Resting schmesting…

Let us just call today an active rest day!

All you need for a great WOD!

10.15 WOD:

A. ”Flight Simulator” – 5/10/15…/50/45…/10/5 of Unbroken Double Unders
Time: 12’23 PB!

B. Three rounds, (not for time):

• 10 Pass Throughs (”Shoulder Disclocators”)
• 10 Reverse Pass Throughs (Start with the broom stick behind your lower back and palms facing forward, with straight arms take it over head to the front)
• 4*15s Three-legged Plank (Left arm of the floor, Right arm, Left leg, Right leg – trick is to keep the body totally straight and not leaning towards the side being less supported!)

Goal was sub 10… But, tried this once before and that time was around 15 min, so an improvement non the less!
I actually did this +1 rep per round (6/16/21 and so on) since I have a tendency to only do a single on the last rep. Had like 8-10 rounds where I had to re-start due to misses, most annoying was when I got to 43 on the 45-round on the way down. For a split second ”Wtf, nobody’s watching anyway – count it!” went through my mind. But then again, of course I came to the conclusion that I do train for my own improvement and re-did it while cursing the damn rope.

Mobility and core work felt good even though my shoulders where protesting a bit from the rope skipping. Plan to add a lot of core work in my WOD’s from now on, I need it…

I am still sore, especially upper body, since ”Cindy” or more likely due to the acumulated workload from the Challenge I did with Jobst so after this wod I spent a good hour on the foamroller, softballs and stretching. Lower back on the left side still isn’t completely healed but it goes in the right direction so next week I will be at it again!

Planning to see ”Inception” tonight, expectations are a bit high wich never is a good thing. That was probably the reason why I didn’t like ”Shutter Island” so much, but now that I think about it my expectations are high enough for me to expect to be disappointed. If that’s the case I might actually like the movie!

Namaste!

11th Hour

Just saw this Leonardo di Caprio-produced movie about how our way of life is destroying the very own planet that provides us with everything making human life possible…

The tragedy is the potential extinction of human life…

Liked it a lot. Not only does it promote a change in the modern human’s way of consuming and wasting just about every resource we can due to the economy currently running our society. But also, some of the narrators is identifying the problem as that within our self. How we human threat this earth is basicly a reflection on how we feel inside.
Not that it’s something I chose to talk about in general, probably cause I don’t know enough about it yet, but it’s actually something that I read and philosophize about alot…

Right now I’m re-reading my favourite book on human awareness, A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle. I like it because it kind of points out the human ego as the reason to most of the actions that we humans do and for me it gave me many ”aha-moments” when I could recognize so many patterns in not only my own, but also in other peoples behaviour.

After the movie I surfed in to www.11thhouraction.com and found a well written post by Al Gore about the Oil Catastrophe going on right now in the Gulf of Mexico, and in relevance to other things we pollute this world with every day. Pretty interesting if you ask me!

”People need to relize there are things they can do in their everyday life,
everybody making a change adds up to something meaningful.”

By the way, did I say that rest periods are killing me? Only been resting for one day now and already I’m bored to death…

Namaste!

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly…

Let’s start with the Good (news):  I beat Jobst in our 3-day Challenge and got another PB today!

Today’s WOD was ”Cindy” and my plan was to keep a 45s per round pace for as long as possible. Kept that until the 12th round and 9th minute when the push ups started to become a factor. Jobst actually got ahead of me in the beginning, but needed to break his pshu’s earlier and as soon as I passed him, I never looked back. Again in retrospect I feel like I didn’t get my max, (might be dellusional though, what you could have done isn’t really ever interesting..), but I definetily had a lot left in the tank when it comes to squats anyway. A little bit disappointed that I didn’t reach my goal of +25 rounds, next time I will!

”Cindy” – AMRAP in 20 min:

• 5 Pull Ups
• 10 Push Ups
• 15 Squats

Chris: 22 Rounds (PB by 3 rounds!)
J-Dawg: 20 Rounds+1 Pull Up (PB by 3 rounds!)

Bonus WOD: ”Within 120sec get a max ground to overhead anyhow!”

Chris: 84kg
J-Dawg: 73 kg

This is where The Ugly comes in!

