups
7 C2B Pull-ups
10 Jumping Squats
Total Rep Count: 254
WOD #2 (6 minutes after #1)
“Annie”
50-40-30-20-10- reps rounds for time of:
Double Unders
Sit ups
Time: 5:57 (not a pr but a pr for having done it after a workout only minutes before starting this one)
WOD #3 (6 minutes after #2)
For time: 50 2-pood Kettle Bell Swings
You must acquire 25 reps before being allowed to rest (rest as in put bell down or stop swinging with bell in hand). If you don’t make the 25 rep minimum, you have to start over at 1. Once the 25 rep minimum is reach though, your next milestone is rep 40 (15 consecutive reps). If 40 is not met prior to resting again, you must go back and start over at rep 26. Finally, the last ten reps must be completed unbroken or you will have to start over at 41.
If you have to scale the load, you are stuck with 10 penalty reps for every size kettle bell you drop.These penalty reps are not figured into the resting milestones but are figured in to your total time. Finally, many of you will be able to make all 50 reps without stopping. You are encouraged to do so.
Time: 2:18 with both rest periods. (I should have gone all the way through without stopping but for some reason, the heart wasn’t in it)
UPDATED with Workout #2B
Started new programming on Sunday the 31st. This begins my prep for regionals and ultimately the games. I will keep everyone up to date on what each workout is. Will be following a mix of Wendler’s 5/3/1 and Rip’s basic for strength with a lot of accessory work for shoulder health as well as attacking lower back, hamstrings, and abs in isolation. Most of these workouts will take place in the morning or early afternoon on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday with an evening met-con. I’ll take Mondays and Fridays completely off. Wednesday and Saturday will be met-con only days with Saturday’s periodizing met-cons to a point where I will do up to 5 in a day. This means that on Saturday’s, I will prepare myself, using a form of undulating periodization, to a point close to the games where I’ll be doing 5 in one day. The there will only be one peak per month meaning that I will reach a high only once per month. Only one Saturday out of 4 will have 2, 3, 4, or 5 workouts over the course of the next 5 months.
I am fairly confident that this will help me out a ton. I am keeping with the strength training because I love it and it keeps me motivated to do the other stuff.
Here is this past Sunday’s Workout:
Workout #1
Back Squat
x5 @ 205
x5 @ 235
x5+5 @ 265 (the last set of every exercise, i have the option of attempting as many reps as I can muster. In this case, I went for broke and was able to bang out 10 reps in total)
Press
x5 @ 95
x5 @ 110
x5+1 @ 125
Bent Over Row 3×10 @ 88/110
3 rounds of:
10 RDL’s (154#)
10 Box Jumps (varying heights)
Rest 1 minute
Workout #2A
Snatch
x3 @ 125
x3 @ 145
x3 @ 165 (missed 1)
x3 @ 165
Dead-lift
x5 @ 265
x5 @ 305
x5+1 @ 345
Reverse Hypers 3×20 (mini band)
GH Situps 3×12
Low Box Step-ups 3×20ea (35 pound db’s)
Workout #2B
DT’ish
5 rounds for time of:
9 Dead-lifts
6 Power Cleans
3 Jerks
weight used: 198 pounds
Time: 13:26 (This was tough but an awesome workout. For some stupid reason, I did 12 Dead-lifts for rounds 2 through 5. Don’t ask.)
Overall, training is going well. I have taken a different approach than last year. I haven’t overhauled, just some changes. I have gotten away from the met-con a lot. I haven’t cut it out but it is not my main concern at the moment. I have been really focusing my efforts on Olympic lifting and squatting. I work weaknesses everyday that I workout but I have put a lot of emphasis on speed, power, timing, and strength endurance. All of this with a little met-con sprinkled in. I plan to hold this schedule until sectionals at which point I will take a little focus off of Olympic lifting in of itself and transition a little closer to met-con. I’m planning on pulling away from speed and power and leaning towards pure absolute strength with a little more met-con involved than currently. I’ll do this for about a month and a half (middle of February till about the first of April).
