After a long weekend lay-off from working out and attending the Midwest CrossFit Sectionals held in St. Charles, MO, I finally got back on the wagon and hit kind of hard. My goal was to squat and press early in the day and then come back with some kind of crazy met-c0n in the evening. I also planned to do “54321″ (final WOD) on Wednesday to see where I stacked up. It definitely would have been nice to see how I’d do against other top flight athletes in an environment of competition and judging but this was a good chance nonetheless.
I knew that box jumps would be were I could get a lot of reps and I felt that squat snatches would be another good way to get reps. I thought I could do good with handstand pushups but my damn shoulder is a piece of junk right now. Certain things like snatching don’t hurt it but hspu’s do.
Anyways, back to what I was saying. I was gonna do the 54321 on Wednesday but I got a little ancy (sp?) and didn’t even wait until Tuesday evening to give a go at it. I back squatted and pressed with a light weight to warm up my shoulder and then proceeded to setup the stations for the workout. Ha-ha. It was good and I did okay. I expected a little more but when the handstands didn’t come, I knew it wouldn’t be near my capabilities.
Tuesday’s WOD (100216)
Back Squat (low bar)
5 reps @ 235lbs.
3 reps @ 264lbs.
1 rep (+4 extra reps) @ 295lbs.
Press
3 sets of 5 reps @ 88lbs.
“54321″
For reps
5 minutes of rowing (calories)
4 minutes of box jumps (24 inch box)
3 minutes of hang squat snatch (75lbs.) (below knee)
2 minutes of wall balls (20#)
1 minute of handstand push ups
Reps: 285 (highest at sectionals was 313)
rowing = 80
box jumps = 125
squat snatch = 35
wall balls = 34 (easily more reps here)
hspu = 11 (easily more reps here)
Ricky,
I am trying to figure out how to get ready for the higher altitude in Denver. I would appreciate any ideas you might have on how to get ready. Did it effect you last year? Did you fly in early, or the day of? What is Joe doing for your other athletes? CFO was impressive as expected last weekend. Great job to all your athletes.
Cole
Cole,
It is good to hear from you. Congrats to you on your qualification.
To answer your question, there will be somewhat of a disadvantage but it will be slight if you train smart. The problem I felt was that when I hit a wall, I hit a wall. There was no continuation of moving at super speed. My strength is that I can go balls to the wall at the onset of a workout and continue to do so until the end. I mean, I can pretty much tell how long a workout should take and if it will take 15 minutes or longer, I hold back a bit and just keep clawing but if it is 14 minutes or shorter, I am sprinting.
When I got to denver, I used that strategy because I knew the workouts wouldn’t be that long and it worked to a charm on the first workout but on the second workout, it caught up with me. When I hit the last few reps of the front squat and the last set of burpees, I hit a huge wall and almost came to a complete stop. I got beat because of it.
So the altitude will cause some hardship but you can offset it a few ways. First off, you can purchase a box of all purpose medical masks. You know, the ones that cover mouth and nose. Those will make your workouts suck but give you an opportunity to feel what it will be like without sufficient oxygen.
Second off, you just have to get ready the old fashioned way, training harder than you ever have. Now don’t do this day in and day out but maybe once or twice a week, you go harder than you could ever possibly think. Make the lungs scream. Like I said, don’t do this all the time because you’ll just burn out but now and then will work wonders for you.
If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.
R.