Not only was my lift at 84kg not too pretty, but also the way I won this was pretty nasty.
We had prepared with a bar of 61kg and a lot of loose weights, up to you how much you want to put on. I decided to just do the 61kg directly to atleast get a number on the board. Jobst was smart and went for 73kg. Since next bumper + already set 61kg would be 70, he obviusly wanted a little margine to my next lift. Obviusly there was no use for me to go for 70 so I decided to go for a win or lose lift of 84kg, wich I got in a lift with about 15sec left of the time. Again Jobst tried to be smart, yeah tried, cause when he then set up for the kill with a lift of my 84 + the smallest extra weights available (0,5kg I think) he accidently left a 4,5kg bumper on one of the sides…
Pretty impressive that he actually almost got the lift if you ask me!

How about The Bad? Yesterday after ”Grace” my back stiffened up badly and last night was probably when it was at it’s worst ever. Got like 10 min of sleep before I had to change position over and over again because of an insane aching.
Decided to take the rest of this week off, I desperatly need it obviusly, and come back stronger then ever next week!

Video might take a while to upload, but I also will be making a full video of our challenge and post it in a while. It has been really fun to ”compete” with J-Dawg and to be totally honest I think a draw would have been more than fair, but that’s only reason to do this soon again!

Namaste!

Amazing Grace!

30 Clean & Jerks @ 135lbs/61 kg – 2’55 min!

PB! with over a minute! But ok, let’s chill for a minute. It’s not a world record, it’s not even close to what some of the monsters out there toss this baby around in, (read that Mikko did it in 1’11…), but I’m stoked. Was dreaming for a time of around three minutes but to actually go under it feels awsome!
I might be sticking my head out, but I actually think this might not have been my max. I pretty much kept the same pace going all the way and was just waiting for ”the wall” to show up, but it never came and even though I of course was a bit taxed after, I wasn’t completely dead…

This was the second part of three in mine and Jobst’s challenge and big ups for him aswell, he took his PB down from 5 min to 3’21!
Tomorrow is the last part with a WOD split in to two parts, ”Cindy” and then max ”ground to overhead within 120 sec” directly after. So, if this goes as expected it probably will go down as a draw, (we decided to count points only for winning events, luckily enough after yesterday). I should best Jobst in Cindy, being a lighter guy as well, and his C&J record is way better than mine.
That said, I must remind you of those Fat Ladies! I haven’t got my 20+ rounds yet, Jobst is showing impressive conditioning considering he’s been on a weightlifting programme lately, and what the hell – if there’s ever a time to beat my own expectations, why not tomorrow?

As yesterday I felt like doing a little extra work and went for this:

3 rounds of:

• 5 HSPU: 3/1/1 with +20cm rom, 3 xtra rom/3 reg, 5 reg
• 25 Ab-mat Sit Ups: 25, 25, 25

Time: 6’48 min

Not so impressive. Just wanted to work it through wich is the reason I didn’t stick to xtra rom all the way, would have been to time consuming.

3 * 3 Skin the Cat + Front Lever Attempts

Just for mobility and to get a good stretch, the levers are still very unimpressive…

Right now I am a little worried, my left hip/lower back area is aching and stiffening up pretty bad. Same area that was injured before, but I think I feel the difference in this being just really tired muscles compared to the ligaments that was probably stretched last time. Let’s hope it goes away during the night!

PS. Big day at Cape CrossFit today where Roland, Daniel, Anton & Graham all got their first Muscle Ups! Africa is where machines are built…

Namaste!

Chris vs. J-dawg!

The Challenge has started!

And I took a bad beating in the first round...

Jobst is leaving Cape Town for a few weeks on Wednesday so we decided to do a three day challenge and go face to face on these WOD’s. Needless to say, I need to shape up asap if I don’t want this to end up in a humiliating slaughter!