From April up until regionals I pull back on the strength and focus on getting my specific conditioning up to speed. Met-cons over broad time with varying degrees of intensity. I’ll also place emphasis on lots of body-weight work. Lots of high rep pull-ups, handstand pushups, ring dips, muscle-ups, and the like. There will also be a lot of medial percentage loads with moderately higher reps for barbell lifts. Plus you can be sure that I won’t get away from heavy met-cons. Around this time, I will be pushing pretty hard on met-cons.
If I qualify for the games, as nothing is guaranteed, I will pull back from met-cons for a little while and go back to some basic strength training for a couple of weeks before hitting the met-cons hard for about 2 weeks. After this, it will be tapering off for the games. We’ll see how it all goes as it is a work in progress and a lot can change from now until then.
As I said, training is going fairly well but today was not that great. I have to go back to working hard on overhead squats. I’ve just lost a lot in that area. I don’t like it one bit. It used to be a strength of mine and somehow I’ve let it get away from me. I snatched and high bar back squatted today. The snatch didn’t go well. I missed about a billion times at 213. I had it in grasp about 75% of the time and just couldn’t make it happen. I was kind of disappointed in myself. After finally giving up on hitting 213, I pulled out a rack and attempted some overhead squats.
I did a few reps at 132, a few reps at 176, and a single at 200. After that, I loaded the bar to 252 and did 50 reps of high bar, ass to grass squats for time. I tried to do as many reps as I could consecutively and when I did rest, I tried to rest very little. I did this to try and force myself to recover quickly. I made myself do no less than 3 reps at a time and even then tried to get at least 4. By the end, my legs were mush and I had to fight for those last few reps. Tough workout nonetheless and I know I am going to feel it in the morning. It took me 10 minutes and 48 seconds to get all 50 reps. Look for this one to be a workout posted to the blog very soon.
Good day to everyone. Another week and the weather is not getting any better in Omaha. We’re expecting freezing rain over the next couple of days and we still have so much snow.
Well, here is my workout for today.
Monday 100118
Snatch from blocks (mid-thigh)
60% x 1 x 3 = 125
65% x 1 x 2 = 135
70% x 1 x 3 = 145
Clean and Jerk from blocks (mid-thigh)
60% x 1 x 3 = 165
65% x 1 x 2 = 176
70% x 1 x 3 = 192 (used 198)
Met-con
6 rounds, each for time:
12 Front Squats @ 132 pounds
12 Burpees
each round is separated by an increasing amount of rest.
After 1st round = 20 seconds rest
2nd round = 30 seconds rest
3rd round = 40 seconds rest
4th round = 50 seconds rest
5th round = 60 seconds rest
Round times:
1st – 53 seconds
2nd – 67 seconds
3rd – 61 seconds
4th – 69 seconds
5th – 74 seconds
6th – 67 seconds
Be on the lookout for the videos I mentioned in the last post. I have them on my computer but just haven’t gotten around to getting it together and on here. Soon. Ha-ha.
Nothing new for awhile. I have been busy getting our group ready for sectionals. We have almost thirty athletes going to sectionals. It is going to be an awesome experience for each one of those persons. There are a few that went to regionals last year but I would say that the people competing for the first time outnumber the returnees. I’m so excited. Everyone is training so hard and even those that aren’t competing are posing such a great challenge to those that are by going tough every workout themselves. This is one tough gym. I’m throwing solid workouts at them making sure to take it up a notch every few workouts, keeping most of them about medium, while taking a few down a notch for fun and recovery. It’s all about the stress and managing it.