Today’s WOD and part 1 of the Challenge: ”Amanda”, 9-7-5 of:

• Muscle Ups
• 135lbs/61kg Squat Snatches

Jobst: 10’37 min
Chris: 15’15 min

To be fair this was the WOD I expected to get my ass kicked in. Jobst is a strong f*cker and has recently improved both his Snatch and C&J with 10kg or more. His MU is also way better than mine so to be completely honest there are no excuses, the thruth is up there in black and white!
My goal was sub 15 min and I’m actually just pleased with the fact that I’ve gone trough this. Might have done a total of between 5 and 10 snatches with 60kg or more before, ever, so to do 21 in one workout is something I wasn’t even sure was going to be possible. Expected this to be a killer condition wise, but I really focused on not missing any reps, I did not wanna end up like Khalipa missing half the reps while falling all over the playground, (did miss the very second snatch though). No way that I could have gone fast enough with these weights to be that exhausted anyway, it was actually more a strenght question in the end when every rep almost felt like a max from the squat position..

After this defeat I obviusly relized I need to get stronger so I did a little extra work:

• A. 3 * max L-sit on parallettes, with feet above another parallette, 60s b/t sets: 20s, 10, 11
• B1. 3 * 6-8 Ring Rows with feet on box @ 31X1 tempo, no rest to B2: 8, 7, 6
• B2. 3* 6-8 Ring Push Ups, feet on box @ 31X1, ca 30s rest to B1: 8, 7, 6

Legs fried for L-sit, both ring excercises found their purpose and I got quite a pump!

Tomorrow is ”Grace” and even though Jobst is way stronger than me in the C&J as well I think I can give him a fight. My PB is one minute better then his, wich however was before he added 15kg to his 1RM max! But, I need to win and really believe I am possible to do so. The fat lady has not yet started to sing!

Namaste!

The Hangover…

Was suppose to go hiking this morning, instead I just woke up at 1pm and feel like these guys…

Think I might go down and get my self a Col Caccio-pizza and watch the Formula 1! Hmm, guess I literally will be walking.
Just relized I left my scooter down at the beachwalk…

Mr. 80%

Quick Post!

Cape CF-WOD!

Thumb swollen and out of flexibility today, but still the butterfly kip worked fine so it didn’t held me back in any way!

Plan was to go at a 90% pace to get all sets unbroken, but in retrospect I waited too long between excercises in the beginning and my total effort was more like 80ish%. Got everything unbroken and felt very swift, HSPU was better than in a long time and the butterfly worked flawlessly. Did situps ”frogstyle” with an ab-mat and stuck to my plan to do the both 500m rows around 1’45 min.

All in all a very good workout that played a bit on my strengths but I should have gone harder, think sub 12 is very possible and for some bodyweight-monsters out there even a sub 10 might be workable?

This week has been a very sub-maxed one, next week will be totally different though since Jobst is going to be my sparring partner for three Benchmarks Monday to Wednesday!

PS. My time was 14.20 rx’d as you can see above.

Namaste!

Therapy for an Idiot

Sometimes I actually think that I’m a smart guy.
Sometimes I relize I’m not…

Karate Kid..?

Yesterday was my rest day and I also decided to make it a cheat day to give my body as much building stones as possible to recover 100% and to be full of energy today. Maybe potato chips and bread wasn’t the smartest building stones to add to my Paleo Diet though…

Remember my rule about burpees for whining? Think I’m gonna earn my self a few today.
Woke up this morning feeling a bit sick, sore throat and runny nose, wich I usually do when I get too much sugar. Also, my body didn’t feel like the machine I was expecting. Instead, I was sore allover with really tight upper quadriceps and hipflexors, my lower back was aching again and my shoulders felt like they belonged to Quasimodo…

Anyway, plan today was to go for a new PB in Snatch and C&J. So after a long warm up and a lot of foam rolling I started working up the weights with the Snatch. This is what happened @ 52kg…

”Snatch 101″

Luckily enough I chilled the sprained thumb with cold water and it didn’t swell too much. However, I tried and got a lift at 60kg as well, but I had to really force my thumb into the hook grip and it hurt like @&#^*#^!!

But, you know what they say: Everything happens for a reason..

I did feel a little bit weird walking in the gym today and honestly I wasn’t in the right mood for PBs anyway, I’ll get them next week instead. Arranged another WOD and it actually turned out to feel really good!