I don’t care how good your diet is, no on can go full tilt bogey all the time. Peaking is all about getting rid of weaknesses while managing stress. You have to give your athletes a brutal workout (super heavy, super volume, or both. Significant to the individual) at the right time, every so often. It’s like trying to guess, read, and hope that they come when your athletes are the most recovered. This doesn’t always mean right off a rest day. I would venture to say that out of a 100% of the time, brutal workouts (the ones that help take your athlete to the next level) should be planned sporadically about 15 to 20% of the time. The other 80 to 85% of the time is spent, split up between your medium to hard workouts and those that are a technique/super fun workouts or even rest days. I would say that they are split up around 50% medium to hard and the final 30 to 35% on light and/or rest days.
This will obviously change once you get real close to competition. It all depends on the individual. Some can keep the above schedule closer to competition while others need to back off earlier. When you decide to back someone off, I would change the percentage to (this is debatable) 10 to 15% for brutal workouts, 30 to 35% for medium to hard, and more than half devoted to light days or rest days with lots of stretching and foam rolling. If everything is hopefully planned out properly, you will get what you are looking for and that is a well rested athlete that has a super sharp edge just waiting to release his/her best performance of the year. If they have more than competition during the year then your percentages change a little as you are looking just to qualify past your first competition. Here you hope for a good performance but not necessarily your best. Maybe 90 to 92% for sectional and 101% for regionals. If you perform past 100% for regionals then that is all you can hope for. It will either be good enough or it won’t be. If it’s good enough then you take some time off but not very much. Just enough to recover from getting burned out. You then hit it as hard as you can for a short time and the rest is back off with a lot of recovery and what I like to call knife sharpening workouts. Focusing on your super weaknesses while keeping your strengths maintained. Do this with low volume and about 80 to 90% intensity. When I say intensity, I am referring to the load, the effort, or both.
You have to be aware of these kinds of things or you are just shooting in the dark and hoping for a miracle. I guess, either way as long as you are having fun but if I am paying $100 to compete as sectionals just to go into it blind, it is a waste of my time. I would at least like to say that I couldn’t have done better, even if it isn’t good enough. Train smart.
My workouts:
I have been following Catalyst Athletics religiously. My schedule is usually either one day on/one day off or three days on/one to two days off.
If I go one day on and one day off, my workouts will bunch up two of their days followed by a met-con of my own. If I go three days on and one or two days off, my workouts will be one of their days followed by a met-con of my own, a met-con of my own, and finally on day three one of their days followed by a met-con of my own.
For instance, I did a met-con from CrossFit Football yesterday and today I did:
Snatch – 75%x1/77.5%x1/80%x1/75%x1×2
weights used – 154×1, 164×1, 170×1, 154×1x2
Clean and Jerk – same as above
weights used – 208×1, 213×1, 220×1, 208×1x2
Front Squat – medium to heavy x 1 rep
weight used – 252×1 (yep, just one rep)
skipped their kipping pull-ups and did our met-con for today which was,
for time:
50 double unders
45 ball slams @ 20 pounds
40 situps
35 step-ups, 24 inch box
30 CTB pull-ups
25 Turkish Get-ups @ 45 pound db
20 SDLHP @ 132 pounds
Time: 13:32
This will be followed tomorrow by a rest day. On Monday I will do Catalyst’s workout from Monday, January 14th along with a met-con with medium intensity (about 50 to 60% of 1RM for whatever lift is involved). I will probably then take off two days and come back with their workout scheduled for today which is maxing out on snatch, c&j, press, and back squat. The only deviation from catalyst is that I low bar back squat instead of high bar.
I am going really hard right now with heavy weights and longer days. I am really trying to break my body down. Throwing a lot at myself. I am recovering enough at the moment but I plan on taking it down a huge notch right around sectionals. I don’t have to compete at sectionals but I am planning it into my training as if I have to. I’ll back off for a week or two and then take it up a notch even higher than what I am doing now with multiple day workouts but more time in between throughout the day as opposed to during a single workout time. I will then take it down a little and then back up to about 80% before finally tapering off for regionals. This is the hardest I have worked my body and mind in a long time. My diet is not very good right now but that is on purpose. I am trying to get a little bigger. I want to compete around 160 this year. Even if that means with a little more around the waistline. It’s really hard for me to put on weight.
I’ll try and keep up everyone on the training. I will also have some video posted within the next few days of a workout from Thursday. Snatch, C&J, Back Squat, and Dead-lift.
Writing in 2010 as the date still feels a little weird. I’ll get used to it. I wanted to post a couple of videos to the website for you guys. One is from last year prior to the games of me doing King Kong but I had to scale the weights a little. I did a 440 dead-lift than the prescribed, i think, 460 and I cleaned 242 instead of the prescribed, i think, 255. I am getting close to doing the workout prescribed as my dead-lift 1RM is now 452 and my clean 1RM is 277.
The second video is from the other day. I did 5 rounds of 3 Power snatches at 164 and 15 chest to bar pull-ups. I believe it took me just under 10 minutes to finish. I’m not sure. It’s not very good video but who cares. Enjoy.
Only 2.5 days left in 09. Only 2.5 days left to get those new year’s resolutions figured out and a plan in place to carry them out. Is it losing weight? Is it getting stronger? Is it spending money more wisely? Is it focusing your attention on those you love? Is it getting better at what you want to get better at and doing what is necessary to get the job done?
Whatever your choices are, you need to have a plan in place. And this plan needs to be specific with specific goals that will be achieved along a specific time-line and these goals need to be realistic. If you don’t follow this plan, you will follow in line with everyone else that shows up to the gym hoping to change their lives only to resort back to old habits before the completion of the first month or shorter. Is that you? I hope not.
_________________________________________________
I got an email the other day from one Matthew Richardson who wanted me to elaborate on my statement of distance events not being healthy. Now understand that sporadically running/swimming/biking lots of miles has its merits. Just like sporadically lifting lots of heavy weights for low amounts of volume. Here’s my take on all this, so to speak. I can think of two continuum’s that I can use for explanation. One one continuum you have no activity vs. over activity and on another continuum you have too much of one activity vs. too much of another activity.
The first continuum would have us believe that if doing nothing but sitting on the couch all the time wasting away with no activity is bad for us, symptoms of obesity, hyperinsulinism, inactive brain, etc., then by equal measure on the other side of the continuum, too much activity, especially in one discipline, could also prove to be detrimental to our health. For example, distance running only, power-lifting only, gymnastics only, etc., etc. Now understand that we are talking about health here and not sport or more specifically the sport of winning at all costs. Look at power-lifters. What do you see? Super-strong, joint issues, over-weight, over-use injuries, very little work capacity, terrible diet? What about long slow distance participants? Super-weak, under-weight, very-little anaerobic work capacity, joint issues, over-use injuries, enlarged hearts (dangerous), bad diets? Do you see what I am getting at? Neither one is healthy. It’s okay to do what you love but wouldn’t you rather do what you love for a long time and have it actually be healthy for you? For this continuum, I would say to make sure your rest and recovery (a la couch time) is on par or equal to your activity time.
The second continuum pits one activity against another. Using our example above, pitting distance against absolute strength development. Because of the reasons I listed above, being on either side of the continuum too much would prove to be detrimental. Again, we are not talking about competition here, only health. The common sense thing to do would be to clean up the diet, increase absolute strength, run distance sporadically but sprint more often, increase power, change workouts to avoid over-use, etc. Kind of just stay in the middle right?
Hopefully this clears up some what what I think about distance running. I love to lift heavy and work at moving heavier and heavier weights and I really don’t like to run/swim/bike for even what’s considered a medium distance but I know that I need to do both and more importantly I need to engage in sport because engaging in sport, and all kinds of sport, is the path to keeping young. By sport, I mean basketball, football, tennis, raquetball, etc. Sprint sports.
More to come later……………………..