Yogaman’s Therapeutic Triplet, 5 rounds:

• 5 Back Squats @ 32X1, 84kg, 93, 102, 102, 111
• 5 Box Jumps: 80cm, 90, 96, 100, 106
• 3 Skin the cat + Front lever attempts

I haven’t Squatted heavy since I hurt my back a few months ago. Really wanted to see if I could go deep enough without the back hurting and actually think my technique was better than ever! Kept it at a depth where I could stay away from ”buttwinks” and that was just about parallell, but I felt really strong in the bottom position, (no where near max in any lift), and my knees stayed turned out all the time wich wasn’t the case before my injury. Thank you Roland!
Box Jumps was really fun, never tried this high before, and actually a little scary at the last round. Ring work only to improve mobility but also I learned that I need to get much stronger in my midsection if I wanna be good at this, my levers was a joke..

At the end of the day: If God gives you lemons, make lemonade!

Rest day!

My first complete rest day in a long time!

Just did some yoga and stretching though, twice a day is the recipy to get my lower back in to shape and also a good way to improve my lifting technique to just about every lift!

Here’s a few videos from yesterday!

Hillruns, maybe I shouldn’t try to become a film director after all..

Power Snatches!

Think I got the second pull explosive enough and really opened the hip. Still getting on to my toes too early sometimes, but all in all pretty good to be me!

Muscle Ups & Clean Grip Deadlifts

Haha, I knew my technique wasn’t pretty but this was just really ugly. Think I need to practice more strict MUs cause I don’t pull the rings close enough. Especially the right arm goes wild all the time..
Kept the back pretty straight for the deadlifts, but looks like my hip goes a little too early in my quest to get the knees out of the way a la Dutch?

Any technique comments are most welcome, I’m learning…

Namaste!

Am to PM

Started this day with some more running…

Antother hard winter day in Cape Town...

10 am – Hillruns @ 90%, 4 intervals: 30s/30/32/34
Goal was to not go over 90% so I decided to stop when the legs only resemblance to drumsticks was the stiffnes, not the frequency..

15 pm – Yogaman’s WOD:

A. On ze minute for 10 rounds: 1 Power Snatch + 1 Hang Power Snatch @ 52 kg
Rest 5 min
B1.  3 * 5 Muscle Ups, rest 30 sec before b2
B2. 3 * 3 Clean Deadlifts, 102kg @ 3111, (110% of Max Clean), rest 90 sec
Rest & Foamroll 25 min
C. ”GHD-Annie”

• 50-40-30-20-10 Double Unders
• 25-20-15-10-5 GHD-Sit Ups

Time: 8’07 min

Focus on snatch was to get slowly into the right position and really explode for the second pull, think it was ok. (Video might be coming up, hehe).
For the MU/Deadlift combo I wanted to get MU in a ”metconlike” environment and I actually haven’t deadlifted over 100kg since I hurt my back a few months ago. MU felt totally ok and I got all 5 in one try the first round wich I think is a PB! The clean deadlift was to prepare my self to set new PBs in the C&J and focus was to get a slow first pull, a straight back all the way and then really lower the weight slowly to build strength. Got a video of this too and let me just say that hookgrip is a b*tch when the weights go up…
The other rounds of MUs wasn’t too beautiful, my false grip really sucks. I get one rep and then I lose it. Anyway, 15 MU in a wod is good to be me and I’m just happy my back can handle this kind of load again! 

I’ve done GHD-Annie before but can’t find my notes of it so don’t know if it was a PB or not. It of course can/should be done with the full reps in the GHD as well, but let’s just say that I felt the 30 reps from last week for a couple of days. Don’t wanna know how 150 would feel..
Anyway, got all the DU unbroken but my quads took the biggest beating here and I had to break set 20 & 15 of GHDs. Maybe they are suffering from 3 running workouts in 2 days, (just saying!).
Tomorrows rest day is most welcome. I have forbidded my self to do any kind of activity at all so if the winter is gonna find it’s way here, let it be tomorrow and tomorrow only. Today was amazing, 27 degrees and sunshine all day long. Met up with a couple of friends down at the beach after the workout and just couldn’t believe this is suppose to be the bad part of the year down here…

Namaste!